vsbabu.org

Leo script to generate environment setters

Leo Outliner is a fantastic outliner that can be used as a plain outliner or as a literate programming editor. If you are into Python scripting, you can easily extend it to make quick utilities. Here is one such silly script.

Often, I will need to set environment variables in DOS, Unix/Cygwin environments. I end up creating scripts to do this. However, it is quite painful to have one script with commands starting with export (for bash) and set (for DOS). Most of the time I would rather like to have a simple property file - like key=value in each line - that I can use to set the environment variables.

Download this Leo file. It has a script in one of the nodes. You put your property file in child nodes with @url node types. Then, when you run the script, each such child node is taken and written out as batch file or shell script as identified by the node header text. A silly little solution that took 5 minutes and has already taken lot of pains out for me!

March 30, 2008

Stuff yet to be fixed

For a while, the site was down. This was because I was using PHP code as server-side-include module to draw the header and footer and the breadcrumbs. My ISP, csoft.net moved to a CGI based PHP execution and this doesn’t work with my scheme of things. Note : so far, csoft guys has been just great; I guess they’ll have valid reasons for this change.

I’ve fixed few of those things by moving to normal HTML mode, ignoring all SSI elements. The cross-reference between other parts of my site with the blog is not yet there and the breadcrumbs navigation on my blog is also not there yet. Both these were also using PHP and that needs to be worked on. Perhaps I should also look into switching from MovableType to WordPress now.

January 03, 2008

Managing notes and todos

We all write notes while working. There are plenty of software available to maintain your notes or todo lists. Some are fancy desktop decorators like sticky notes, calendars or todo-list in side bar. I’ve been looking for a solution that lets me manage my notes and todo-lists. Many of the items out there does either notes or todo-lists; not both. Ideally, I would prefer just writing notes and todo’s automatically extracted from it. I zeroed in on six main contenders – explained in the order I used them.

1. Leo Outliner
2. Abstractspoon Todolist
3. Wikidpad
4. Jello Dashboard
5. MonkeyGTD
6. TVO – The Vim Outliner

So, what is the pick?

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January 01, 2008

Scrum for Self : V2

Last year, I wrote about Scrum for Self, an Excel sheet that I use to plan my week. An updated version is now available below.

Enhancements:

• Projects, contexts and statuses can be setup now - motivated by GTD.
• A nice dashboard that gives you idea about your remaining tasks.
• Better embedded documentation.
• A 5 week calendar to help you plan your due-dates

If you are interested, you can download the zip file (43KB) that has the Excel file. Extract the zip file. Open the Excel file and look at Dashboard sheet. The Excel has some sample data that you can use as a starter.

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Excel to record expenses

I tried various tools to keep track of my expenses. Tried free and non-free software tools out there. Found most of them to be very rigid and too much time consuming. For more than a year, I’ve been using an Excel sheet I developed to track expenses. I found it pretty handy.

Main features are listed below:

• Configure your accounts as you wish
• Configure categories of expenses
• For categories you want to monitor, set monthly budget and track against it
• At any given point of time, you can see how much money you’ve with you!
• Expenses by categories are reported on a monthly basis and on YTD basis
• Quick check to see your monthly net flow (earnings - expenses)
• It takes about 3 seconds to record one transaction

If you are interested, you can download the zip file (108KB) that has the Excel file. It has couple of macros - that is only for sorting data. Excel will still work without the macros - you just have to do sorting once in a while. Extract the zip file. Open the Excel file and look at Instructions sheet. The Excel has some sample data that you can use as a starter.

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June 26, 2007

Scripting Outlook Journal

I maintain information about my tasks, meetings etc. in Outlook Journal. Here’s a simple JScript script that exports this information into a delimited format. Yes, Outlook itself can export data like this, but if you want to automate stuff and get it to the next level, this script might help you.

If you save this as sample.js, you can run it like cscript /nologo sample.js

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Older Posts

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