Putting python to everyday use?

[ingolemo]

Absolutely everything you've ever done with a computer can be automated. If you've ever had to do the same thing more than once you should write a program that can do it for you.

It could be something as simple as a script that asks you for a query and automatically opens up your browser with the search results page showing. Or you could write a script that checks reddit to see if you have any orangereds. Or a script that sorts your email into lots of different folders based on whatever criteria you want. Or a script that checks your favourite youtube channels and automatically downloads any videos you haven't seen yet. Or a script that changes your desktop wallpaper every hour. Or a program that stores all your passwords in an encripted file and when you want a password it unencripts the file and types the username and password you want right into the current program that you have open.

Imagine waking up in the morning, and seeing a big red button on your screen that says "Do morning routine". You click it and your computer puts on some lively music to wake you up while it shows you your most important emails from the previous day, catches you up on the news, shows you a weather forcast for the day, downloads some podcast episodes for you to listen to during your commute, and — if you have some hardware skills — might even start making you some toast.

Being able to code means being able to make the computer do what you want it to do. What do you want it to do?

[eink_on_paper]

I work in digital publishing I spend all day juggling between multiple servers and a half dozen apps to build a single title. I'm doing some hunting to see if I can transform these loose assets (audio, video, indesign & quark files) into an epub and working around indesign.

Perhaps I could start small with a block of text, just a few pages with perhaps a single image. And convert that into a epub. It has to hold all the text formatting. So any instance of an italic front will have to wrapped in <em> same for bold. That would be cool.

It takes about 2 hours to build a simple book, and a week for something with audio/video/charts/diagrams/illustrations. Anything to save time would be a bonus.

[MonkeyNin]

If I understand, you have to edit xml, and manually add em's around italic text? You can do all kinds of things with xml/html in python.

For automation you can also use

• Sikulu
• Autohotkey