I’ve gotten a number of tickets over the years because I misinterpreted the alternate side of the street parking signs on our street. Yes, I’m embarrassed that somebody whose livelihood depends on being able to interpret and write complex boolean expressions should have trouble with these signs, but there you have it. But I resolved to not get caught out again, so this is what I did:
- Installed IFTT on my phone
- Created two PNG files, one that says “North” and one that says “South”, and set up two lines in my crontab on my computer that copies the appropriate one to my public web server when the parking rules change over.
- Created an IFTT rule that when I get close to home it displays a “rich” notification including which ever image is on my web server
- Created two IFTT rules to send me a notification when the parking rules change over.
- Created a shortcut on my home screen on my phone so I can check the image on the web server if I miss the IFTT notification.
If I get another parking ticket, it won’t be because I didn’t try.