(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:27 am)
Quick note on the Emergent Task Timer Online: I have updated the data saving to be hopefully more robust. If you were experiencing data loss, hopefully that problem is gone. If you ARE losing data, please report this to me. Unless you like losing data. In particular, text changes to the descriptions should now be automatically saved after you pause typing for about a second.
If you want to watch the saving queue to see when it’s updating, get into the console and type dbg tracesave and you’ll be able to see when and what is being saved at any given time.
The current version is 06-0803X; if you don’t see this, then try force-refreshing your browser.
UPDATE
Someone asked for a stand-alone projector version; they are now available on the ETT Alpha page. Note that they use different cookies than the online version, and I think the cookie is also dependent on the filename of the projector file. This will go away once I get some time to implement saving to a central server. If anyone has some tips on the best way to implement a user administration system in PHP4, I could use them :-)
9 Comments
I have a tip : use Rails, not php4. If you’re focused on happyness and productivity, Rails should be your thing.
By the way, I love what you do! You posts and the productivity tools you build are invaluable. I use your ETT ALPHA every day now and it really makes a difference in my productivity. I can’t lie to myself anymore about how much time I really spend working. I also use a Rails project/time management app and I’d love to hook it up to an interface like yours one day (hopefully soon).
Anyways, thanks a lot for sharing your wisdom and inspiration.
I know this post is old, but it seems to be the most recent ETT post so I’ll comment here:
I’ve been using SlickRun (http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/) and when you combine it with the desktop standalone ETT, you effectively get a “hidden” ETT that doesn’t take up taskbar space as a minimized window. Alt+Q pops up Slickrun, my SlickRun magicword is ett and it pops up the window (simply typing e will autocomplete), you click your bubble(s) and ALT+F4 to close. Other than the bubble click, it’s all keyboard quick and it stays hidden.
…now if only we could use the keyboard to fill in bubbles…
That’s really cool…thanks Dizzy! I wonder what a keyboard interface for the ETT would be…I’d probably hold off on that until I had the entire suite of tools defined (I love keyboard nav…I grew up with WordStar as my favorite wordprocessor, which at the time has the most elegant set of editing tools. I should TOTALLY MAKE the ETT WordStar compatible :-D
Haha, WordStar. If you did make a WordStar ETT it would have to come on a 5” floppy, there’s no other way.
…but in the meantime…
Simply having a default cursor (if it were rectangular, blinking, and green, that’d be cool) on the current time would be perfect; and the arrow keys could move it around with the spacebar allowing you to fill in (If you really wanted, you could use the Ctrl+S/E/D/X diamond…but again that would exclusively be on the 5” floppy version). To make it even more efficient, up and down could be restricted to the lines that have some text in them already so you could jump through only the tasks you’ve filled in. Horizontal, of course, would go through every time period. Lastly, while I’m at it, I noticed you can’t Tab or Enter from one line to the next in the morning when you are writing the tasks for the day, that would be convenient too.
Wow. I looked at this and initially said, nice. But then I realized that I could have this open in the background while I’m working on ‘another boring monthly update’ and actually have something to help me stay focused.
Thanks, this is awesome and I appreciate the effort you put into doing this.
Dizzy: HAHAHAHA! That’s hilarious! :-) I’ve got some ancient files I need to resurrect. The UI improvements you mentioned are indeed planned…I have to get off my butt and write the web service database part first, then I think it’ll be time for a UI refresh to take everyone’s feedback into account.
Jeff: Awesome! Thanks for sharing your experience…I should probably mention that in the instructions, so people have the idea as they’re reading it! Let us know how it works out for you!
Dave,
Is there a way to clear all entries for the standalone ETT (like at the end of the day)?
Love your site and appreciate all the work that you’ve put into each of the forms. I’ve lurked for a long while, but want to now say “thanks”.
Mark: There’s a debug console command you can enter:
lso clear. Afterwards, you can typerestartand it should clear everything.The app is storing information for every day you run it right now, awaiting the day when a new version lets it save everything to a server. One of these days! When you enter the debug console (ctrl-alt-tilde) and enter this command, it will all be erased.
5 years later, this is still the productivity cat’s pajamas. A belated thanks. And the ‘lso clear” tip is crucial!