AwkEng Personal Project and Clocks for Father's Day

Hi all,

Brief update on some personal projects and a note that Voltmeter Clocks are available for Father's day!

Pen & Paper - For a long time, I've kept a paper sheet on my desk with my to-dos, and I'll scribble notes on it throughout the day. www.merini.io is a custom tool I made for myself to capture my own, personal, workflow.

Slightly Smart(er) Phone (Or do I really need AI?) - I've carried a Light Phone for the last several years, and while the upsides of not having the internet in my pocket have been amazing, I often find a few sharp paper cuts.

1. Not having weather. While there are several services that will text you the weather at a pre-determined time, I want the weather at my request. (As well as hour by hour and a 5 day forecast.)
2. Bus prediction times (either via the Transit app or via my Next Bus sign ) are super convenient.  While the Light Phone does have a Directions tool that can get bus times, it's... just... too... many... clicks... and... takes... too... long. The MBTA used to have an SMS service you could text to get arrival times, but it was shut down years ago. 

Anyway... this was an opportunity to scratch an itch. I experimented briefly with some SMS based text messaging AI agents, (including one I won't name, but I will endorse text it search it as useful, if personally distracting, for any not-smart phone readers on this list.)

For many use cases though, AI agents are overblown, and a simple regex match is enough. So I built a small little SMS tool. It only has a few keywords: weather, mbta ###, (bus from home to) school, (bus from school to) home, and it's been a nice little quality of life booster! Sometimes, it's the small wins.

Best regards!
Sam Feller
aka THE Awkward Engineer