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frequent-task-reminder

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frequent-task-reminder 0.2.1 is utilities software developed by Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz.
Every day you have to do repetitive tasks. Maybe you are keeping an eye on some mirror. Maybe you check some web forum for specific posts. Maybe you are working on a book or essay and try to make progress on it every day.



Maybe you prefer the computer to remind you of some task you otherwise manage to ignore. This program will remind you of those boring tasks. Every day. In fact, every time you run it.

frequent-task-reminder tracks repetitive tasks by creating pending "work units", which have to be cleared manually.

frequent-task-reminder keeps a little database of pending tasks in a file located at ~/.frequent-task-reminderrc. On the first run, it will be created with pretty much a simple XML container. First you have to add pending tasks you want this program to remind you. Then, you call this script for example from your ~/.bash_profile, so it is called every time you log into a console or open an xterm. Of course, add the parameter --list to actually show the list of tasks. And whenever you feel like, clear a pending work unit.

It's all very easy, and running the script without parameters or with the --help parameter will show you the commandline usage instructions. Right now the program is limited to remind you of tasks once per day. This is, every day the program adds a pending work unit to all active tasks, which you have to clear. Since running the script with the --critical option only shows the tasks without cleared work units, this will show you what you still have to do before the day is over.

Usage examples:

frequent-task-reminder is for the time being a command line tool with a few options. Run it with the -h or -help arguments and it will tell you anything you need to know.

Usually you will end up putting this line somewhere in your ~/.bash_profile:
path/to/where/you/untarred/this/frequent-task-reminder.py -lc

The first thing you will want to do is create a new task:
frequent-task-reminder.py -a "Visit http://photo.net/"

The task is created, and the program automatically lists all the active tasks. Your new task will have an numerid id, which can be used later to handle work units. Now, assuming you have done the task for today, you want to clear the work unit with:
frequent-task-reminder.py -w task_id/task_name

You can use the name of the task or the id, which is shorter and quicker to type. Once the task is cleared to zero, just wait another day and the counter will go up.

If you are wondering what kind of tasks this is good for, I do some documentation cleanup tasks for a few free software projects. It is as easy as taking the entry of a programming API and thinking how would you improve the documentation. So each day I try to improve the API and at the end of the week I see if I can send a patch to the project with my changes.
Another one I do every day is documentation translation.

The problem with translations is that it's a very very very boring job. About 95% of people I've seen strarting a translation are gone after a week. However, translating one or two paragraphs of text a day takes less than five minutes. So that's all I do. At the end of the month, I do more this way than saying "Ah, I'll wait for a weekend and work for an hour or two", because I know (and you know) that weekends are for other things and I'll want to rest.

Finally, another nice use I have for this program is reminding me to read books. Depending on the book, my interest and free time, I decide that one work unit is a few pages or a chapter. This way I have been reading up to five books simultaneously and none of them really drag me down. In fact, all the above takes about less than half hour every day. I prefer to spend that time in various projects than neglect something for a long time. If you think this way too, you might find the program useful.

Requirements:
Python
ElementTree XML Python package

What's New in This Release:
A switch to reset all units of a task has been added.
Now if cElementTree is found, it is used.
frequent-task-reminder 0.2.1 supports english interface languages and works with Linux.

Downloading frequent-task-reminder 0.2.1 will take if you use fast ADSL connection.

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