HN Explorer

Ask HN: girlfriend reminders

4 points by orenmazor ↗ HN
This sounds really terrible, I know.

But when you're focused on your startup or just in general in the code "zone" for 12 hours straight (or a few days straight), it'd be great if something could remind me to text my girlfriend and say hi, or see if she wants to grab lunch.

Kind of like dailyburn's app reminds me that I haven't eaten or worked out.

If I could set up a recurring alarm on my phone to ping her once every couple of hours (or even just check my damn phone in case she texted me). I usually keep my phone on mute, so I'm not bothered by messages, but push notifications tend to have a noise.

I could extrapolate this into "remind me to call my parents once a week" or something.

It's easy to lose yourself in code :)

6 comments

[ 1985 ms ] story [ 387 ms ] thread
kevinstubbs
Lol. I would write an simple console app in C# that would use the speech API to tell you messages. It could read from an .xml file to know reoccuring times (every day at 3pm, every other hour etc.). Happen only once times could be set by typing them like

  > ----------------
  > Enter a command.
  SET

  > What time would you like to set in military time?
  1800

  > What is your message?
  Call girlfriend for dinner plans

  > OK, at 5:00pm I'll tell you
  > "Call girlfriend for dinner plans"
  > ----------------
  > Enter a command.
namank
To make things easier, you could leverage Google Calendar and schedule the reminders. The 'reminder' part will be then taken care for you.
orenmazor
a friend just suggested that I use ical and schedule reminders for recurring events.
namank
Hm...so I'm assuming there is a server version of ical? Or do you mean write your script to interact with ical which actually loads stuff on to google calendar?

Either way, Good luck! Let us know how it turns out

nametoremember
You don't break to get coffee or use the bathroom?
orenmazor
I do. I also break to take the dog for a walk. the point is that I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing, I lose track of things.