A collection of small things I have built for different tasks and bits of automation. Most of them I have lost track of, but I thought it would be good to put them down in one place.
When I was applying for a US visa for graduate school in Summer 2023, the hardest part turned out to be getting an appointment for the in-person interview.
Slots were rare. They would show up suddenly and disappear just as quickly. There was a Telegram group where people shared updates about new openings. I needed one in June, July, or August.
I could not afford to miss them, even if I was asleep or in class. A simple notification was not enough. I needed something that would actually get my attention.
So I wrote a small Python script. It listened to messages from that Telegram group using the Telegram API. Whenever a message included words like Jun or June, it triggered a caller function. That function used the Twilio API to give me a phone call. To save free Twilio credits, I never actually picked up those calls.
There were a few false positives, but it worked. I did not have to keep watching the group all the time, and eventually I got a slot. Later, I even managed to reschedule to an earlier date.