I started studying this week, and read through some announcement that claimed the course would really take 200 hours to complete, so if you didn't have the time, you shouldn't take the course. I suddenly had this urge to once and for all find myself a good timer, something I've been looking for a while now, to see if the course really takes that much time.

Being the efficient being I am, I am sure that I can cut down at least slightly on that time not by producing worse results, but by being more efficient. I also believe that with a timer I'll be able to focus on the task at hand and not go skimming through some unrelated websites whilst on the computer, because then the time wouldn't be exact any longer. Of course any good timer has a pause button, but still, when running all tasks on time I think I'd be better at focusing on them. I'd be using this program not only for studies, but for any design clients as well, and many other jobs like finishing websites for sale, or writing a book, etc etc. It's useful.

After a little Googling I found a great blog post on Freelancer Switch, and what was even better were the comments. There were hundreds of them, with just as many links, and through them I found what seemed to be the perfect program, Lumina. YES!

It was for Mac only.

There must be hundreds of time-task programs only for Windows, so why did this one program have to be for the MAC? Because all good programs are made for MAC, you say? Bullshit me not. I had no choice, I have no plans to buy an ultra-expensive MAC, or to refurnish the 15 year old I have in a closet, so I kept searching.

Most of the timers listed were web-based, with great interfaces that allowed timing, multitasking, collaborating & even invoicing clients directly. What was also very great was the price. You could get a free account on most of these, with a limit on about 5 clients, and this I didn't want. First of all, I didn't need a client interface at all, I just wanted to list my projects and time then. Lumina was as simple as it could get. You had projects, in these projects you had tasks, and all these tasks you could time. Easily, through the click of a button. That was it. Perfect program.

On the web-based clients I kept finding a 'Pricing and Signup' link, which without reason annoyed me a lot. Can't they skip the Copy/Paste? Why not type in something a bit more creative like 'Buy Now!' or 'View Our Prices', why always 'Pricing and Signup'??? Makes me feel like it's all a giant conspiracy and that the same company is really behind at least a hundred of these simple time-taskers. I just want a project timer, skip the invoices please, I can take care of that myself as long as you give me something that is

• Simple
• Neat
• Ehh... simple

Really, I'm not asking for much. Yet all the programs I've stumbled upon are too cluttered, they have too many features that aren't needed. Either that or they don't work on Windows 7, I did find one other promising program that had this one ginormous flaw. As for web-based clients, I managed to find a couple that I really liked.

• Time Chunk, The Failing First Choice

One was TimeChunk. It's really simple, you type in categories, tasks, and then you time then. You can add clients and projects too, in a separate column, and you log in using an existing Google account. So there is no need to register, yet the site stores all the information you enter. Great! Nice and easy, just how it should be! The only problem is that it doesn't work, punching the clock (their words not mine) produce an error, and there is no way to get ahold of the site owner to see if it will ever get fixed. I even tried the domain whois to find some contact info, but it's registered through proxy domains (anonymously, they don't give out owner information). Well that sucks.

• E-Tim, One I Have An Eye On

Next up is E-Tim, another simple web app you don't need to register for. You just enter a few tasks and start timing, that's it, when you're done for a day or need to switch computers you can export the tasks and import them upon your next visit. Everything s saved in a a text file. The site also has an "Eye" feature which reminds you kindly every 15 minutes or so to give your eyes a rest, look around the room a bit, and this is another great feature. I've actually been looking for a program that does this very same thing, without the tasks, and with both programs in one it's nothing but a one hit wonder for me. It's a shame the information isn't saved automatically, they say they want something easy, something you don't need to register for, but I think I'd rather register and keep track of my tasks universally without needing to keep track of a text file to export and import all the time. Otherwise, this is probably my favorite so far.

• Mr Tick Tock, The Final Candidate

Finally, there's Mr Tick Tock, a service like the above in which you do sign up for an account, receive confirmation via email, and then get going. The interface is simple and you can add categories, clients & tasks. Not the perfect combo, but a very good one, and the timer is easy to get a hang of. Unlike the above there are no text files, so despite the lack of Eye feature, this might be the decisive pick. I'll be trying out all three (if they get the first one working) and probably settling for one of them.

• Also, Slim Timer

Did I mention all of the three above are completely FREE? Well, they are. Some people like me, in need of something simple like the above, probably started all three of these services for personal use and decided to share them with the world, something I'm very thankful for! Btw, a runner up I won't be using but should still mention is SlimTimer, another online interface that works wonders, yet is a bit too much for me.

So did I find the program I was looking for? No, not really. The perfect program would not only be simple but also be offline. I doubt my Internet will be going down any time soon, but if it does, I'd like to be able to keep timing tasks just the same, and with these web-based applications, I can't. It can also be useful having programs separate from the browser, in situations where the browser is better left shut down, or when you're browsing around a lot and don't like that one open window you can't close down. For now the three above will have to do though, they're not perfect, but they're much better than all the others I've seen so far.

UPD: E-Tim has disappeared. Link removed.

Doesn't that sound familiar? Well, maybe not the entire screen, only the entire browser window, but only that is more than enough. I was throwing together an ordinary post for my blog yesterday with a few images, around 1300 (images), when WordPress suddenly refused to update the page... the process ended up with a blank page, over and over... and over. So I visited the main site and AAAAAAAAAARGH, blank!

I tried one of my other sites, it worked. I tried logging in via FTP, it worked. I tried logging into the admin panel again, that worked too. What didn't work however was the rest of my goddamn website. I spent maybe an hour messing around with the .htaccess file and searching the net for solutions but they wouldn't give me any. The ones they did give were not relevant. I figured out that what caused the problem was probably the script trying to display thumbnails for all 1300 images at once, a simple memory overload.

Why it had no effect on the admin panel is a mystery though.

How did I solve it? Well I just resisted the urge to do something about it and did something else, and the problem fixed itself. It's happened before, it's just the 500 Internal Server Error without the 500 Internal Server Error message typed in the browser window. I disabled that. So now you get a nice blank screen when things fuck up instead. Much better, right? So it fixed itself, not. I woke up this morning and thought everything would be ok when I visited my website this time, but guess what, it was blank. Instead of disabling a few plugins from the admin panel I then proceeded to move them all into a new directory, reload the site, and voila, it worked! Took a couple of seconds to move the plugins back in again and now everything is smooth and perfect. Why didn't I do this yesterday already? I always think clearer in the mornings.

Anyhow. What to do to prevent that things like this ever happen in the future? Well there isn't much I can do. Optimize the database maybe. Maybe go through my plugins. Maybe check for collisions in post/category slugs, etc etc. Nothing that really does anything in the long run, sure everything will run better until they stop running completely, and that's when there really is a problem. Hope WP does something about this issue, cause I can't.

I was reading this good guide on how to fix the white screen of death and came across the simple solution of removing extra spaces from wp-config. I checked my old wp-config, and what do you know, there's an empty space!

Problem solved. So easy.

It would start early, it would end late, it would be filled with variation and sunshine and movement and I would feel great.

I don't like relying on alarm clocks, so this week I decided to try training my mind into waking me up at the right time instead. Not that I've ever tried waking up by alarm since I graduated anyway...

The right time for me is 5:30, and so far things are going good, today I was only two and a half hours off, so who knows, maybe I'll actually breach the border and be content with it before this week is over.

It didn't work at all Monday, the first day of this experimental trial, and I'm thinking the reason for this may have something to do with a lack of motivation, since I really didn't want to get up at 5:30 that day, or any day, ever. I'll have to deal with this lack of will somehow or the experiment obviously won't work. Another reason could be that I was tired and needed the sleep, who knows, or maybe the 9 o clock routine has gotten stuck in my head too much to just be brushed away by this experiment in a moment.

A problem I've just realized I had is three external hard drives (2x1TB/500GB) with the same drive letter. Changing one of the drive letters results in drive letters for all three drives being changed (didn't realize this earlier because I never had them plugged in simultaneously). I've been looking for ways to solve this problem but so far have not found any. I realize the problem is due to all three drives being the same model, however. I think that if I had plugged in all three drives to the computer at the same time when I first received them they would have been assigned unique letters, but now that they have all been assigned a letter this letter is linked to all three models and I can't do anything about that. Plugging in two of these drives at the same time results in only one of them being seen, and it can cause some problems with trashed files between the drives ... amongst other things. So, my quick fix for this is only plugging in one of the drives at a time. Fortunately I don't need to have all three connected simultaneously as I use them all to store excess media files, so I sorted out all the files on them neatly and stashed them away. Task finished.

About a month ago I signed up for a one day trial at FileServe to download a shitload of files, and after having downloaded a shitload of files I forgot about the account in the naive expectation that it had expired. I tried logging in at first just to see that it really was gone, and it was ... for a while. Today I checked my PayPal account for other reasons and found out that the subscription had renewed itself automatically about a day after the account had expired, shit. So there, $10 unused used for really nothing. I'm a bit pissed at this since it was a 1-day trial, and I paid for that one day specifically, without even considering that it might be renewed automatically. As far as I know I didn't read anything about automatic renewal when I paid for it, I found the question in the FAQ today when I was looking as to what the hell really happened. Anyhow, I have three days left on my subscription now but I don't know if I can get my account info before then. Since I just ordered a one day trial (or so I though) I never bothered typing down the login information somewhere, I just signed in and let it run.

My seedbox expired a while back as well, and I don't need a new one. I'm not registered at many ratio-tracking trackers and on the ones I am registered my ratio is more than high enough now. Seedbox.cc was a disappointment... as I've posted twice already, so I really won't sign up for any of their plans in the future. I tried a trial at Seedbox Unlimited earlier too, and with them I'm happy, despite having only a 100MB connection my speeds were at least ten times higher than at Seedbox.CC ... and ... yeah, that's good.

So, February starts today. Time to go back in mind and think through the things I did this January, hmm, what did I do? It seems like I didn't have any free days, every day I did something, I spent countless hours in front of the PC box but what have I really managed to achieve? They say the world will end in 2012 so what's the use of doing anything anyway...

Nah, depressive tendencies aside, there's just too much I want to do. Today I have, hmm, I've posted this. Time to get moving.