Joe Ganley

I make software and sometimes other things.

 

Due to Blogger's termination of support for FTP, this blog is no longer active.

It is possible that some links from here, particularly those within the site, are now broken. If you encounter one of those, your best bet is to go to the new front page and hunt for it from there.

Most, but not all, of the blog's posts are on this page; the archives are here.
My desk calendar
 

Due to the nature of my work, I keep a calendar on my desk at work that is separate from my various personal calendar and note-taking machinery.

Initially I used a standard month-at-a-glance calendar, but I found it a nuisance writing things inside of little boxes. Then I switched to a linear perpetual calendar (similar to this) - basically just a lined, numbered list - but found that in locating today on the page, I often don't know the date exactly, but rely on the day of the week as an indexing cue.

So what I came up with was a list format, but with the day numbers offset according to the day of the week. Here is this month's in PDF form: weekdays only, which is what I use, or with the full week. One of these days I may automate the generation of these, but in the meantime I'll try to post each month's as I generate it for myself.

No sooner had I posted this than I ran across a similar (but prettier) design from Amy Marcella (via Oh So Beautiful Paper).

Update: Here's December, weekdays only and full week. If anyone uses these, please make a comment to that effect, as otherwise I won't bother posting subsequent months.

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To do lists, continued
 

My search for a means of tracking tasks continues. In the cloud, I tried out Remember the Milk, Ta-da List, Todoist, and Toodledo. Of these, Toodledo is my favorite, but ultimately I wasn't happy with it either, and in any event I really wanted a local app rather than a web-based solution, because I want my data kept locally and I want to be able to use it when I'm offline.

In the app world, I tried the Jira bug-tracking system, which is free for personal use, but it is far heavier-weight than I need for this purpose. I tried AxoSoft OnTime and FruitfulTime TaskManager, but didn't really care for either of those. Things looks really nice, but it's Mac-only. My current favorite is Tudumo. It's simple and well-designed, and while it isn't quite perfect, I have few complaints. I like that it is designed with simplicity as a primary goal, it is GTD-friendly, it is reasonably priced (though not free), it has a generous 60-day trial period, and it gives me full control over my data (it will export CSV). If I end up sticking with it, I'll make a later post about how I think it could be improved.

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To do lists
 

I've been looking for an electronic way to track my to-do lists, tasks, and projects. None of the online services I've tried does quite what I want, and anyway I prefer to keep the data locally. This morning I had the revelation that what I wanted was almost identical to the functionality of a bug-tracking system. I could use Bugzilla! I've used it as a client for years, but never tried to install it myself. Here is how the installation instructions begin:

  • Install Perl.
  • Install a Database Engine.
  • Install a Webserver.
And anyway, it isn't clear whether it works on Windows. Fail.

It seemed that a smart business model for commercial bug-tracking software would be to give away single-user licenses for personal use. And indeed, AxoSoft does this. However, I installed it, and it is incredibly complicated. I didn't look at it long enough to determine whether it just has way more functionality than I need, or is poorly engineered, but certainly its interface is overwhelmingly complex for the simple things I need to do.

I'd love to try FogBugz for this purpose, but even a single-user license is $200. I wouldn't mind paying, but that's far too much for what I need.

So, I keep looking. I might have to write something myself.

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