This is a very simple project, but I’ve found the result to be quite useful. So, it’s worthy of a quick write-up.

The Problem

The primary goal was to have a place for gentle reminders. A sort of a digital white board for things that weren’t necessarily to-do items (e.g. take it easy on eating snacks in the cafeteria).

A secondary goal was to do something that would help me become more proficient with Python. This might sound strange in the era of LLMs, Copilot and Vibe Coding. But, I’d like to do more than just write English at the computer.

The Solution

I decided early that a daily email would fit the bill. Yes, I’m a dinosaur that looks at my inbox first thing in the morning. That makes email as good a place as any to put timely things I should care about.

What I ended up with is a Python script on a local server fired off by cron each morning that compiles and delivers a very personal email newsletter. The newsletter changes daily and contains the following sections:

• Google Calendars displays appointments and other events like birthdays
• APIs currently used to get a quote of the day
• Weather forecast to answer the all important “do I need an umbrella” question
• Markdown text for reminders etc.

Python makes this sort of thing easy with a bit of code to glue together some logic with libraries such as SMTP. With copilot, I had a POC running in a few minutes. From there, I proceeded to slightly over manage/engineer things a bit—fine by me since it’s a learning opportunity.

Resources

Code is on Codeburg: https://codeberg.org/jpreardon/newsletter-mailer

Lessons Learned

• Use issues on Codeberg/Github to the max. They act almost like a bookmark allowing you to pick up where you left of days, weeks or even months later. As Simon Willison says in Coping strategies for the serial project hoarder: “With issue driven development you don’t have to remember anything about any of these projects at all.”
• While Github has a ton of features and a big community, Codeburg has what I need and it’s nice to use something that’s not owned by one of the big tech companies for a change.
• Copilot is helpful for learning and can do a lot, quickly. Although, at times it feels like learning from a super-confident, eager developer who know knows the technical bits inside and out, but doesn’t have much real world experience and doesn’t always think things through.