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Re:Sikuli Script by krilnon on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @06:59PM (#8391904)
I used Sikuli back in 2011-12 for some random automaton tasks, and often wish I would remember to use it more.

- Advisor wanted a one button way to run a convoluted research prototype I had made, and I didn't want to have to dig into Cocoa to figure out how to programmatically click/select options in a few desktop apps.

- Worked at a company and there was silly employee training slideshow+quiz, so I had Sikuli wait for the next arrow to show up once the audio was finished and click it.

- Wanted to heat up my GPU to warm a brownie, so I opened one of those WebGL water demos and had Sikuli repeatedly pick up a ball and drop it in the water.

Re:Sikuli Script by AceJohnny2 on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @09:07PM (#8392318)
> - Wanted to heat up my GPU to warm a brownie

Please elaborate.

Re:Sikuli Script by krilnon on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @10:31PM (#8392526)
Sure thing. I was an intern at Adobe working on a new programming language. The office has a cafeteria, and I would often buy lunch there and get a brownie to save for later.

I like brownies better when they're warm, so I came up with a few ways to warm the pre-packaged treats while still sitting in my office. I first tried sitting the brownie atop my laptop charger: http://images.reclipse.net/warmed_brownie.jpg

This worked fairly well, but the charger was less hot when my laptop was at 100% charge, so I sought alternate methods for heating up the brownie. For some reason, I had stumbled across some recent WebGL demos at the time, and noticed that the fan on my laptop would spin up on that particular demo. (http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/)

This provided a more consistent heat than the charger, since usually my laptops would be completely charged by the end of lunchtime. I had my own laptop and a company-provided laptop, so it wasn't hard to set one of them aside as a brownie warmer.

Re:Sikuli Script by habosa on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @12:18AM (#8392798)
Wow. I thought the "to warm a brownie" thing was a joke about WebGL performance. That's a hilarious story.
Re:Sikuli Script by krilnon on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @01:45AM (#8393016)
Nah, it's real. Adobe had a WebGL competitor, Stage3D, at the time, but I didn't work on that at all. As an intern, I would run a few useful benchmarks per day, but it was more reliable to run things I knew would heat up a laptop instantly, so I used WebGL demos.

Brownie-wise, I would wait a while because lunch would fill me up. But at 3 or 4 pm, I'd be hungry again and something the size of a brownie would really hit the spot.

Re:Sikuli Script by _pmf_ on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @02:01AM (#8393061)
Low hanging fruits.
Re:Sikuli Script by yzzxy on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @10:01PM (#8392451)
> - Wanted to heat up my GPU to warm a brownie, so I opened one of those WebGL water demos and had Sikuli repeatedly pick up a ball and drop it in the water.

I'm not sure why this is like nails on a chalkboard for me. Maybe it's the programmer equivalent of dog-earing book pages.

Re:Sikuli Script by krilnon on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @10:45PM (#8392552)
It was just for fun. Part of my job at the time was evaluating benchmarks, so things like the water simulation were on my mind. I don't remember if there were microwaves on each floor that I might have used instead.

I don't dog-ear book pages, if that makes you feel any better.

Re:Sikuli Script by yzzxy on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @11:13PM (#8392637)
Reminds me of the Wired bitcoin miner[0]. They bought an early ASIC miner and used it to heat coffee on a livestream.

[0] http://www.wired.com/2013/05/butterfly_live/

(also I dog ear pages so we're even)

Re:Sikuli Script by Ygg2 on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @12:52AM (#8392887)
I'm gonna post this XKCD, because it's eerily appropriate (once WebGL manages to fix any performance bugs): http://xkcd.com/1172/
Re:Sikuli Script by krilnon on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @01:39AM (#8393007)
I haven't worked anywhere with tasty nearby brownies since then. =-/ I know I ate something unhealthy often at the Stata Center's cafe, but I think it was a large cookie that didn't need to be heated.
Re:Sikuli Script by Ygg2 on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @10:51AM (#8394821)
:,( You can buy brownies before or after, no?