GottaDash with Shoes
In my previous job, I regularly used the (10+2)*5 procrastination hack to boost my productivity. I was pretty comfortable with the system. It kept me focused in what I was doing. It allowed me to conserve my energy for my tasks. Sticking to the system sort of developed my discipline. Because I was aware that I was working and I had progress in my tasks, I felt encouraged and motivated to even more productive. My boss and colleague suggested that we implement a tool to facilitate that (10+2)*5 hack, and we did. The company named it GottaDash. Mikong made a JavaScript version, while I made a Flex version. In making that Flex version, I had to spend some time learning the basics of ActionScript, MXML, and the SDK because I wasn't familiar with the platform and the languages. My learning of Flex had a very good motivation -- RIA using Flex and Ruby on Rails. GottaDash in Flex was the tool I used at work.
But then my MacBook crashed, and along with its hard drive, all my programs and files were obliterated, including the source code of the Flex version. Sigh. I didn't have the time to re-implement the Flex version, and it already took a lot of my work hours, so I decided not to re-implement it.
Last Saturday, I felt that my body was missing its productivity juices; my mind, its focus. So I quickly cooked up GottaDash using Shoes, a tiny UI toolkit for Ruby.
Coding in Shoes was a little bit challenging. Why? Because I wasn't able to find a comprehensive documentation (in RDoc). I switched back and forth between my code and the Shoes manual. There was one time that I wanted to know the api of the Shoes::Every, because I wanted to subclass it. Nope. I failed to find it. It isn't in the internets? That's weird. I ended up getting the Shoes source code and going through it. I wasn't able to find the documentation for the :styles options for elements.
Another thing I had a problem with was the video command (I only needed to play the alarm sound). You can't play hidden videos. They have to be visible in order to play them. I ended up creating a stack element with a size of 1x1 pixel just to hold the alarm mp3.
So here it is. Grab it, open it with your Shoes installation, and feel the joy of being productive!
P.S. In the spirit of open source, I've uploaded the GottaDash source code in github, if you want to take a look at it. It's released under MIT license.
P.P.S. A friend recommended to me that I should set up a way to accept donations, possibly through PayPal. I haven't done so and I'm still wondering if people would actually want to donate money to me. But I sure hope that this will be useful for many. It's useful for me.
Update There are times when Shoes would crash. I couldn't trace the bug atm, but when I have the time, I'll update the thing, maybe refactor the code a little bit to make it smaller and simpler.
