Author Topic: HowLong2It - GOE Challenge 2007 Entry (Read 59,768 times)

tinjaw · « **on:** December 02, 2007, 05:14 AM »

Here is my entry - HowLong2It

HowLong2It is a way to keep track of how many days since some date in the past and how many days until some date in the future. The applications is always only a click away. Click on the tray icon and the status window will popup to show you the dates/tasks you are tracking.

I have setup a webpage for it. It is based of an idea from spankymcgee.

This is an odd entry, because I built it, and everything related to it (the web page etc.) in about a total of less than 24 man hours. I hadn't planned on entering this contest, but Friday I decided to see what I could do using AutoIt in the time remaining. I will be doing a heck of a lot of work on this over the next few days to weeks. Right now all that is there is the executable file. There is no installation necessary. There is no documentation at this point, so it will be the first thing I do starting... now.

tinjaw · « **Reply #1 on:** December 03, 2007, 05:44 PM »

I have made a comprehensive video for HowLong2It.

I will be adding it and more info the to the program's main page. But I just wanted to get it out now because I won't be until this evening that I will get a chance to formally put it up.

mouser · « **Reply #2 on:** December 05, 2007, 05:27 AM »

The video is perfect and demonstrates everything you need to see. The user interface you came up with is perfect.
Actually you know this was a great little idea. The days since thing is just nice and clean and simple. very nice

tinjaw · « **Reply #3 on:** December 05, 2007, 11:19 AM »

My first review.

Thanks mouser.

rjbull · « **Reply #4 on:** December 05, 2007, 03:20 PM »

Hmmm, an element of reinventing the wheel here. Take a look at Horst Schaeffer's Date Reminder

tinjaw · « **Reply #5 on:** December 06, 2007, 01:20 AM »

Quote from: rjbull on December 05, 2007, 03:20 PM

Hmmm, an element of reinventing the wheel here.

That's fine by me. That application seems to be targeted at a different audience though. Mine is more to keep track of how many more shopping days until Christmas, or how many days until you need to test the pH of the pool again, or how many days it has been since you ordered a product online that is supposed to be shipped in 7-10 days.

The other application is a more extensive program for different kinds of scheduling.

spankymcgee · « **Reply #6 on:** December 06, 2007, 06:06 PM »

Awesome! I like it.

It's great that you can use it for things like monitoring oil changes, toothbrush changes, etc. That's what I envisioned. GReat job!

wandas · « **Reply #7 on:** December 07, 2007, 03:53 AM »

Great utility. I want it but....

Doesn't seem to work on non-US time zones??? I'm in Thailand, and we set our dates as dd-mm-yy rather than the US format of month-day. I think that might be why HowLong2It comes up showing that every date is "-1" away. It doesn't matter if it is future or past, doesn't matter if the month is above 12 or not (I tried 5 January for example and it still showed as -1). I have seen apps before that didn't work with out-of-US time formats, so I'm guessing that is the bug.

I hope you can get some time to have a look at this. The app looks great. If you need screen shots to explain further, or need more info, feel free to mail.

Wanda Sloan
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tinjaw · « **Reply #8 on:** December 07, 2007, 11:36 AM »

Wanda,

Thank you for taking time to report this bug. I'll get that fixed ASAP.

thanx,
tinjaw

nogojoe · « **Reply #9 on:** December 08, 2007, 08:17 AM »

Nice little program
I will have some uses for it but I am in the same boat as Wanda :wallbash

seedling · « **Reply #10 on:** December 09, 2007, 04:26 AM »

how about adding the ability of maintaining a list of files and checking their last-modified date for some kind of a reminder or scolding?

i presented this idea to mouser, who also loved the idea and told me of this ongoing project to which it would make a nice addition.

so, have at it

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** December 09, 2007, 04:44 AM »

hmm that is not quite what i thought you meant seedling

what i thought you were suggesting is
for each of the tasks in HowLong2It that counts how many days have elapsed since you last did something, add the ability to specify a "too long" alarm.

in other words, let me add a task like "Water the Plants", and the program keeps track of how long its been since i did that. Let me set an alarm so that if i go past 7 days before doing it again, it should show me an alarm saying its been too long since i did that task.

tinjaw · « **Reply #12 on:** December 09, 2007, 02:19 PM »

wandas, nogojoe,

I have modified HowLong2It (now v 0.0.0.9) to use the international date format of yyyy/MM/ddd. Please let me know if this fixes that issue.

nogojoe · « **Reply #13 on:** December 09, 2007, 09:09 PM »

Hi Tinjaw

Fixed it OK

Just Great

nogojoe · « **Reply #14 on:** December 12, 2007, 08:39 PM »

Hi Tinjaw

A possible improvement would be to have the “since“ & “until” entries be able to be grouped together rather than as they are listed on entry.
Just a click on the “days“ button could sort them out into such order if it were possible
It would make it easier reading

Just a suggestion

nogojoe

Gordhan · « **Reply #15 on:** December 25, 2007, 07:06 AM »

Hi,
I really like this program

. Would it be possible to make an option to run it on startup? I tried adding it to my list of startup programs, but then it opens without any entries in it.
Thanks,
Manoj

mouser · « **Reply #16 on:** December 25, 2007, 08:15 AM »

Quote

then it opens without any entries in it.

tinjaw the program is loading configuration/data file from working directory, instead of directory where the program lives?

tinjaw · « **Reply #17 on:** December 25, 2007, 10:34 AM »

Quote from: nogojoe on December 12, 2007, 08:39 PM

Hi Tinjaw

A possible improvement would be to have the “since“ & “until” entries be able to be grouped together rather than as they are listed on entry.
Just a click on the “days“ button could sort them out into such order if it were possible
It would make it easier reading

Just a suggestion

nogojoe

I have created Issue #0000008 at bugs.tinjaw.com.

tinjaw · « **Reply #18 on:** December 25, 2007, 10:36 AM »

Quote from: Gordhan on December 25, 2007, 07:06 AM

Hi,
I really like this program . Would it be possible to make an option to run it on startup? I tried adding it to my list of startup programs, but then it opens without any entries in it.
Thanks,
Manoj

I have created Issue #0000010 at bugs.tinjaw.com.

Gordhan · « **Reply #19 on:** December 25, 2007, 05:41 PM »

Thanks Tinjaw. I look forward to using this program all the time...really good for staying focused on projects

Manoj

dsp · « **Reply #20 on:** June 22, 2008, 05:33 PM »

has this project ended? i was lokin forward to nogojoes suggestions bein implemented...

tinjaw · « **Reply #21 on:** June 22, 2008, 05:49 PM »

Quote from: dsp on June 22, 2008, 05:33 PM

has this project ended? i was lokin forward to nogojoes suggestions bein implemented...

No. It has just been hibernating. :-) Let me put this again on my schedule. It may be a while though as I am busy and will be out of town for a whole week in the first half of next month.

Any thing else users want to mentioned before I work on it again?

urlwolf · « **Reply #22 on:** November 13, 2008, 01:24 PM »

Just a quick note: something similar but in opera widgets format:
http://widgets.opera.com/widget/5034/

urlwolf · « **Reply #23 on:** November 24, 2008, 01:16 PM »

I love this little program!
It'd be great to use one of those gantt charts and show the intevals in days between each key date (I use it for conference deadlines!).

I think it may be hard since this is autoIt and there may be no gantt libraries for it... but it'd be a killer addition. Just seeing the times in a continuum would help.

Also, using gcal integration to substract dates you maked as away in the computation of days left would be killer.