DonationCoder.com Software > N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007

WorkCoach - v0.8.0 - January 24, 2007

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Seriema:
I usually work nights so having another way to "go to the next day" would be usefull. Logicly speaking, for my case, a new day starts when I wake up. Meaning I've been asleep for at least 6 hours and WorkCoach has at least 6h of idle time, and then become active again - that would be when I want WorkCoach to start counting "a new day" for me without me having to do anything. I hardly ever reboot and always have the computer on at night.

Arjen:
I will think of a simple yet flexible way to rollover to the next day; that function is quite poor right now and apparently it's something people would like to see improved.

PS I am in the UK , and its 0:24 and the times have not reset from yesterday ??
-stevenhealey (January 05, 2007, 06:25 PM)
--- End quote ---

That's correct, right now the application just logs for the date that was detected at startup. So in this case you would have to restart WorkCoach to roll over to the next day. Also see what I wrote in an earlier post:

In principle, the day is simply defined as the (local) date on the machine WorkCoach is running on, so midnight local time is the "roll over time". However, the program determines the date on startup and keeps using that date until shutdown, so in practice we have a "dynamic roll over time" that works fine for those overnight activities, as long as you don't restart WorkCoach. :-}
-Arjen
--- End quote ---

The ability to reset the project times at any time of the day would make the program more flexible ,
morning sessions , afternoon session and evening session would then be possible.-stevenhealey
--- End quote ---

I am considering implementing logging exact times in a future version, as opposed to just logging the time spent as it is now. So then this problem would also be solved...

mojomuse:
just wanted to add what a great idea/app this is ..!  :)

on quick initial test run, the following ideas spring to mind for me:

- would be handy to be able to simply start/stop/pause the counter (rather than having the only other current option of closing it down completely).  this might also help those people looking to have more control over day-borders etc
- am also finding it uses a lot of CPU, but by this i mean, after initial loading CPU of @ 1%, it seems to then settle in @ 35-60% ..!?  :(  incidentally, seems to bizarrely drop down when i'm surfing ..?!
- agree would be great to have a simple overview of time spent/day for each task.  to this end, you might want to look at how a different app approached the same logging/reporting issue here http://codebox.no-ip.net/controller?page=bitmeter
- reckon might also be handy if you could somehow set up "parent" and "child" tasks, where (for instance) i could have major categories/tasks for personal/work and break down subtasks within these ..?  again, a great app that approaches the to-do list in this way, so you can see a little more what i mean, can be found here http://www.abstractspoon.com/tdl_resources.html.  in your case, both the main parent task would count as long as any subtasks were active/counting.
- would be handy to have at least a manual "check for updates" option from the sys tray icon (especially at such an early stage of development)

otherwise, the various ideas already mentioned sound great ;)

from my point of view, however, the most critical is to sort out the CPU issue, since at present i don't think it's viable for me to run @ such a high level ..

end of the day, its greatest use to me is to be able to look back each day/over a week and see where most of my time "disappears" (!!!) so i can start to make more use of what little i have available to me - and your coaching tips would then be great here.  in this respect, i guess you could set each task to warn you if it's "share" across a day was falling below a certain target .. is this the plan?

either way, look forward to all/any updates ..!

cheers ..

Arjen:
Hi mojomuse,

Thanks for your comments! I will add reporting functions after I've done the basic functionality I have in mind. A "pause" function might be a nice idea - thanks for the suggestion.

I'm a bit worried by the CPU issues. WorkCoach uses a few percent of CPU on my machine, and I "only" have an AMD Athlon XP 2800 CPU. I've never seen it use as much CPU as you mention. I'd like to get some more information on the issues you're having: what kind of computer are you using? Fairly recent computer? Windows XP or other Windows version? How do you measure the CPU load? Are you doing anything special when the CPU load is so high? Any idea why it's dropping when you are surfing, as you mentioned?

Are other people having these issues? Tomos, you reported high CPU load earlier, is this similar to what you are experiencing?

I'm still thinking about the messages I'd like to implement so I'm not sure how exactly they will look. In the next version, you will be able to set daily budgets for projects. The messages should for example warn you if you have exceeded the budget, or if you are spending a lot of time on projects you hadn't planned (hadn't set a budget for on that day). Any suggestions are welcome.

tomos:
Hi Arjen

went for it (workcoach) again this morning.
Was having some system problems (genaral high CPU usage) but seems fairly okay now (dunno, I rebooted ... :) )
Listed as AMD AthalonXP 1666MHz 2000+
Win XP uptodate

Using Process Explorer:
CPU rates vary between 15 & 30%
still seems very high - it seems to fluctuate a lot as i work even though I havent changed window/programme. (CPU changes every second or so but then I notice they all do that in ProcessExp.!!)
Also seems so far not to vary that much between different programmes (including surfing)

hope that helps ??!!

tom

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