Saturday, February 10, 2007

Upgrade path for alpha users

I was reminded (thanks schilke) that I need to announce this here:
(drum roll)... I officially now intend to support an upgrade path (through to beta and final 2.1) for adopters of the alpha. The dire warning about there being no upgrade path is no longer applicable. If you were holding back from the alpha only because of the dire warning then come on in the waters fine. :)

This has come about because I intend to stick with a tag based version, ie the plan to stop using tags entirely in favour of tiddler fields is on hold at least until a future version 3.0 or whatever.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

New tiddlyspot flavour

MonkeyGTD 2.1 alpha now available as a Tiddlyspot flavour. So it's now a little easier to get your MGTD online.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

OMG BUNNIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

It's pink-o-licious ! But seriously though, very nice theme. Saq this HAS to go to TiddlyThemes.com. :)

Update
Well the wheels are in motion so perhaps someday we can all use this theme. Also note that the theme is based on Clint's TiddlyRin (which was based on a wordpress theme called Rin) and "Bunnylicious" a Vox theme by Ideacodes. Which incidentally comes in colours other than pink.

Mini FAQ

Q: How come it's still alpha?
A: Basically because it's half finished. There is a lot of functionality I still want to add to MonkeyGTD. Plus I want it to look better, run faster, work perfectly in IE and be much easier to use and manage. When all that's done it will move to beta.

Q: When will that be? What is your timeframe?
A: MonkeyGTD is a spare time project for me so the answer is when it's ready. There is no timeframe.

Q: Can I use it?
A: Yes. I use it daily. I have 116 projects, 114 actions, 3 realms. I upgrade whenever there is a new release (sometimes before ;). And there are many others using it as well. But I should mention that you probably need to use Firefox.

Q: But is it right for me?
A: Only you can answer that.

Q: Should I use MonkeyGTD 1.0?
A: You can. To be honest though MonkeyGTD 1.0.x is not so great. It has some flaws due to the fact that I wrote it without knowing much about GTD. Despite that a lot of people are very happy with it. On the up side at least it's not an alpha...

Q: Can I upgrade from 1.0?
A: It can be done but unfortunately I can't help you with it at this stage. It might be easier to just start fresh. Consider it a really big review. ;)

Q: Where do I download?
A: Right click here and save as.

Update

Q: Where can I read the fine manual of MonkeyGTD so that I can have a quick start with it?
A: See here.

Q: That sucks. Why is there no better documentation?
A: Please contribute here :)

Labels:

Hypergraph and MonkeyGTD

This is interesting. I'm not sure it will help get things done but it sure looks cool. I would probably put it in a tiddler though so it's not constantly in your face.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

New stuff (r83)

  • Much improved Review screen (contributed by Michael Lockhart, thanks Michael!)
  • "Remove project" button to nuke a project and all of it's actions, ticklers, etc
  • "Delete old actions" button available in the Review screen
  • One or two other tweaks
The new review screen is a bit slower than the old one -- you may get long running script warnings if you have a lot of stuff -- but it's worth it.

Monday, February 05, 2007

On checklists

David Allen says he has loads of checklists and he uses them every day. I have one or two myself. So how could MonkeyGTD manage checklists? Daniel and I were just having this discussion and I thought I would share our conclusions.

Idea 1 - Checklists are snippets you can paste into the quick entry box.
Suppose you have a party checklist. Create a tiddler called "Party Checklist". (Tag it as "Checklist" to make it easy to find later). Enter some actions in .action name format, ie the format used by the "Process Inbox" quick entry box. Here's an example:
.Decide on guestlist|Home
.Send invites|Email|F
.Buy beer|Errand
.Buy snacks|Errand
.Setup stereo|Home|F
Now suppose you are having a party you can go to the quick entry box and type:
Party Feb 17|Friends
then find your checklist tiddler and copy and paste the contents underneath the above. Click create these items to create. Now your checklist is converted into a project with actions. The next time you have a party you can do it the same way perhaps refining the checklist each time you notice something extra is required. The problems with this is that because each tiddler must be uniquely named you could only have one party at a time, ie you would have to delete the old party actions to create a new one. Also I think that in many cases you want your checklist to be more lightweight that a full-blown project with actions. This leads to...

Idea 2 - Checklists are just text you can paste into body of an action (or project)
This time create a tiddler called "Travel Checklist". (Again tag as checklist so you can find it later). In there enter the following:
* Passport
* Tickets
* Sunglasses
* Money
* Credit cards
* Towel
* Ear plugs
* Phone
* Phone charger
* etc...
Now when you are actually travelling you can create an action "Pack for trip". Edit it and copy and paste in the above into the body of the tiddler (aka notes). Better yet just use the include a tiddler macro like this:
<<tiddler "Travel Checklist">>
This will include the contents of your checklist in the notes. Now Daniel points out that this way you won't have the satisfaction of clicking a little checkbox for each item on your list. I replied that you could print it and use a pen. Or you could just do it mentally. (I think this example is a list that your brain could processes easily enough).

(I also suggested to Daniel that if he installed Eric's CheckboxPlugin from http://www.tiddlytools.com/ he could probably have a lightweight checklist with those satifying checkboxes). So anyway I think both of these ideas have merit and are probably useful depending on the situation. I think my own use of checklists is more likely to be lightweight like the one in idea 2. What about you?