Gareth Cronin - Projects

Bar Tool

Bar Tool

Bar Tool screenshot

Bar Tool is designed for the home cocktail enthusiast to help with designing new serves.

  • Change the number of serves to total up ingredients and overall serving size
  • AI bartender: riff using artificial intelligence
  • US and rest of world units of measure conversions
  • Alcohol by volume calculation for keeping things under control
  • Search by ingredient
  • Catalog of ingredients and products, including the rums of the Smuggler's Cove book
  • Ingredient descriptions from Cocktail DB
  • Share recipes and use Instagram-style recipe copy to clipboard
  • Load and start riffing from the classic recipe library
  • Save your own recipes and variations for later retrieval
  • Glassware library - figure out best fit for drinks
  • Product library - automatically capture the products you use
  • Rate recipes
  • Tag library and your recipes with custom tags
  • Upload images for your recipes
Albumize

Albumize

Albumize screenshot

Albumize is a way to manage your Spotify listening by album

  • Albums from Spotify are presented in a simple, easy-to-read table
  • View albums from your library and in playlists: organise albums with tags
  • Search and sort albums by release date, duration, popularity, and more
  • Filter out compilations and singles or EPs
Bedside clock

Bedside clock

Bedside clock screenshot

A replacement for a good old-fashioned clock radio, designed to be run on a tablet.

Medium article explaining it.
Codex

Codex

Codex screenshot

A virtual wallet for storing barcodes for loyalty cards etc.

What can I borrow

What can I borrow?

What can I borrow screenshot

Here in New Zealand, Auckland and Wellington Libraries have a decent range of digital lending available on eBook and eAudiobook, mainly on the Overdrive (with the Libby app) and Borrowbox platforms. The service is "free" (funded by our property tax) to use.

I'm a big Goodreads user - I use the community lists ("Listopia") and the awards lists to find my next read. This app is the front end to a service I built to scrape library data and show which books from Goodreads lists are available for digital lending at the libraries.

You can also add your Goodreads ID, and the app will fade the books you have already read, and build (slowly) a list from your "to-read" shelf.

JIT Time

JIT Time Calendar Add-on

JIT Time screenshot

Busy people struggle to make time at work for regular needs like eating lunch, going to the gym, or just taking time to reflect. JIT Time makes time for those important things. Some people deal with the challenge by setting a fixed time for events every day. This is a problem though, because it reduces flexibility and makes it hard to coordinate with colleagues' and friends' schedules. Rather than scheduling a fixed time every day, with JIT Time you can set the earliest, latest, and ideal time you would look to book, and the number of days ahead you want the add-on to work out to. Every day it will scan ahead and try to book the ideal time on each of the days you have selected. If there is another event in the way, it will work between the earliest and latest possible times to find a time that doesn't clash.

Medium article explaining it.

Evernote and Raspberry Pi

Evernote and Raspberry Pi

Evernote and Raspberry Pi diagram

Offline back-up for Evernote running on a Raspberry Pi. Described in detail on Medium.

Philips Hue

Rules for Hue

Philips Hue

A rules language for describing complex automation rules to automate a Philips Hue home lighting system.

An Medium article on integrating the Hue bridge and a second article on generating a parser for the rules language.

MSFS Cheat Sheet

MSFS Cheat Sheet

MSFS Cheat Sheet screenshot

A cheat sheet for quick flights in different planes in Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) simulator.

When switching to types that I haven't flown for a while, I find it handy to have the basic performance limitations and optimal speeds.

Track to Plan

Track to Plan

Track to Plan screenshot

Converts real world radar tracks from FlightRadar 24 into flight plans for Microsoft Flight Simulator and other simulators and flight planning applications that accept "pln" format.

Flickr

Flickr and Raspberry Pi

Flickr backup diagram

Offline back-up for Flickr on a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) Linux with an external USB hard drive, a one file Node.js script that calls the Flickr API, and a Cron job to run the script once a day.

Medium article explaining it.

Mindful Mix

Mindful Mix

Mindful Mix screenshot
I'm a fan of Calm, the mindfulness app. It's still my go-to for guided meditations. Much of time I find I don't need a guided meditation, but I still want background sound and a periodic bell to prompt me to check that my thoughts haven't wandered. Calm has some unguided meditations with a bell, but only with a few fixed lengths and intervals. It also has some "soundscapes" that have background sounds along with intermittent passing sounds (e.g. in the "Central Park" soundscape people chat as they walk by, a plane flies over). I decided that what I really wanted was a combination of all of these plus more:
  • A timed, unguided meditation
  • Ability to continue when the timer has finished if wanted
  • Ability to pause and resume a session
  • A calming, ambient, background sound loop
  • A periodic bell to check I'm still in the moment
  • Random intermittent, but relevant, sounds
  • An automatic diary of sessions