Most of my side projects have been about automating the little things that end up taking me a lot of time.
At my first job, part of my work (next to junior dev) was to deploy EARs on Websphere. I automated it so that people just had to drop it on a shared folder and I'd just take a look if it failed to install automatically.
I made a browser plugin to compare the price of the European Amazon and a few other websites (it grew to more countries and websites) http://www.shoptimate.com
And now I'm working on a tool that regularly checks if some of my content is getting adblocked because it's something I periodically do by hand http://www.blockedby.com
In the end, automating things can take more time than actually doing it. But if it's used by others and saves them time as well, it's gratifying.
It is a file format for java applications designed to run on J2EE servers like JBOSS, Websphere, Weblogic, etc. It is a zip file with conventions on certain files and folders in the package.
At my first job, part of my work (next to junior dev) was to deploy EARs on Websphere. I automated it so that people just had to drop it on a shared folder and I'd just take a look if it failed to install automatically.
I wrote a command-line tool to search and download subtitles https://github.com/patrickdessalle/periscope
I made a browser plugin to compare the price of the European Amazon and a few other websites (it grew to more countries and websites) http://www.shoptimate.com
And now I'm working on a tool that regularly checks if some of my content is getting adblocked because it's something I periodically do by hand http://www.blockedby.com
In the end, automating things can take more time than actually doing it. But if it's used by others and saves them time as well, it's gratifying.