AutoHotkey Community

Glad to hear it might work for you. Let me know. I'm writing a book on productivity systems, best practices, etc. I'd be very interested in how this approach works for others. Thx.

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Lars

So how does this thing work?
*kicks autohotkey*
...
*bangs on it with coffee mug*

Well I've done all I can do. But humor me, I haven't read the AHK quickstart tutorial so I know nothing about this software. I can't program or anything.
Do I download all of the versions of the file
Extract the contents of all the files to one folder
Run AHK for the first time
Then doubleclick the WB_Timer.ahk?

How does this work?

But still version 3.00 alpha does not do anything for me.

Not sure what your asking but I'll give some quick tips that might help.

* If you don't want to install/use the AHK engine, just run the exe version in a folder of your choice. All necessary support files will be created in that folder as necessary.
* When the exe is run, a square icon will appear in the icon tray. Depending on your config. settings (right click on the square icon), as time progresses, the icon will show a progress bar that moving upward.

If I haven't guessed right on what your asking, please ask again.

_________________
Lars

Regarding the task logger functionality, I thought that the following might be of interest to other readers of this thread:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090802681.html

Please note that v. 3.00 Alpha archive doesn't contain all the files needed to run Workbreak. You HAVE TO download 2.81 and extract 3.00 on top of it to make it work.

PS
TotalBalance,
that would be nice to have one download 'to rule them all' - with all the images \ resources included. It would make only additional 100k or so.

BTW, never had a opportunity to thank you for the great script !

valenock, thanks for the post! For some reason, perhaps in haste, I uploaded the wrong set of files for the most recent alpha. That probably explains the other users comments of nothing happening!

I've just replace the files and all should be as intended.

Let me know if otherwise. Thanks again!

_________________
Lars

It's been a long time since I've used WBT. But I just started again and I'm reminded why I like it. This utility has a "life cycle" that people will want to understand:
1) My life is in chaos, I need help to organize. Look around. Find WBT.
2) What's AHK? How do we install WBT? Getting to know you...
3) Start using WBT. Wow, that was neat. Use it more. Wow, how did I keep track of anything before this?!

When I stopped using it, I was simply too busy to keep track of my time. Bad move, Buck. That's exactly the time when I need to keep track of my time. So here I am, back again at point 1 above. For all of these reasons I still highly recommend WBT.

Side1: WBT was my introduction to AHK. I've written a few helpful ditties with AHK but I'm not qualified to do much with AHK yet - as time permits that's my goal with AHK, to be able to give back to TotalBalance and the community for the privilege of being able to use these fine tools.

Side2: I still don't have time to research the concept of "Getting Things Done" but I feel like I'm at the edge of water watching other people in boats that have sails with GTD in big bold letters. They're sailing where I would drown so I really want to know more about this concept that may help me to organize my time better. WBT is only a small part of that.

So with those things in mind I'd say the next two steps in the WBT user life cycle are:
4) Get more interested in AHK.
5) Try to find out more about GTD and how to make better use of this tool and others to solve the problems that brought us all here in the first place.

I should add that I absolutely recommend ToDoList (www.abstractspoon.com) for use with WBT - it's almost a requirement!

I hope that helps someone else who's trying to figure out what this thing is and why/how they can/should use it.

TotalBalance - I don't suppose you need a reviewer for your book? I'm probably a member of your target audience and can help you to determine if your book is actually hitting the target. FYI, one of the things I do in life is technical editing for SAMS, McGraw-Hill, Manning, and other publishers...


Regards, and thanks again.

Wow, Starbuck, thanks so much for the review. Always appreciated!

The development of the software toolset has been both fun and quite challenging. It's designed to support how the mind works best.

While I have a review board lined up, I'd be honored if someone with your background is interested in reviewing the copy and/or "proof of concept" software toolset of which WBT is just a part. I'd be happy to send you a pm with more details.

_________________
Lars

I like the software a lot, but one thing drives me crazy: the inability to see how many mins/secs are left until the break or until work starts again. If you could add this to the mouse over on the taskbar, that would be fantastic. Perhaps I'm a bit too anal retentive for wanting to know the seconds as well, but I'm curious every time.

Other suggestions:
-like InstantBoss, create some sort of snooze button for the break or the work selection
-ability to change the sound files
-ability to make the sound files play until you hit a button

Thanks for the great software and I hope it keeps getting better.

A mouse over will show the minutes passed and which session your on. I decided not to show the seconds because of concerns about additional memory useage and system slowdowns to show everytime there's a mouse over. This may be a non-issue, but being a non programmer it just didn't seem worth the time and dead brain cells to figure out how to provide this granularity. However, as I've mentioned in previous posts, everythings open source so if this is really important to you, feel free to tweak the code any way you like. All I ask is to share your customization code so all can benefit.


An issue I have with a snooze button is it involves a bit more than just the "snooze" code as it relates to tracking and recording your tasks. Instead of a snooze button, I went with the options to either restart or reload the script. In effect, the "reload" option can act as snooze button. After reloading, WBT is on "standby" (unless you've set the option to AutoStart).


This is definately on my todo list. Just need to find the time to do it!

_________________
Lars

I am not a programmer by nature (and really haven't dabbled with any code since 2001ish), so I guess I'll just see how annoyed I get by the lack of seconds. I can't imagine showing the number of seconds would use much more memory however.

Really, the big deal to me is during a break because I use the 10+2 method. The difference between having 59 secs left and 1 sec is often the difference between checking another article or post and getting back to work.


That makes sense in terms of tracking and recording tasks. I hadn't really used these features yet, so it didn't occur to me.


Sounds good and keep up the good work!

anyone else use a webcam and record themselves doing homework with this?

Here is a quick hack I came up with for the problem of screen capture using multiple monitors. I extend my monitor from Left to right, so the code may need to be altered for right to left.

This script resides in the autoexecute section of my autohotkey.ini file that I load on startup:


It puts a tooltip in the top left hand corner of my primary screen with the title of the active window on my second monitor.

I don't use multiple monitors so THANK YOU for making the mod!! Won't be able to test, but those who've asked for this functionality probably will. Awesome!

_________________
Lars