
Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? - gcj
Just curious about scripts and things you guys have automated
======
acidburnNSA
Lots of home automation fun with Home Assistant ([https://www.home-
assistant.io](https://www.home-assistant.io))

* Self-hosted security system that e-mails me when triggered. It arms when everyone disconnects from the wifi and disarms when anyone in the home reconnects to wifi. Totally passive. Also arms at night when the kitchen lights have been out for 5 minutes after a certain time and disarms when motion patterns that can only be someone waking up are sensed.

* E-mails work and personal when smoke alarm goes off or when water is detected in basement

* E-mails pic from front door camera when doorbell pressed (yeah, like Ring, but with a ESP8266 monitoring my normal doorbell)

* Voice reminder on garbage day

* Northern loon call exactly at each sunset

* Ambient jungle noises and lights on when I wake up and it sees me

* Laundry timer + reminders

* Vacation mode random lights on/off

* Plays a Ship's bell chime on the hour, but only during daytime (ambiance)

* Tones when any outside door in the house opens. Optionally: random Seinfeld bass transitions

* Alert for power outage

* Alert if my mom's house temperature goes too low in winter when she's away (I've called the plumber to fix the furnace thanks to this)

* Turn on A/C if temperature above threshold at 4:00pm in anticipation of my return from work

Stuff like that. Loads of fun. Lots of fiddling.

~~~
j7ake
Sounds great. So do you need one raspberry pi per automation ? Or are you
somehow linking all these diverse processes with one raspberry pi ?

~~~
acidburnNSA
One raspberry pi for all! The devices are connected via zwave wireless with a
USB stick zwave controller. Actually I moved the main server from a pi to my
home server a while ago but it was all working fine on a pi 3.

------
schappim
Example 1 (custom hardware).

My wife and I run [https://littlebird.com.au](https://littlebird.com.au) and
ship 25K orders per year. We found that it was taking too long to fulfil each
order using Australia Post.

So I built our own custom WebUSB postage scales and label printer. Creating a
consignment is now 1-click.

This enabled us to take the fulfillment process down from 5 minutes to 5
seconds. Across 25K parcels this equals 11-months of work time.

Being a WebUSB based solution, they "just work" with anything running the
Blink rendering engine, even Android phones.

You can see the WebUSB Scales and Label Printer in action here:

(30 sec video)
[https://vimeo.com/334547755/c387957a25](https://vimeo.com/334547755/c387957a25)

Longer demo:

[https://vimeo.com/334563934/915a25eedc](https://vimeo.com/334563934/915a25eedc)

Shopify liked the demo and I got to demo it to their CEO and various teams in
Ottawa.

The minimum order quantities on the Postage Scale hardware was 100 units, so
let me know if you'd like one :)

Example 2:

I've automated the lodgement of "Australia Post Inquiries" to get a refund
when they miss their SLAs. The numbers add up quick over a year.

~~~
radicalriddler
Damn, I attended one of your Raspberry Pi workshops in Mount Kuring-gai about
3 years ago.

Unless I'm completely mistaken, who knows.

~~~
schappim
Awesome, thanks for coming! We're now in Hornsby (needed a bigger
factory/warehouse).

------
geocrasher
My typing. In my work I tend to type a lot of the same things over and over
again. So I automate that with AutoHotKey. Ctrl+Tab becomes RightAlt. Two
words become entire paragraphs. Even simple things like "You're welcome" are
just 'ywyw' or 'tyvm' becomes "Thank you very much". I know it sounds silly,
but while trying to avoid RSI's, the less typing the better.

I also use autohotkey to help me remember to Linux commands that I don't
remember of are awkward to type. Like 'awk1' becomes "awk '{print $1 }'" and
then I can modify it as needed.

This has worked extremely well for me for many years. Ymmv.

~~~
rolleiflex
I wonder if it would be possible to build an app that's effectively a self-
installed keylogger given access to your entire stream of writing, and after a
few days, it starts to recommend candidate strings for automation with
Autohotkey.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
This was the idea behind the Blackberry Android keyboard.

Source: Was there, wrote code for it.

~~~
nickthemagicman
sounds like code that could be useful to this day at least the concepts.
That's the downside of closed source. It's gone now.

------
gorgoiler
I have a folder on my mail server called “Dead”. If I move an email to that
folder then all subsequent emails to the same address as the first one go into
“Dead/Match”. It’s driven by procmail and a script.

When used with one-off email addresses you get a behavior that’s like
unsubscribing, but without having to trust any “unsubscribe” links or
processes, and also without having to edit any config files (it’s all driven
from iOS Mail.)

1/ book your hotel using the email address $RANDOM@yourdomain

2/ receive booking conformation and enjoy holiday

3/ when you eventually get marketing spam, file it in _Dead_ and never be
bothered again.

~~~
michaelfavia
Until you book again at that hotel chain or third party agent like Priceline
and never receive another email again right? I like the premise but the
details seem like they would cause more trouble than the solution solves.

~~~
davchana
Same thing happened with me twice.

Long time ago I setup workflowy.com to send me emails of daily changes; gmail
filter to mark as read, apply label, archive & forward to Trello board. So
twice I forgot the password, asked password reset link; & it is not coming to
my inbox; because that filter was auto reading & archiving it.

------
kdbg
This might sound a little-bit stupid, but I automate locking/unlocking
internet access on my phone and computer.

That is to say, every night my computers and phone will lock me out[0] at a
set time. Then in the morning I have to log 30 minutes of exercise (tracked by
my heartrate on fitbit) to unlock internet access.

I also have certain time-wasting sites like Reddit and Netflix locked out
until I complete a sufficiently difficult problem on leetcode, projecteuler,
or wechall

\---

I was just finding it hard to keep myself going to bed at a decent hour when I
have no constraints like a 9-5 job and to keep an exercise routine going. So
this automation has helped me.

[0] My computers are basically totally locked, my phone keeps the phone,
messaging, camera, and skype accessible

~~~
nestorherre
What do you use to lock/unlock your gadgets?

~~~
kdbg
Kaspersky Safe Kids. I chose it after experimenting with a bunch of options,
it was the only one that wasn't trivial to bypass on my phone.

Basic setup is that I wrote a script (against Kaspersky ToS) that can login
and change the lock/unlock schedule and enable/disable website/application
restrictions.

So it unlocks after I tell it to check Fitbits API, and disables restrictions
after I tell it to check one of the challenge websites. Locking happens on at
a configured time each night.

------
zakn
Shopping for groceries. I made a website which lets my wife and I pick recipes
and any "one off" items we need for the week. The code figures out which
ingredients it should buy (preferring organic / sale items) and then calls the
"APIs" of our local grocery store's website to make the purchase. We then just
have to pick up the pre-packed groceries on our way home from work.

It costs $5 for the packing service, but it's worth it to avoid the burden of
shopping. No more tedious math on which is the better deal. No getting lost
trying to find avocado oil. And no lines. I wish I had done this years ago.

~~~
koonsolo
I've been thinking about doing the same thing, but I want to automate it in
such as a way that it knows what food is still unused in the house. Haven't
found a solution for that yet, but maybe with smart fridges and/or image
recognition we're not far off. Unless the hn crowd knows an existing solution.

~~~
skiman10
You could try scanning the UPC codes and saving those in a database. I guess
then you would have to scan them again to remove them which could be tedious.
Maybe that idea will spark some inspiration though.

------
jonny383
I went through a phase of trying to automate _all_ aspects of my life. If I
did a task more than 3 times, and it could be automated, I went ahead and
wrote some scripts for that.

Anyone will quickly learn there is a trade-off between managing the time it
takes to maintain automation and the time you would spend just "doing" said
task.

After this realization, I started manually performing tasks, timing them, and
storing them in a glorified spreadsheet. Any time automation broke, I timed
how long it took to fix, and also put it in the spreadsheet.

I deprecated all automation tasks that did not save me either 10% or more
time, or tasks that I found at least some enjoyment in (such as messaging my
wife when I would be home, reading my child's school reports regardless of
their result).

I have over 140 automation scripts in tact. Some are software-only
(interacting with APIs, emails, SMS, scraping) and some have associated
hardware (sensors attached, etc).

I have become obsessed with data being generated by this automation, so I now
log all events and meta information where possible. This gives me pretty good
insight on where pointless items exist in my life (which allows me to just
stop doing them, automated or manually) and where important parts also exist.

~~~
g96alqdm0x
Would you mind sharing which automated tasks offered the highest ROI, and some
information about how you run them all (i.e., do you use cloud services, or an
always on RPi that you run the scripts on)? Also, which libraries have you
used for scraping?

~~~
rvdca
To be honest, given the description, who would not be interested with that
description on the top list?

------
Retric
There are plenty of other ways to do this, but...

I have a CC specifically for reoccurring bills. It’s automatically paid off
every month and just by looking at that one debit it’s easy to notice if
something odd happens and then track down what changed. Plus by adding it all
together I tend to trim what services I keep paying for.

~~~
yyhhsj0521
Your bank has an API for that?

~~~
matwood
You don't need an API. Most bills can be put on a CC. Most banks have
automatic bill pay. Having all the recurring bills on one CC is the life hack
b/c it's very easy to see in the total each month if something requires
investigation.

------
rsync
I use cron to send myself birthday reminder emails:

    
    
      0 0 9 11 *      /usr/bin/mail -s "REMINDER: Nov 9 is Marks birthday" me@mydomain.com
    

Or just annual reminders or warnings I want to heed:

    
    
      0 0 1 8 *       /usr/bin/mail -s "REMINDER: MAKE christmas St. Francis reservations NOW for good pricing..." me@mydomain.com
    

Sometimes, instead of /usr/bin/mail, I use 'smsme' which is a small script
that interfaces with twilio:

    
    
      /usr/local/bin/curl -X POST -d "Body=$msg" -d "From=$from" -d "To=$to" "https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/$accountsid/Messages" -u "$accountsid:$authtoken"
    

(that's not the entire script, but you get the idea)

~~~
xyst
What’s wrong with reminder apps that are default with all smart phones?

~~~
rsync
I've been building this crontab since 1996.

How many phones have you gone through since 1996 ?

------
erikhayton
I automate most things I do more than a dozen times.

Marketing for my wife's uncle was a pain, so we automated CL and FB posts to
fire from Quickbooks Inventory on a schedule.

I'm full-time remote, so I have a spreadsheet that tracks my expenses from a
google form, does currency conversions for my location and forex analysis to
tell me the best day to pull money from an ATM, tells me how much I have to
spend on food each morning...

There's a script I send quotes I like to, and it randomly sends me one from
the list via Telegram every day at 6am.

I'm also a swing-trader who hates staring at charts, so my watchlist generates
via news and sentiment, then I run TA on that watchlist to send me alerts if a
signal is generated, then all I have to do is hit buy/sell on my inline
keyboard and it sends off a market order; it auto-exits after a target or stop
loss is hit.

Recently formed an agency with a few other automation devs who do similar
stuff if you want to check it out:
[https://weautomatestuff.com](https://weautomatestuff.com)

~~~
dmak
I would love to hear more about your trading scripts and your TA assessment.
Which API do you use?

~~~
erikhayton
I write custom scripts for strategies, pulling data from places like Alpaca,
IB, CCXT; charting using bokeh, plotly, mpl and other repos; zipline for
backtesting... It really depends on the need; and the speed.

------
1zael
Back when Tinder's API was more open, I had a Python script that would
autoswipe everyone in the match queue. Then I'd go through all my matches,
manually filter the ones I didn't like, and message the ones I did.

It was highly efficient, increased my conversation rate, but didn't really
impact my end metrics ;)

~~~
barbs
There was a hilarious article a few years back about someone who automated
every part of the dating process, including the actual dating using a bot on a
segway and automatically ordering sex toys. Anyone know what I'm talking
about?

~~~
gadders
Link below. It was written by Rob Rhinehart, the founder of Soylent:

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/engineering-the-perfect-
date_...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/engineering-the-perfect-
date_b_4319302)

------
todd3834
I live in a condo complex with a dog and no lawn. We learned after getting our
dog that this place doesn’t want dogs going to the bathroom on any of the
common area (makes sense but annoying to dog owners). We used to get a small
patch of grass delivered every week but it was a hassle to swap each time.
Also it was disgusting by the end of the week. Then I discovered porch potty.
Got the version that is hooked up with a sprinkler system and a drain. Set up
an auto timer so it gets completely flushed every night. Saves us a bunch of
money and time. Highly recommend.
[https://www.porchpotty.com/](https://www.porchpotty.com/)

~~~
wheelerwj
> We used to get a small patch of grass delivered every week

haha, WHAT??

~~~
uoaei
Sod-as-a-Service (SaaS)

------
anotherevan
Have an ultrasonic sensor on top of my monitor that's used as a presence
sensor to tell the computer when I’m in front of it or not.

Pauses the music player when I walk away and starts again when I return.

More details here: [https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-
there/](https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/)

------
kunalpowar1203
I've used Automate App
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.automate&hl=en_IN))
to set my android phone to silent mode in office and loud at home based on the
wifi ssid.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
That Google/Android tracks everywhere I go, sends me an email at the end of
the month about it, and still can't silent/remind when I get into proximity of
a location bugs the shit out of me.

That tracking that's so profitable for them is an afterthought when it comes
to my own convenience.

~~~
disillusioned
I mean, Google Assistant absolutely supports location reminders. Just ask
"remind me <x> when I get to work" and it'll... mostly work. Sometimes it's a
bit late, but it mostly works. For silent, I think that'd be more of a
Tasker/Automate thing, like OP.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
Makes sense I missed it then, I hate using the assistant. It feels like asking
someone else to scratch my nose.

------
techolic
Previous discussions

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14782332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14782332)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20564687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20564687)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13337024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13337024)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16875106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16875106)

------
shostack
Nothing fancy or involved at all, but in my personal finance spreadsheet, I
dynamically pull in Zillow's current estimate of my home value (which I take
with a grain of salt obviously).

I also use IFTTT to pause my robovac if my doorbell rings.

Right now I'm working on a Mint scraper to automate the rest of my personal
finance data entry, but running into headaches getting Selenium to work
properly on Catalina.

~~~
erichocean
Puppeteer is way better for scraping.

~~~
wp381640
I just started a new scrapy project with:

[https://github.com/clemfromspace/scrapy-
puppeteer](https://github.com/clemfromspace/scrapy-puppeteer)

best of all worlds

------
gandalfgeek
Not exactly a script, but if I really think about it the largest thing I've
automated in my life is investing--- via index funds. No picking individual
stocks, no rebalancing (Vanguard and others have "target date" funds that
rebalance automatically).

~~~
buffaloo
Don’t you just end up with a portfolio weighted with half below average
stocks? Seems like you could beat this just by buying stuff you’ve heard of.
I’m sitting her with my Apple phone, using Verizon internet, burning
electricity from a publicly traded utility that probably won’t go broke next
week, wearing my Nike shoes and drinking a Coke. That portfolio probably beats
your index and requires zero brains or effort.

~~~
bitadder
The problem isn't always knowing what to buy, but when to sell. For some who
don't have the time of researching and rebalancing an index fund or ETF that
does it for you is a good value prop.

Example where that strategy might run into problems - hindsight is 20/20:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EH6la6VWoAIC0cM?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EH6la6VWoAIC0cM?format=jpg&name=medium)

~~~
swinglock
Index funds don't try to time the market. Which ETFs are you thinking about?
Hedge funds?

------
anotherevan
I read a lot of articles by saving them to Pocket and reading via my ereader.
I wrote a little PHP browser based application that interfaces with the Pocket
and hn.algolia.com APIs that helps me to follow up on articles in related
forums such as Hacker News and track my reading habits.

Naturally I called it Pocket Lint.

------
Antoninus
Hire a cleaner once every 10-11 days to clean my apartment and do the laundry.
Its surprising how much time you have if you don’t have to do dishes.

~~~
throw03172019
My house is a mess after a week. How’d you come up with 10-11 days?

~~~
mthoms
Thats when he finally runs out of dishes.

------
majewsky
[Not really automation, but I'm hijacking the opportunity to tell the story.]

I'm a terrible morning person and I noticed that I need much longer to get up
and dressed and everything than it reasonably should take. On the order of
"taking 1 hour to do stuff that can be done in 15 minutes". I seem to have
ADHD (disclaimer: not formally diagnosed, just going off of symptom lists and
descriptions from other people), and that in combination with morning
drowsiness seems to make me really ineffective at this point.

So I wrote down a list of all the things that I need to do in the morning,
together with an upper estimate of how long this is going to take. Think
something like this:

    
    
      { "tasks": [
        { "label": "Make the bed", "duration": "60s" },
        { "label": "Morning wash", "duration": "3m" },
        { "label": "Get dressed", "duration": "2m" },
        ...
      ]}
    

I built an application for my desktop PC that just runs down this playbook and
always shows the current task, together with a timer for the current task as
well as the overall playbook, in comically large fonts to fill the screen:

    
    
      PREPARE BREAKFAST
    
      Current: 04:45/05:00
      Total: 16:45/59:30
    

There is no "Pause" button, only "Skip" for when a task is shorted than the
alloted time. Also, the application can beep to signal "3-2-1-Over" at the end
of each task, and each task can have a configurable beeping interval. The
whole point of the system is to be breathing down my neck to stop me from
procrastinating, and it works perfectly in that regard.

Since starting with this tool a few weeks ago, my morning routine has gotten a
bit shorter, but I also get more stuff done at the same time. I have a slot
for meditation, so I'm now doing that semi-regularly in the morning. (I still
skip it too often. Maybe I should make that task unskippable.) I have a slot
for preparing a packed lunch, so I don't have to eat out as much and save some
money in the process. With the time saved, I've switched my commute from tram
to walking. I'm still tweaking the playbook here and there, but it already
feels great to arrive at work in the morning knowing that I've already done
several positive things for my well-being, rather than the bare minimum as it
used to be.

~~~
gield
I need this in my life. Is the source code public somewhere, or can you make
it public?

~~~
majewsky
I haven't gotten around to polishing the repo enough to make it public. If you
follow me on GitHub, you should see it once I publish it. The name of the app
is Monastery, so it's going to be
[https://github.com/majewsky/monastery](https://github.com/majewsky/monastery).

------
laurentdc
I use a 20 line Python script to convert Outlook .ics calendars into billable
hour count. It looks for a company name (the client) and calculates start and
end time. All it needs now is to fill a .pdf invoice template and I can get
rid of HR :D

~~~
nathan_f77
Shameless plug: I’m working on FormAPI [1], which can help you set up the PDF
invoice template. We provide a Python client library, so you can add that to
your script with a few lines of code.

[1] [https://FormAPI.io](https://FormAPI.io)

------
CoolGuySteve
I have a website that tells me when the next train leaves and if I need an
umbrella: [http://mazu.ai/](http://mazu.ai/)

Probably a good idea for a startup actually, a 90s style "web portal" for
urban commuters that tells you the weather, transit situation, and downloads
some news articles for when you're in the tunnel.

~~~
roland35
I have a pretty good system for knowing if I need an umbrella! If I forget it
at home, it always rains!

That is very cool!

------
EarthlyFireFly
Beware of the indulging in ease, avoiding labor and exertion, becoming
habitually idle, lazy, inactive, as, an indolent man!

The use of manual labor is one which never grows obsolete. Manual labor is the
study of the external world. Labor is God’s education. No separation from
labor can be without some loss of power and of truth to the seer himself.
(Emerson)

The simplicity of life, language, and habits empowers people, but luxurious
lifestyle, pretentious language and effeminate habits lead to weakness and
death. (John Ruskin)

It’s not by meeting your idle desires that freedom can be achieved, but, on
the contrary, by freeing yourself from the desires. (Epictetus)

People are constantly looking for new entertainments and pleasures, hoping
that way to quiet their worries and reach happiness. But this way they can't
get satisfaction, because a man looking for his own pleasure is never
satisfied: having received what he wanted, he is not settling down, but right
away feels the new desires, which are not yet satisfied. (Tolstoy)

------
classic959
I drop photos (from whatever device) into a folder on my NAS and they get
automatically sanitized of EXIF data, and resized/bordered ready for posting
to the internet.

It's simply a cron & bash script on a server that monitors one NAS folder,
then drops the output into a second folder where I can pick them up and use
them.

It uses ImageMagick & Exiftool.

------
neilalexander
I use Philips Hue for light automation quite extensively.

\- 6:30am to 7:00am during weekdays, the bedroom and living room lights fade
on slowly, emulating sunrise. They switch off automatically when I leave home
for work on a morning.

\- 45 minutes before sunset, the living room lights fade on to full brightness
over a 30 minute period. The bedroom lights do the same, but to a dimmer
setting.

\- At 10:30pm, the bedroom lights fade themselves to a brighter but warmer
relaxing light setting, in preparation for going to bed.

\- If I'm not home when 11:00pm comes around, based on the location of my
phone, the lights will all switch themselves off again.

\- The hallway lights turn themselves using a motion sensor on if motion is
detected and the ambient light level is low enough - they come on fairly
bright during evening hours, but the dimmest possible night light setting
after 11pm and through the night. After a minute or two of detecting no
motion, they switch themselves off again.

------
sebazzz
Probably not as exciting as the other comments here: I automated the startup
routine at my work computer. It sets up VPN, clears out the HTTP proxy
settings, clears the routing table to allow local network access, then starts
up Visual Studio, SSMS, Outlook, Firefox, OneNote and some other auxiliary
apps.

Other than that, I got consumer-style automation with IKEA Tradfri which
responds via HomeKit and Apple shortcuts to me turning off my wake up alarm.
And I use shortcuts to send a SMS home with my expected arrival time so my
wife knows when she can start with dinner.

~~~
gcj
what do you use for this?

------
dgudkov
Very mundane tasks but it saves me some time:

* Automatically clean Windows desktop from garbage and temporary files that are older than 15 minutes

* Download and parse Ngnix web-logs every day, extract notable events

* Send myself email notifications about certain currency rates hitting certain thresholds

* Backup certain folders on schedule

* Pull data submitted by others from Google Sheets, export it into a database

All this done using EasyMorph ([https://easymorph.com](https://easymorph.com))
- the visual data preparation and automation tool that I'm working on.

~~~
simon1573
> Download and parse Ngnix web-logs every day, extract notable events

Would you mind expanding on this? Sounds interesting

~~~
dgudkov
Nothing extra-ordinary to be honest. The application has built-in tools for
fetching weblogs over SFTP and creating business rules for parsing different
types of events in the logs - e.g. downloading the installer, reading
tutorial, etc. The events are then aggregated and inserted into a database
that contains various historical metrics that allow me to get an idea about
user engagement and trends. Visually designing the logic provides the
advantage of flexibility - I can quickly experiment and fine tune the parsing
algorithms and metrics without coding, as well as do ad hoc calculations in
order to answer spontaneous questions.

------
nell
I have a list of questions that I like to be thinking about and have an
automated system that texts me one of those questions at random during my
waking hours.

~~~
SN76477
I use IFTTT to do a few things like this.

Mostly motivational sort of stuff.

I like this idea of asking myself questions.

~~~
nell
Yeah, I used to email myself my core life principles, but it felt like
unsolicited advice even when it came from me. Questions on the other hand are
mostly engaging especially when you don’t know what it’s going to be.

~~~
SN76477
I like that idea of questions.

I do have one that says something like make a list, writer out 2 or 3 things
and do them.

------
abhikb2005
Indian here who travels abroad (but within Asia) for work, and we need to
submit a lot of documents along with a visa application (invitation letter
from a colleague in the host country; NOC from the employer; tax returns etc.)
for a business/work visa. The applications are the same, the data is (almost)
the same, apart from the dates. So my friend built a small tool to automate
the entire process. All we do now is

1\. select the country that we are visiting from a dropdown 2\. enter the
dates that we will be arriving on and departing at 3\. provide an itinerary is
possible and click a button that says "magic"

And automatically all the necessary documents are emailed to the respective
stakeholders (read HR and travel desk) in a snap. Otherwise, it is usually a
2-3 day process. Ask the travel desk for documents, email overseas colleague,
email HR, collect all, print, write, scan, email, get them reviewed,
edit/correct/modify/facepalm and finally submit.

We are now making a web app of it and putting it online.

P.S.: I realize that I might be a bit of an oddball here because it is
possible that a USA passport doesn't require such mundane stuff.

------
eivarv
Human context switching. I'm being cheeky; I mean closing down and bringing up
all relevant applications, their state (open windows, tabs, files...) and so
on for working on a given task or project.

Sort of like a workspace manager for the OS. Releasing an open beta this
winter.

There's a short, low-res demo that kinda illustrates the basic concept on
[https://cleave.app](https://cleave.app)

~~~
tayleeganj
nice, looks pretty cool

------
soinus
I automate my todos. In the best tradition of getting things done, I have a
single list for all my todos. It is in Trello and it uses Butler for
automation. I have Inbox, Today, This week, Done and Later lists. The Done one
gets emptied every day at 2am. Wherever I move a task to Today I get assigned
to it and the due date is set to the evening of today. It's not much, but
keeps me kinda organized.

------
DubiousPusher
These are a wonderful invention.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079N9FW5B/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_Z...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079N9FW5B/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_ZwNTDb1XNYY3W)

I also use these.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0748RK2XQ/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_n...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0748RK2XQ/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_nzNTDbMHJQZEK)

I have made other serious efforts to automate my life and generally found that
trying to catch time with homemade Rube Goldberg machines is a bit like trying
to catch water with a properly engineered sieve.

After your basic appliances, I've found it's actually quite hard to exchange
money for time. A great value I've found is meal prep companies. They are
expensive but cheaper than a cook or cleaner and they remove many chores.
Debating what to eat, menu planning, grocery shopping and actual prep cooking
are greatly relieved.

------
dannyfakito
I have setup a crawler acommpanied by a discord bot to notify me and my
friends about new posts on each faculty class website. These posts usually
include stuff like exam results, schedules and other notifications. Really
helpful. Stopped us from manually checking each website when we anticipate
schedules and results for each exam.

------
jaimex2
Home Assistant:

\- Water garden if no rain

\- Lower curtains as sun sets

\- Rotate pin codes on door for abnb property when bookings end

\- Log in correct user when TV turned on nielsentam box

~~~
Ryckes
> \- Rotate pin codes on door for abnb property when bookings end

Nice! Is that a lockbox or an actual electronic lock? Would you mind saying
which model?

------
Mathnerd314
I use automatic bill pay and some scripts to fix video player settings, that's
about it for full automation.

A lot of things are semi-automated, as in I have a script / specialized
software to handle them, but I still run them by hand. I have a paperweight
suitable for holding down the enter key which comes in handy sometimes.

I use the repeating events feature in Google Calendar a lot, that seems to
mystify people who think I put them all in by hand.

The automation people seem to fall into a few camps: smart home, enterprise
data, and vacation. The last is referring to the sort of people who build a
business, hire some low-paid folks to do all the work "automatically", and
take a vacation. This seems like cheating to me but whatever.

~~~
beernutz
Just in case you might not be aware (this has caught me out):

Google Calendar repeating events has no way to set up a "repeat every x"
(day,week,month,etc..) forever. It will stop after something like 1 year with
no warning.

I use it for an important daily email reminder, and did not notice it had
stopped until a day or two after.

------
jsonbourne
Usually, my download folder is quite messy. I wrote a rudimentary script to
re-organize a folder using a simple cli. It also has a config that can be
updated to account for different file types or categories.

------
anotherevan
Wrote a program that tracks Australian movie release dates for movies I'm
interested in. Sends a daily email if a release date moves, or there a new
movies for me to flag my interest in.

Interfaces with themoviedb.org for plot summary, cast and crew info and such.
Interfaces with Google Calendar for writing entries for each movie I'm
tracking.

The code is available although a bit rough.
[https://github.com/evmcl/movieschedule](https://github.com/evmcl/movieschedule)

------
HNLurker2
My job is to advertise on classified ads my local business: heard of OLX? I
have macros in JavaScript that does that automatically (I only have to sit and
write the captcha)

------
lettergram
1\. I wrote a cron job to auto commit my code to their repos if I haven’t
edited a file in 12 hours.

2\. I started a while business getting news emails on more niche topics (works
better than other services IMO):
[https://lettergram.net/](https://lettergram.net/)

3\. Automated emails sent to customers thanking them for feedback.

4\. Important emails are texted to me (as determined by my classifier)

~~~
n4r9
How does 1 cope with branches? Also, do you never e.g. leave a piece of code
commented out for a couple of days whilst fixing a related bug in a different
file?

~~~
lettergram
It’s what ever active branch I’m on. I do a branch per feature / issue, then
merge to master. Not really a problem.

I also have all critical stuff setup to auto deploy after tests.

I’m a one man shop, everything has to be automated or I don’t have enough time
lol

------
maxerickson
I have a motion light at the bottom of the basement steps.

I also write scripts to compare OpenStreetMap to external datasets and surface
interesting differences.

------
heidijavi
I use textexpander mainly for email support, it saves me ~80 hours per month
of typing something I already typed in the past

~~~
schappim
You might want to checkout Alfredapp.com . I recently moved all my snippets to
Alfred’s snippet/expansion system. It is way more powerful.

------
louis8799
Report generation that need to be done through some poorly designed web
frontend (even to a point where you abstract the automation process and the
return of the data as an api). Have been worked at various companies over the
past decade, I found that this kind of automation is the most valuable.

------
mxgoddard
Whenever I turn on my work laptop it launches sites and applications I use on
a day to day basis, like Jira (for our ticket), Hacker News (daily dose of
information), Slack, Outlook etc. Very simple to create with python and just
something I wanted to make.

~~~
lardissone
I use the same laptop for job and personal work/usage, so I use an app called
Workspaces
([https://www.apptorium.com/workspaces](https://www.apptorium.com/workspaces))
that let me setup group of apps/websites/commands that I can launch with a few
clicks or using url-schemes.

------
_untra_
I automate my garden. In the summer I have it configured with an automatic
drop. I still get to play in my garden and there's always more annual
maintenance to do, but the general watering and care is easily automated with
a drip timer from home depot.

~~~
in9
Any tips on automating watering herbs in a small apartment?

------
wetpaws
Minor stuff. Any logins that require password (git/ssh), all the command line
operations that I do more than one time (I start with moving them to text file
and when it gets tedious - to shell scripts, saves surprising lots of time).

------
JMTQp8lwXL
I had trouble getting a DMV appointment. Wrote a script that would alert when
one was available. The site wasn't busy enough to warrant building out the
booking. Only used the script once.

------
mister_hn
I bought a vacuum robot that cleans up daily. I saved a lot of time daily, I
do just a ground good cleanup once in a week. Best investment ever.

------
pards
Pre-authorized payments for bills (phone, gas, electricity etc). There are so
many upsides to this:

\- Zero stress

\- Avoids late charges

\- Improves credit rating (see previous point)

Edit: formatting

------
ProfAesop
I use Alexa to turn on ambient music and lights. It removes tedious screentime
in a place I consider a sanctuary-esc.

Worth the $75 rig.

~~~
zantana
I did the same with Mycroft [https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/) using
the routine skill
[https://github.com/ChristopherRogers1991/mycroft_routine_ski...](https://github.com/ChristopherRogers1991/mycroft_routine_skill)
and integration with Home Assistant I can have it play my music set up in the
morning.

I have a goal to eventually have most of my high tech stuff not involve a
general screen either being a simple remote or voice so I don't get pulled
down the rabbit hole.

------
buboard
deleting emails in gmail. It's unnecesarily complex but i can add a marker
such as _delete_ in emails or use filters to get them auto-labeled, and then i
have to use a google script to delete those after a month. It sounds like
something that should be trivial for everyone to do, but it's not.

------
ydnaclementine
I use tmuxinator to auto open my terminals and start my services in separate
panes in tmux

------
superkitty
Automating menial work of Fax reading/processing in US healthcare by applying
the ML.

------
alok-g
Autohotkey to save PDF copy of a webpage along with a link in the folder
currently open.

------
mk60sboy
Automagically chimes and closes garage door after being left open too long

------
drdeadringer
Simple stuff so far.

* I have my browser automatically launch on boot-up [linux]. Saves me a click each time, xkcd's "is it worth the time" be darned in this specific instance for me.

* I have scripts that webscrape stock//etf//mutual_fund stock prices for personal financial tracking reasons. I just want the numbers, not all the hassle of getting the information for each stock//etf//mutial_fund for each financial house every single time.

* I have a mutable script to download a large swath of a podcast's episode archive so I don't have to "click and save" hundreds of individual episodes. Modify, execute, go take a shower or make lunch, come back and modify the metadata so it works on my .mp3 player.

... stuff like this. Nothing major, but "automating the pain away" type of
thing.

Note: this is ignoring the "fun programming" I do for myself as per question.

------
damionx7
Sending server error via pushover to my phone

------
girishso
I built a page poller, that scrapes any web page periodically to check if some
particular part of it is changed and then email it to me. Use it to have new
xkcd pics delivered to my mail among other stuff.

[http://pagepoller.r14.railsrumble.com/](http://pagepoller.r14.railsrumble.com/)

