This is cool. I want to use my phone without being notified all the time. Right now I have my phone set so I can hear it if someone calls, and I can hear my husband texting, but everything else is silent. But then every now and then I get a notification from a messaging app that says "hey! Your notifications are off! Tap here to turn them on so you can stay up to date!" and I'm like... you don't understand why I turned them off, do you? My friend reminds me that any attempt to not be addicted to tech is an uphill battle because it's *designed* for addiction. It's hard to detach, but it's not because you're a bad person.
I also want to give my kids a screen where they can tap a picture/icon of a book, and then listen to it (with headphones). And there's no nonsense on it, no games, no notifications, no flashy animation. I want it visually as boring as possible, and I want it not connected to the internet or 5g or anything, except maybe to download/trade book recordings. I could imagine that by default it's not connected, but you can "connect to download" and then it would disconnect when the download is complete. Maybe I'd even make my own recordings of their books! This would be for long rides in the car.
For the books, our local library has kids’ books with a little audio player inside the front cover. The brands are Wonderbooks and Vox Books I believe.
At times I’ve thought of writing myself an application to optimize grocery inventory and meal planning according to my own particular system, but when it comes down to it, I like the lightweight and almost infinitely flexible nature of pen and paper and my own brain. I think it’s a case of this phenomenon: https://xkcd.com/1319/
And I think this is a prime example of my main beef with AI, too—no amount of “easy-to-use” “tools” can substitute for deep experiential knowledge of a particular problem and the methodical habits of mind with which to solve it. I’m skeptical that drag-and-drop programming tools will help folks who haven’t been shown at least a little of what’s under the hood to understand what they’re working with. But I am definitely a bit of a curmudgeon in this regard.
I don’t think it would help people understand programming, but I think it could help people get more out of their deep knowledge of a different problem.
(Just like I get a lot out of substack without knowing how to build it)
My personal project during my recent paternity leave has been to build a recipe management / cooking / grocery shopping / meal scheduling system in Google Sheets / Google Apps Script. It’s not “dozens of users” as much as “just for me and my wife” but it’s definitely in the category of “programming for home ec”.
Long before LLM coding tools, I’d found that particular Google ecosystem to be fairly robust and easy to get into without any JavaScript programming experience. But today it’s safe to say that LLMs are my go-to over search/StackExchange when I need to learn something new.
I turned to it a year and a half ago to remove some friction when it came to creating Google Slides each week (like, pushing back against "the tyranny of the blank page") for my students.
We mostly just do problems, sooo... when I've decided which ones are that week's, I throw them into consecutive lines of a Google Doc, drop the link of the Google Doc into my AppsScript, and run to automatically generate a presentation with 1 problem per slide.
The short summary is that having this system automates a lot of the busywork out of showing hospitality to friends and family, particularly by having them over for dinner.
1) We get summary of our upcoming meal schedule highlighting those for which we can invite friends over, along with a list of the friends we haven't seen recently to reach out to.
2) Once we schedule a gathering, we are reminded to decide what we're going to cook for them, and can browse an ordered list of our recipes to choose from, taking into account guests' dietary restrictions, previous visits, recency, quality, complexity, and soon-to-expire ingredients we have in stock.
3) Once we decide what we're cooking, we are sent a shopping list for online ordering.
4) Once the online order arrives, we check over the items and record relevant expiration dates.
5) We get an alert the night before whenever there is overnight prep needed for a recipe.
6) We get a summarized version of the recipe to reference on an iPad while cooking.
7) And in general, if we make any changes -- to our plans, a recipe, ingredients we have in stock, etc. -- we only need to make those updates in one place and the change will get propagated appropriately.
1. Programs to crawl through* comments on old posts of a couple Substacks to, as an ordinary subscriber, discover and index new comments that were made long after I've stopped. I could have it check old posts with a frequency that exponentially declines compared to how recently they were posted! It could be a cron job. (The thing to build this with would be, like, Chromium and python or C#, I believe.)
2a. an interface to live "between" me and an internet forum. I think it's a solvable but effort-requiring problem to alter the way things display so that I don't have a distracting series of quotes of quotes of quotes, but instead have it look more like WordPress did. Have mouseover highlight WHICH portion of the replied-to text block was quoted.
2b. an "overlay" interface for substack / substack comments sections as well, to rearrange the content of the comments according to how I would choose to.
3. For family: just installing good ole "talkd" on my Linux laptop!! And letting my kids ssh in. So we can talk the way people on the internet were MEANT to** communicate. (Probably does not involve coding, just installation-wrangling. seeing as I can't believe there's no updated version existing anywhere, even if my first attempt at this didn't succeed.)
I really really like the focus on tools to give you power to do "attentional triage," as your hubbie worded it in that one neat book review. (of an Alan Jacobs book!)
* Thinking this through several years ago, I came to believe that if i DID make it, (and make it so it would email links to said new comments to people) and somehow put in effort to promote it, it was a useful enough service that i could find substackers who would pay a monthly fee for it. But then if it became too much used, Substack would understandably ban it? A hypothesis untested, though.
** The old days of talkd were just delightful; so spontaneous... when you're typing, each letter is sent to the other person instantly, so you feel very, VERY present. (I didn't even know how to delete things, though I think "ctrl+H" will do that.)
I’d love to create a browser extension or applet that automatically searches my local library catalog and saves available titles to a “to read” list (or, as a bonus, automatically submits a purchase request for books that the line hasn’t acquired yet). There are a million list apps, but it’s annoyingly difficult to connect them to work in sync. E.g., there are extensions that link Amazon & library catalogs, but they aren’t also connected to Goodreads, Letterboxd, etc., so they don’t save the time of labor of federating all the lists and retrieving the physical items.
Another thought. I wonder if this would allow regular people to fix things. There's a lot now that has to be fixed by professional coders and not by just someone with mechanical skills. But if more people have access to coding, maybe more people could fix things.
This is cool. I want to use my phone without being notified all the time. Right now I have my phone set so I can hear it if someone calls, and I can hear my husband texting, but everything else is silent. But then every now and then I get a notification from a messaging app that says "hey! Your notifications are off! Tap here to turn them on so you can stay up to date!" and I'm like... you don't understand why I turned them off, do you? My friend reminds me that any attempt to not be addicted to tech is an uphill battle because it's *designed* for addiction. It's hard to detach, but it's not because you're a bad person.
I also want to give my kids a screen where they can tap a picture/icon of a book, and then listen to it (with headphones). And there's no nonsense on it, no games, no notifications, no flashy animation. I want it visually as boring as possible, and I want it not connected to the internet or 5g or anything, except maybe to download/trade book recordings. I could imagine that by default it's not connected, but you can "connect to download" and then it would disconnect when the download is complete. Maybe I'd even make my own recordings of their books! This would be for long rides in the car.
For the books, our local library has kids’ books with a little audio player inside the front cover. The brands are Wonderbooks and Vox Books I believe.
I love the audiobook idea!! Like the Yoto player but with more creative features.
At times I’ve thought of writing myself an application to optimize grocery inventory and meal planning according to my own particular system, but when it comes down to it, I like the lightweight and almost infinitely flexible nature of pen and paper and my own brain. I think it’s a case of this phenomenon: https://xkcd.com/1319/
And I think this is a prime example of my main beef with AI, too—no amount of “easy-to-use” “tools” can substitute for deep experiential knowledge of a particular problem and the methodical habits of mind with which to solve it. I’m skeptical that drag-and-drop programming tools will help folks who haven’t been shown at least a little of what’s under the hood to understand what they’re working with. But I am definitely a bit of a curmudgeon in this regard.
I don’t think it would help people understand programming, but I think it could help people get more out of their deep knowledge of a different problem.
(Just like I get a lot out of substack without knowing how to build it)
My personal project during my recent paternity leave has been to build a recipe management / cooking / grocery shopping / meal scheduling system in Google Sheets / Google Apps Script. It’s not “dozens of users” as much as “just for me and my wife” but it’s definitely in the category of “programming for home ec”.
Long before LLM coding tools, I’d found that particular Google ecosystem to be fairly robust and easy to get into without any JavaScript programming experience. But today it’s safe to say that LLMs are my go-to over search/StackExchange when I need to learn something new.
Ha--Google Apps Script!
I turned to it a year and a half ago to remove some friction when it came to creating Google Slides each week (like, pushing back against "the tyranny of the blank page") for my students.
We mostly just do problems, sooo... when I've decided which ones are that week's, I throw them into consecutive lines of a Google Doc, drop the link of the Google Doc into my AppsScript, and run to automatically generate a presentation with 1 problem per slide.
Nice!
What does your program solve for you?
Apologies for the very late reply!
The short summary is that having this system automates a lot of the busywork out of showing hospitality to friends and family, particularly by having them over for dinner.
1) We get summary of our upcoming meal schedule highlighting those for which we can invite friends over, along with a list of the friends we haven't seen recently to reach out to.
2) Once we schedule a gathering, we are reminded to decide what we're going to cook for them, and can browse an ordered list of our recipes to choose from, taking into account guests' dietary restrictions, previous visits, recency, quality, complexity, and soon-to-expire ingredients we have in stock.
3) Once we decide what we're cooking, we are sent a shopping list for online ordering.
4) Once the online order arrives, we check over the items and record relevant expiration dates.
5) We get an alert the night before whenever there is overnight prep needed for a recipe.
6) We get a summarized version of the recipe to reference on an iPad while cooking.
7) And in general, if we make any changes -- to our plans, a recipe, ingredients we have in stock, etc. -- we only need to make those updates in one place and the change will get propagated appropriately.
Apps I've considered:
1. Programs to crawl through* comments on old posts of a couple Substacks to, as an ordinary subscriber, discover and index new comments that were made long after I've stopped. I could have it check old posts with a frequency that exponentially declines compared to how recently they were posted! It could be a cron job. (The thing to build this with would be, like, Chromium and python or C#, I believe.)
2a. an interface to live "between" me and an internet forum. I think it's a solvable but effort-requiring problem to alter the way things display so that I don't have a distracting series of quotes of quotes of quotes, but instead have it look more like WordPress did. Have mouseover highlight WHICH portion of the replied-to text block was quoted.
2b. an "overlay" interface for substack / substack comments sections as well, to rearrange the content of the comments according to how I would choose to.
3. For family: just installing good ole "talkd" on my Linux laptop!! And letting my kids ssh in. So we can talk the way people on the internet were MEANT to** communicate. (Probably does not involve coding, just installation-wrangling. seeing as I can't believe there's no updated version existing anywhere, even if my first attempt at this didn't succeed.)
I really really like the focus on tools to give you power to do "attentional triage," as your hubbie worded it in that one neat book review. (of an Alan Jacobs book!)
* Thinking this through several years ago, I came to believe that if i DID make it, (and make it so it would email links to said new comments to people) and somehow put in effort to promote it, it was a useful enough service that i could find substackers who would pay a monthly fee for it. But then if it became too much used, Substack would understandably ban it? A hypothesis untested, though.
** The old days of talkd were just delightful; so spontaneous... when you're typing, each letter is sent to the other person instantly, so you feel very, VERY present. (I didn't even know how to delete things, though I think "ctrl+H" will do that.)
Here just to say that the Chrome extension idea sounds exactly the kind of thing Jen Fulwiler would be interested in collaborating on/co-writing.
I actually used to use a chrome extension that did exactly that, minus the devotion! I think it was called friction or something...
Yes, I know I can get the lag, but I really want the second part!
I’d love to create a browser extension or applet that automatically searches my local library catalog and saves available titles to a “to read” list (or, as a bonus, automatically submits a purchase request for books that the line hasn’t acquired yet). There are a million list apps, but it’s annoyingly difficult to connect them to work in sync. E.g., there are extensions that link Amazon & library catalogs, but they aren’t also connected to Goodreads, Letterboxd, etc., so they don’t save the time of labor of federating all the lists and retrieving the physical items.
Cool project! I use this library extension for a smaller version of that use case: https://www.libraryextension.com/
When I’m on Amazon it shows me if the book is at my library and I can click through to place holds
Another thought. I wonder if this would allow regular people to fix things. There's a lot now that has to be fixed by professional coders and not by just someone with mechanical skills. But if more people have access to coding, maybe more people could fix things.
> if more people have access to coding
In my (only kinda educated) opinion this should be addressed by access to old-fashioned coding, opposed to access to AI-generated code blocks.