tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50235651543811241132012-01-13T13:10:22.271-05:00Lotus Agenda was the best personal organizer ever. I miss it terribly. So I'm rewriting it as a web app in PHP.Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-70441736756700948712011-12-29T14:15:00.000-05:002011-12-29T14:15:23.177-05:00

Several people have written me asking about the status of this project. Unfortunately, it has stalled, and I've run out of enthusiasm. I loved Agenda. It was the most amazing program back in the DOS days, but today Agenda just doesn't cut it, even for simple tasks. Its time seems to have passed, maybe our world was simpler then. I've added extensions that I thought would make it more

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-22686321451759963952010-09-15T08:35:00.000-04:002010-09-15T08:35:04.462-04:00

This is the first week of classes, and I'm registered in a course called 'Digital Games and Learning'. I have some trepidation about this course.  One of the books on my summer reading list was Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows - What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains'.  Strangely, it's a book about why people don't read books anymore. Marshall McLuhan famously said "The medium is the message", a

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-48455475640963683802010-09-13T16:02:00.006-04:002010-09-14T22:59:36.861-04:00

First Screenshots School started today, and I am using my version of Agenda for organizing my courses and interests. The look-and-feel is still very primitive, especially since I haven't put in much effort with the style sheets yet.  But the functionality is beginning to emerge, and the underlying code structures are strong enough to keep me moving forward.

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-75792716381115097762010-08-26T13:08:00.002-04:002010-08-26T13:41:43.792-04:00

It's back-to-school time, I've bought a new laptop - a Sony Vaio F-series with a full 1920x1080 resolution.  I read a lot of research papers, which are typically PDF documents formatted into multiple columns.  It was painful on the old laptop - I'd have to scroll up and down each page.   So I would put the screen into 'portrait' mode to view the documents as full pages, but I didn't have quite

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-24184456853630959692010-07-04T22:15:00.000-04:002010-07-04T22:15:47.890-04:00

One of the reasons that I wanted Agenda was because I am going back to university in September.  I cannot think of a better tool for organizing research papers and managing my thesis.  That's going to be my first real 'use-case'. My version of Agenda is now at the point where I can enter items into a file, creating categories as I go.   The basic structure is in place, and the specific fields

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-52984377631208567122010-05-22T18:44:00.001-04:002010-05-22T18:51:15.998-04:00

I've been working steadily on the Agenda Rewrite, probably about 15 hours per week.  I'm happy to report that progress is good.  I've got the basic operations running for adding items and displaying views.   I'm learning  Jquery (http://jquery.com) – what a fabulous tool – as the basis for my user interface. The strategy of testing before coding has fallen away.  One of the reasons is that I

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-24737877952759361922010-05-08T18:17:00.004-04:002010-05-22T18:52:07.795-04:00

Running Agenda on my DOS netbook isn't convenient, but necessary since both my desktop and laptop machines are running Ubuntu. But I still need and use Agenda.   It provides both a model for the new application I'm building, and my organizer for ideas, todo lists, etc. So I looked into the 'Ubuntu Software Center' on my laptop (a friendly wrapper for apt-get, the Linux utility that installs

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-71568603188006016372010-05-05T22:24:00.003-04:002010-05-05T22:41:59.730-04:00

Spent the day with my feet up, reading Scott Rosenberg's 'Dreaming in Code'.   http://www.dreamingincode.com. This book covers the first three years of the Chandler project, http://chandlerproject.org, an ambitious project to build what it describes as "An open-source Note-to-Self Organizer."  But this wasn't just any organizer they were building.  Chandler hoped to capture the spirit of

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-14150003877999864242010-05-05T09:12:00.003-04:002010-05-05T15:05:54.720-04:00

Yesterday was a perfect day - 80km bike ride in the morning, and then some brainstorming about Agenda with my great friend (and former business partner), Dale Jeffries. Early code is not just about solving a problem, but also figuring out what the problem really is.  Getting the problem right is the necessary first step in a successful project - it is surprising how often this is overlooked .

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-1187033564557409672010-05-02T06:46:00.005-04:002010-05-02T06:59:06.984-04:00

If you haven't read the previous blog on Categories, please read it now.  Otherwise, the examples in this entry won't make a lot of sense. In Agenda, Items are managed by the categories they belong to.  Agenda treats Categories like 'Initial View' and 'PC Platforms' (which seem to be Views that present groups of items) identically 'Game' and 'Manufacturer' (which seem to be groupings of items)

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-71997616667930708322010-04-30T13:28:00.005-04:002010-05-01T15:09:13.419-04:00

The basic database objects are working, and also bits of the user interface.  I can create and open files, add and delete items, and item notes and properties.  I have a basic View object, not pretty but functional. It's time to attack 'Categories', which is the beating heart of Agenda.  They are also the most complex part.  I won't really understand how Agenda works until I try programming

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-15992029211045254152010-04-27T08:26:00.002-04:002010-04-27T08:29:04.865-04:00

Lotus Agenda was possibly the most elegant software program ever written.  Agenda is a Personal Information Manager (PIM), one of those note-keeping programs that let you enter To-do lists, notes, contacts, etc.   It was written long before email became popular and we all switched to Outlook.   Agenda version 2.0, which I fell in love with, was released in 1990 as a DOS program.   Agenda was

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-32220982615080383052010-04-21T18:23:00.001-04:002010-04-21T18:24:21.118-04:00

Golf tournaments often award a prize to the 'Most Honest' golfer.  It's not something you keep on the mantlepiece.   I may have earned a prize for the 'Most Honest Blogger'. I use Google PPC advertising for my dyslexia site.  It's expensive - about 60 cents a click.  I have a $5/day budget, so I only get 8-9 clicks per day. I only advertise on Google.com, not on any affiliates.  Of course, a

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-42679349482571552272010-04-17T21:07:00.004-04:002010-04-18T10:38:15.141-04:00

Interesting week.  I wasted most of it. In spite of saying I was going to follow the Test-Driven-Design methodology, I fell badly off the path.   OK, I'm back.  But it's an interesting story. Instead of just creating a list-of-files, as I set out to do, I got detoured.  I started to build the main display-item grid in Agenda instead. I realized that the list of files was exactly what an

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-75157526505399703602010-04-13T07:01:00.004-04:002010-04-13T07:19:40.549-04:00

I'm trying the technique of Test Driven Development (TDD).  It feels a bit weird, but so far it has worked marvellously. I haven't done any design, other than have a general sense of what I want to do ("Write some objects to encapsulate the database...").  In TDD, the design is supposed to emerge from repeated short cycles of Test-Code-Repeat. The idea is to start by writing a small test for

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-15488034491505755562010-04-11T19:16:00.004-04:002010-04-12T06:49:11.964-04:00

I felt badly after posting the last blog entry. It sounded like I was demeaning Mitch Kapor and the programmers that built Chandler, even comparing myself to them. Not true. There's something else going on here, and I want to write about it. It's about the Open Source community, and the amazing gifts they have given us. Open Source is going to be the recurring subject of this blog. I'm

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-24909418519498455772010-04-10T09:04:00.000-04:002010-04-11T18:47:41.174-04:00

I was looking at the Wikipedia entry for Lotus Agenda. It mentions Beeswax, which I knew about, and also another project called Chandler. Click, Click… OMYGOD !!! Mitch Kapor, one of the original designers of Agenda, seems to have funded a massive project to re-write Agenda into a multi-platform version. He kept a blog. In an early posting in 2002, he talks about the project, and mentions

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-47190489510156102742010-04-08T18:40:00.000-04:002010-04-11T18:44:04.735-04:00

The old-fashioned style of programming is a three-stage process: Design, Program, Test. By that, I should be designing for a few more weeks, but I’ve already started writing some code. I’m trying a newer paradigm that suggests that you write some test cases first - basically write the tests for what you want the program to do. Then write some code that satisfies the tests. Finally think

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-27138795692626485542010-04-07T16:17:00.000-04:002010-04-11T18:39:43.282-04:00

I don’t have to design the application, I’m simply building a new version of an old DOS chestnut. If I can imagine the code for the original Agenda, about half of it runs the user interface, and the other half implements a toy Database Management System (DBMS) that manipulates the data. So I start by focusing on the data side, laying out the databases. Agenda originally used text files.

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-52364865237333179002010-04-07T02:02:00.001-04:002010-04-11T19:51:59.109-04:00

By Tuesday morning, I have reconsidered Android. Chances are slim that I will succeed in rewriting an old unsuccessful program into a killer app. I’m not a marketing genius. I’m not a great programmer either - more of a lazy hacker. I’m not ready to support this package on different platforms. Heck, I don’t even own an Android device. I want to be able to use my version at University.

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-33471004540900186682010-04-05T20:26:00.002-04:002010-04-11T19:50:35.214-04:00

Monday morning, I take a peek at the Developer’s Kit for iPhones and iPads. The more I look, the less I like. Apple is running a closed store where they control everything. The iPad is really an entertainment toy.  Only a single app runs at a time (huh?), maybe that makes sense for a tiny iPhone.  I can’t really see using an iPad at University for serious work. I remembered reading about a

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5023565154381124113.post-36050445014681026362010-04-05T16:23:00.001-04:002010-05-08T10:49:10.258-04:00

Over the weekend, I realized that I am bored. Bored. Bored. My dyslexia project (http://www.decode-abc.com) runs by itself. I check the York University website twice a day to see whether I have been admitted. I spend hours browsing the internet without much purpose, read a daily newspaper cover to cover. I need a new project for the summer. This weekend, the IPad went on sale. It’s a

Tom Berendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10181217316407830798noreply@blogger.com1