Preamble
These trivial projects are more like assignments in scope, so if you're thinking Gosh these things have limited utility
you would be right, and you would also be missing part of the marginally bigger picture. Ultimately these are small learning exercises. It could be understanding and implementing some spec or a small part of a standard, it could be fighting with the tools required to implement the thing, or both. Either way, I've learned a little or a lot, and perhaps they may prove useful to you as well.
In all instances, I've stepped outside of what I'm comfortable with, at least for a little while. Some were motivated by necessity, like school projects or work terms, while others were motivated by curiosity, or annoyance. I think that it's easy to tell which project is motivated by which.