Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Resurrecting an old project

Have you ever been thinking so hard about a problem that you don't even notice when the music you're listening to has stopped playing? This just happened to me about five minutes ago, while I was looking through the code for my old project Chorenivore.

I'm thinking about getting back to work on it for a couple of reasons. Working on a more concrete app that does a few very specific things is both more useful and easier to do than spending my time coding a game, like Dungeon Crawler. I've tried to find a good to-do application, but haven't had any luck. I've tried Tadalist, ToodleDo and Remember the Milk.

And it's a good idea to work on a project to solve a problem I have.

Problem? I don't like the to-do applications I've tried.
Solution? Make one yourself, dummy!

What I want Chorenivore to be is a simple to-do application that allows users to create single and repeating tasks. I also want users to determine when a task should be completed upon creation.

Then I want a list of the days of the week, which allows users to drill down and see what's due that day. I may want some other visual cues in the future (such as showing how many tasks are due on a particular day, or separating single and repeating tasks) but for now I'll be satisfied with tabs that render partials for each day of the week.

The real thing I think is missing from online to-do lists is the satisfaction of crossing an item off a list. I often find myself making lists simply so I CAN check things off of that list. I'm sure I'm not the only one, so I'm thinking about ways to replicate this, or get close to replicating it with a web application.

How often do you guys do something like this? Dig up an old project you've abandoned for one reason or another? I'm guessing this is a pretty regular occurrence for web developers.

On a side note, I fired up a new Rails application the other day and it's funny how BULKY Rails seems after a solid 3 or 4 months using Sinatra.

1 comment:

  1. A noble project. Check out "Any do". It is a decent task app that has some of the features you are looking for. It might give you some ideas. I have it on my Android phone. It looks like you have some good ideas Tyles.

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