Seconded—even describing what, exactly, it does would be incredibly helpful. As in, if you don’t want to publish the code, describe the functionality, algorithm, features, etc.
@Johnicholas: Mostly off-topic, but in response to your software interes… I use org-mode and it is abso-freaking-lutely unbelievable. If you’ve been into todo lists, organizers, and the like… please tell me you’ve found that. I learned emacs just for org-mode, and that’s saying a lot about the motivating factors involved.
I’m sure you’ve seen todo.txt and the more advanced spinoff, taskwarrior. If you’re on a Mac, taskpaper is pretty cool. Lastly, timetrap, a dead simple time tracker for seeing where your time goes.
Of course, with org-mode, you can take notes, track todos (including assigning deadlines), log where you spend your time, export to html or PDF (via LaTeX), integrate with gnuplot, ditaa, and tikz for graphics, and loads more. Then again, they always did say emacs was the text-editor that could also cook a pizza for you...
The one stupid productivity hack that has stuck with me for several years now is turning on a clock in org-mode for the task I’m working on, and then having to work focusedly on that task until I turn the clock off.
I do use org for keeping random diary notes and wiki-style notes and for doing quick spreadsheet stuff with the lightweight spreadsheet feature.
I found this massive article on workflows and customizations of org-mode pretty interesting.
No problem—the org-mode mailing list is phenomenal and it’s incredibly useful for all sorts of things. Give a holler if you’d like any more discussion about things like this. I’m sort of an open source nut :) Researching programs can be addicting. For something with less of a learning curve, TiddlyWiki is fantastic as well. I just thought of that one. About the only thing (besides exporting and integration with all of those other “modules”) it didn’t do for me was task tracking. As far as taking notes and keeping track of things, it’s awesome. Like a personal notebook in wiki form.
Ok, enough out of me. If you need help setting anything up, send me a message and I’d be happy to help. I wonder if a post specifically on organization programs would be useful...
If you’re interested, I can send you a blank version that I modified for use at work. It contains a lot of plugins and HowTos built in. I had some interest from coworkers and took what I’d been using, stripped out all of my information, and wrote tutorials and explanations to help new users get into it.
I haven’t used it in over a year but still have the file. That also means I don’t quite recall all of the functionality that it contains! At the very least, it looks waaaay better because I used the appearance from teamtasks (which has todo functionality anyway), it has contact support from twab, and lots of stuff from some of the amazing plugin sites out there.
It ended up pretty darn cool, though to be fair I was using it to track research experiments for Intellectual Property documentation, not necessarily personal things. Since I found org-mode, I have seen the value of tracking personal life and thus, I think if I had the same revelation a couple years ago, I’d be using TiddlyWiki for such uses as well.
Let me know if you’re interested in my version—I can post it on google docs and give you a link.
Seconded—even describing what, exactly, it does would be incredibly helpful. As in, if you don’t want to publish the code, describe the functionality, algorithm, features, etc.
@Johnicholas: Mostly off-topic, but in response to your software interes… I use org-mode and it is abso-freaking-lutely unbelievable. If you’ve been into todo lists, organizers, and the like… please tell me you’ve found that. I learned emacs just for org-mode, and that’s saying a lot about the motivating factors involved.
I’m sure you’ve seen todo.txt and the more advanced spinoff, taskwarrior. If you’re on a Mac, taskpaper is pretty cool. Lastly, timetrap, a dead simple time tracker for seeing where your time goes.
Of course, with org-mode, you can take notes, track todos (including assigning deadlines), log where you spend your time, export to html or PDF (via LaTeX), integrate with gnuplot, ditaa, and tikz for graphics, and loads more. Then again, they always did say emacs was the text-editor that could also cook a pizza for you...
Org-mode made me switch to Emacs from Vim.
The one stupid productivity hack that has stuck with me for several years now is turning on a clock in org-mode for the task I’m working on, and then having to work focusedly on that task until I turn the clock off.
I do use org for keeping random diary notes and wiki-style notes and for doing quick spreadsheet stuff with the lightweight spreadsheet feature.
I found this massive article on workflows and customizations of org-mode pretty interesting.
I’ve heard org-mode is awesome, but I haven’t tried it yet. I hadn’t seen taskwarrior, taskpaper, or timetrap yet, thank you very much!
No problem—the org-mode mailing list is phenomenal and it’s incredibly useful for all sorts of things. Give a holler if you’d like any more discussion about things like this. I’m sort of an open source nut :) Researching programs can be addicting. For something with less of a learning curve, TiddlyWiki is fantastic as well. I just thought of that one. About the only thing (besides exporting and integration with all of those other “modules”) it didn’t do for me was task tracking. As far as taking notes and keeping track of things, it’s awesome. Like a personal notebook in wiki form.
Ok, enough out of me. If you need help setting anything up, send me a message and I’d be happy to help. I wonder if a post specifically on organization programs would be useful...
I’m using TiddlyWiki now. :)
If you’re interested, I can send you a blank version that I modified for use at work. It contains a lot of plugins and HowTos built in. I had some interest from coworkers and took what I’d been using, stripped out all of my information, and wrote tutorials and explanations to help new users get into it.
I haven’t used it in over a year but still have the file. That also means I don’t quite recall all of the functionality that it contains! At the very least, it looks waaaay better because I used the appearance from teamtasks (which has todo functionality anyway), it has contact support from twab, and lots of stuff from some of the amazing plugin sites out there.
It ended up pretty darn cool, though to be fair I was using it to track research experiments for Intellectual Property documentation, not necessarily personal things. Since I found org-mode, I have seen the value of tracking personal life and thus, I think if I had the same revelation a couple years ago, I’d be using TiddlyWiki for such uses as well.
Let me know if you’re interested in my version—I can post it on google docs and give you a link.
Thanks! I will raid it for features and modifications—these tools are so personal, everyone wants to control and customize their details.
Back at work—the file should download for you by clicking THIS. Let me know if it doesn’t.
Thanks much!