Useful side project ideas? /u/sinceJune4 Python Education

I see a lot of people asking about projects to help learn Python. Here are a few ways I use it outside of my day job.

I put together a Python program for my home use, and have it scheduled to run at 6am daily via Windows Scheduler. I’m not sharing code here, just these ideas that you can easily google and find samples of individually. It may spark other ideas.
What it does:

1. Reads our 4 different Google Calendars using the api and gathers our events for the next 7 days.

2. Pick appropriate gym schedule from my own day-of-week gym dictionary.

3. Gets local weather forecast by web-scraping using BeautifulSoup.

4. Picks up a quote-of-the-day from another website, also using BeautifulSoup.

5. Assembles all of the above into an e-mail and sends to myself and family.

I’ve also got a separate daily Python program I run that reads my Gmail for 4 specific subject lines, downloads the attachments from each, deletes the 4 e-mails, then imports and combines the files for some volunteer work I do. While I’m at it, I also delete other e-mails from certain senders or domains that I don’t want to unsubscribe from, but usually don’t need them, and if I do I can always get them from Trash folder.

Another program I run from time to time traverses all my backup drives, OneDrive, Google Drive, and other drives to give me a combined list of all my files into a SQLite database. It gives me an easy way to find old .mp3 files or user manuals or photos downloaded from old phones, etc… I’ve even used it to organize music into playlists so I can copy a playlist to headphones with storage.

What is your best use of Python outside of work? Please share ideas!

I see a lot of people asking about projects to help learn Python. Here are a few ways I use it outside of my day job.

I put together a Python program for my home use, and have it scheduled to run at 6am daily via Windows Scheduler. I’m not sharing code here, just these ideas that you can easily google and find samples of individually. It may spark other ideas.
What it does:

1. Reads our 4 different Google Calendars using the api and gathers our events for the next 7 days.

2. Pick appropriate gym schedule from my own day-of-week gym dictionary.

3. Gets local weather forecast by web-scraping using BeautifulSoup.

4. Picks up a quote-of-the-day from another website, also using BeautifulSoup.

5. Assembles all of the above into an e-mail and sends to myself and family.

I’ve also got a separate daily Python program I run that reads my Gmail for 4 specific subject lines, downloads the attachments from each, deletes the 4 e-mails, then imports and combines the files for some volunteer work I do. While I’m at it, I also delete other e-mails from certain senders or domains that I don’t want to unsubscribe from, but usually don’t need them, and if I do I can always get them from Trash folder.

Another program I run from time to time traverses all my backup drives, OneDrive, Google Drive, and other drives to give me a combined list of all my files into a SQLite database. It gives me an easy way to find old .mp3 files or user manuals or photos downloaded from old phones, etc… I’ve even used it to organize music into playlists so I can copy a playlist to headphones with storage.

What is your best use of Python outside of work? Please share ideas!