After running ManicTime I found the application was not meeting my requirements exactly. The application does not reuse tags automatically, this means that I need manually assign tags every an application was used. On the other hand, the statistics pane allows me to create specific groups of applications that are used to show time, which essentially gives me the result I want. The downside is that there is no information about what documents were open by the applications. If I use the same applications for different projects, then I can not differentiate between those projects. On the good side, the program author responded very quickly to my request and promised that the new release will have some updates that will be useful for me.
RescueTime vs ManicTime vs Wakoopa
January 18th, 2010Software for time tracking
December 13th, 2009I have been using RescueTime for more than a year. By “using” I mean that the application was running on my computer. Time to time I went online to see how my time was spent. Recently, after not visiting the site for a long time, I found out that my data is stored only for three month and some features (a year overview among others) are available only in paid accounts. It seems that $50 a year is not that much. But before committing my cash I decided to see what other options are there. Thanks to alternativeto.net (new website to me, and a good one too) I found a few alternatives.
Before going through the alternatives, I will specify what it is that I am looking for from an application like this. The most important usage for me is to know how much time I spent on a certain project. This simply means that I want to be able to specify what applications (documents in applications) corresponds to what project. Tagging is a way to do that. The next step is to see how much time different activities within a project occupied my time. This is also can be accomplished by tagging. I see benefits of storing the data online, but it is not a priority for me, because I do not plan to use multiple computers. For the next year or so I see myself working exclusively with windows and hence support for other operating systems is not a priority.
wakoopa: First impression was negative. After business like RescueTime, all the colors, pictures, and profiles looked a little alarming. Similarly to RescueTime, the data is stored online. Unlike RescueTime the account is free.
slifelabs: Looks too commercial without enough information to convince me to try them. Hence I did not even sign up there.
ybex: Seems to be oriented on what they need and my benefit is a side effect. This was not very convincing, hence no signing up there either.
manictime: Unlike RescueTime, the data is stored locally and the program is freeware, but for Windows only. The application has much larger memory footprint than other solutions.
Osho books.
November 8th, 2009I enjoy reading Osho’s books, even though they do get repetitive (for a good reason), here are some thoughts about them.
Freedom. This book introduced me to a few interesting concepts: “freedom for”, and “three dimensions of freedom”. Given that for Osho (and I agree with him) freedom is the ultimate goal, the topic of freedom is a very important topic. Surprisingly I was thinking very little about this topic before (yet another stab into self-hypocrisy). Great read.
Joy. Yet, another good read. If you understand the difference between pleasure, happiness, and joy, there is no need to read the book. If you do not know what is the opposite of joy, or how pain and pleasure are connected, then, please, read the book.
Intuition. Taxonomy of bases for our actions: instinct, intellect, and intuition. The differences and similarities between these methods are explained. A very good book to read for a scientist.
Meditation. Different meditation techniques with some explanation of why and how they work. An amusing read, but I am not sure that it is fully applicable to our times.
Soul development as the next evolutionary step
October 25th, 2009I suspect that most people will name “soul” as the main difference between animals and humans. They will not be able to define what it is, but it is still a basis for the difference. Now, let’s look at the evolutionary steps: inorganic (minerals) to organic (up to animals) to consciousness (humans) to X (Read Ishmael to find out why there is X). Humans redefine rules of evolution (natural selection does not apply any more), but evolution shall continue (why would it stop?). It seems to me that we are stepping into “soul evolution”, or whatever you want to call it, stage. Animals could not develop brains without presence of required organic molecules. When these molecules became available, brain was developed and used to advance the evolution. The next stop is soul development. There is no point to make it more esoteric than it is, instead it is reasonable to find a rationale behind this progression. The only problem is that souls do not live in four dimensions that we live in. The other dimensions (if any) must be understood, before their inhabitants can be met. It seems that souls will not be available until a human has reached certain level of awareness. And this is a circular argument: no awareness – no soul is visible, no soul is visible – no need to develop awareness. On the bright side, animals did not become aware of the brains, until they started to use it. We will see if we have the time to use this approach.
Alexander Shyrokov has reviewed
October 18th, 2009
A documentary about how food is made in US. Good questions, and good attitudes. The movie tried to be too sentimental at times, but still it had delivered the message! I never thought about how customers change the supplier. According to the movie, fast food chains are the largest customer for meet, and crops. Now it is only logical to see that the production methods from fast food chains must be applied to the food suppliers if they are too support the demand. How good are the methods? That is for you to decide. On the other hand, we are the customers for the food chains. They will give us what we ask them for. Hence, we vote for what kind of food we get with every meal we purchase! That is a lot of power in our hands. http://www.foodincmovie.com/
The cove
October 18th, 2009
Interesting documentary that focuses on one particular place in Japan, where dolphins are slaughtered. It is a story of a man who is trying to undo something that he had started. Some moments were really intense (better than action movies), some were very brutal. The goal of the movie is to rise awareness about the issue of dolphin captivity and killings. The author says, that if it is not possible to stop killing in one particular place, then it is not possible to address the global problem of killing whales and dolphins world wide. http://takepart.com/thecove.
Find duplicate files using OpenOffice.Calc
October 13th, 2009I had a problem of having a set of directories with some files duplicated in some of the directories. The search for a software to remove duplicate files did not reveal any free utilities to accomplish this task. So I decided to use OpenOffice.Calc to do the job.
- First I got the list of all the files:
dir /b/s >list.csv
- Then, I opened list.csv in OpenOffice.Calc and used this formula to extract only the file name:
=RIGHT(A1;LEN(A1)-SEARCH("\\[^\\]*$";A1;1)) - After that, I sorted the sheet by the file names and added a formula that detected duplicate file names:
=IF(B2=B1;"DUP";"")
- Search for the string DUP (in values) quickly showed me where the duplicates are.
I know it was not as easy as running a specific program, but it was easier for me to do that than to find a free software.
The Holy
October 5th, 2009
The Holly by Daniel Quinn.I was and is greatly impressed with Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Hence, I am trying hard to find the same greatness in his other books by comparing them to Ishmael. I understand, though, that every work must be judged by itself and not as a clone of something else. Still, it seems to me, that all of the Daniel’s books, I have read, do touch the similar subjects and talk about the same messages. Surprisingly, each time, the author finds very different angles to deliver the messages, which is very entertaining.
The Holy did not impress me as something exceptional. It did not provide the comprehensive picture of the environment and did not even hinted into the direction of how the environment can be explained. The notion of “them” vs “us” is an old one and is well popularized by Matrix movies. But Matrix does show how this separation came about, why it was possible, and where it would lead. I failed to grasp that reading The Holy. The book, of course, is well written and reminded me of Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Still I found myself waiting for something more until the very end of the book. In my opinion, the last few chapters of the book contained the important things, which were not really explored during the rest of the book.
The neocube – a magnet puzzle
September 24th, 2009I have played with the neocube. This toy is a collection of spherical earth magnets. Magnets make it very entertaining to play with this toy. One can create many shapes as shown in the video below. After getting a taste of it, I am planning on purchasing it.
Defense grid
September 21st, 2009
Following a good review of a tower defense game Defense Grid, I looked at the demo of the game. I liked it at the first glance, but eventually I was not impressed by the game balance. No need to use different kinds of towers to finish all four levels. In fact, basic towers were sufficient even to get the medals. The last level available in the demo allowed to use different strategies: use different towers (four types), use different upgrades (up to three on some towers). It turned out that it is easier to finish the level (with a medal) using only the basic tower even without upgrades. It seemed that attempting to use different towers created more risk than benefits. I hope the other levels in the game are more balanced. I did find that graphics, sounds, and narration were nicely done. The speed-up feature of the game is great. I really liked that each level could be completed in a short period of time, which makes the game attractive for casual games.
I wonder why such a task as balancing is not done automatically? If I work for a game development company I can see myself developing an automatic “game balancer”. Checking if a level is balanced is possible with a simulation, especially for such a deterministic games as tower defense games.