Tuesday, November 6, 2007

The Real Thing Two—Well, Sort Of

A few days ago, I didn’t write about the snack-factory next door, instead, I wrote about a little program that helps keep my fingers moving along as I write.

Today, what I am not going to write about is my theme crashing on my fiction-only site. If I were going to talk about that, I’d have to mention the hours I spent trying everything I could to fix it only to repeatedly fail. I’d have to mention finding several viable replacement themes and settling for my second choice because it would require less tweaking to make me happy. What I really would have to mention is how the designer used base64 encoding in the footer to try to eliminate the removal of the “sponsor’s” pop-ups and ads. Of course, if I were going to write about this, I’d have to brag about ripping that code apart and putting what I wanted there despite the gibberish that is base64 code.

Instead, I’m going to write about The PC Timer: it’s the other little program I use to make my writing time more efficient.

The PC Timer

This program is just what its name implies: it’s a timer/alarm that runs unobtrusively in the computer’s background. The user sets the time and then forgets about it: when the set-time expires, the program comes to the front of the computer’s workspace and alerts the user her time is up.

I love this for two reasons: first, it keeps me from having to worry about the time I’ve budgeted to write—I don’t have to clock-watch because this program takes care of it for me. This means I don’t have to worry about getting so caught up in what I’m doing that I forget to leave for the day job. Second, when things are going slowly (or I’m in the middle of, say, NaNoWriMo), the compulsion to check my word count can be overwhelming. Using the PC Timer, I can set thirty-minute intervals and make a mental deal to check my count only after the timer goes off.

There is a similar device available for the Mac, and as Mac things tend to be, it’s much prettier:

The Mac Timer

The best news about each is that they are priced right: they are FREE.

Happy times, no?

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