I built a little script that gives me a fake phone call to escape boring and awkward situations. I bought a virtual number from twilio and saved it as one of my relatives.

Whenever I feel stuck, I just tap a button called “ESCAPE” on my phone. It sends a request to my remote server. The server runs a small Python script which schedules an actual call. After a minute, my phone rings and plays a pre-recorded audio.

I simply say “sorry, I’m getting a call” and walk away. A tiny project, but it has saved me so many times.

Script - https://x.com/the2ndfloorguy/status/1965624429146165251

Hilarious, I love it. I'm a cheaparse so if I paid for an extra phone number for something like this, I think I'd "everything-looks-like-a-hammer" it.

I'd have it...

    * give me wakeup calls, 
    * call to remind me of all meetings with an exclamation in the title, 
    * call my wife whenever my phone detects i'm entering a casino, 
    * call me whenever my wife's within 3 miles of her ex's house,
    * answer when I call and it'd give me uplifting life advice platitudes like "Hey, you're doing alright. Also, you look /fabulous/ today!"
    * ... :ponder_emoji_here: ;-)

How can you be sharing a link to twitter? And it has a screenshot of code! Does it need to be so hard to share some text?

Linking to a screenshot posted on twitter is a terrible way to share code.

I had this on an old brick phone, but I forgot which brand. You'd triple click the power button and it'd start ringing a few seconds later so you had time to move your hands away from it and not look like you triggered it. You could even have it display a custom contact.

I have a simpler way: keep your phone on the ringtone settings page, and just tap one of the ringtones when you want it to "call" you.

How much does it cost for the virtual numbers from Twilio?