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Hi Joe :)
nice to hear you again ! It seems like you got nice hollydays, you seem to talk more freely, good ! (my holyday will be in october.... I had no summer vacation this year).
As I told you in the forum, I started last july a linux podcast.. finally.. after long weeks of reflexion listening to your podcast, and other. I call it "Les Minutes Linux".. that of course is in French :) So am I, isn't it ? So thanks for having indirectly me pushed to make this podcast :p (http://minuteslinux.podmiel.info)
I think you got a little too fast in the istallation of a programm, from source. I don't know exactly the audience you have (average level of knowledge, etc..) All linux distros have one think in common : the all have repositories where users can pick and install programs easily. Using yum , yast, adept, synaptic. So did I on my introduction podcast.... Users don't need to crawled aroud the web to find anything, it's 90% sure in the repositorie of their distros.
Here.. I make a little intro also for your nexwt episode :) Enjoy
Olivier
Content:
Computer were supposed to make us more productive
most of the time they do
in the web 2.0 world there are plenty of online planning and organizational tools
one of the most popular are todo list managers
We have different online sites such as tada list and Remember The Milk
Also there are many different offline tools, such as iCal and Outlook
These are all good except they save files as a sort of portable format
you can export them to iCal format, but still some things don't import and export iCal
usually you are eith completely locked into a product, or you have to go through a kludge to get the file into another application
there is one universal format, that anyone can read, text
text is so simple that no matter what, you can read a text file
also reading a text file will be something that even in 10 or more years, you still we be able to read text
so we have to format down, now what is the best way to edit plain text
for me it involves the command line
Thankfully, I read a blog called LifeHacker
On that blog, Gina Tripathi had a similar love for the command line
Initially she just came up with the idea of keeping your taks in a plain text file
since Gina is a command line junkie like me, she came up with some little ways of editing the file effiecently using linux tools
mostly it was a lot of grepping and using cat to list the text file in the shell
then in another article, Gina posted a small script that would do many of these commands for you and you wouldn't have to remember much
this concept of a todo shell script was liked by a lot of people, and it spawned its own website
Now there are many different parts of the script
The most important is the todo.sh shell script
it is a shell script which means it will run in Linux and OS X natively
for windows you need a bash emulator such as cygwin to run the scriptt
there are other tools on the website such as a AIM and Jabber Bot
those allow you to access your todo list from AIM or Jabber
There are also many different additions and little hacks for it
First though, we are going to go over how to use and install the todo shell script
Installing the script on Linux and OS X is very easy
All you need to do is download the .zip file and extract it
to make it executable just run chmod 755 todo.sh
go edit the .todo file and put the location of where you want your todos and everything to be held
that is all, you are done installing the script
the main problem with this is that you need to put the entire path to the todo.sh to run it
what I do is I want to be able to simply type t to get to the todo.sh
to do this I simply created a symlink in my /bin directory that points at todo.sh
to do this change directory into your /bin directory
then we are going to create a link
to do this type ln -s /path/to/todo.sh t
make sure you do that in the /bin directory
also make sure you use the -s flag
so now you are ready to use todo.sh
type t list to test it all
as for windows you will need a bash emulator such as cygwin
cygwin is easy to install
simply download the installer and then run it
then it will create all the files you need and place a shortcut on the desktop
now simply download the .zip again
we are going to do the same thing you did for OS X and Linux
so now that it is installed, I use t as the way to get to the todo.sh
the most common thing you want to do with a todo list is to list them
so simply type t list
this will list all of your entries
if you want to search for a entry type t list <search term>
this will search your list for what you say
now lets add an entry to do this simply type t add <todo item>
now let me tell you about how todos can be categorized
there are three different ways, priority, project, context
the priority is a simple A,B,C,D and so on
to do that you will want to type (A) or whatever priority and then the todo
then we have project, which is a certain project that you want to add a todo to
for this we use p:Project name
last is context we do this through the @ symbol
so you type @phone to say this is something to deal with the phone
no that you can add and list todos lets show how to mark todos as done
to do that we type t do <number of todo>
that will put an x and the date in front of the todo
also you want to delete todos we do that with a t del <number of todo>
to remove those done entries, we type t archive
this will put all of the done entries into a done.txt file
those are the basics of todo.sh
you can do most things with these commands
I find that this is a very cool way to have your todo's listed in a very platform agnostic format
Now that we have the todo.sh done and natural for us there are other little tools that you might want to deal with
I find the best way to get to your todos outside of the command line is to simply use the aim bot
to use the aim bot you need perl with the OSCAR cpan module
generally perl and cpan are installed on Linux and OS X
as for windows, installing perl is outside of the scope of this podcast
once you have it all installed, just type perl todobot.pl with the correct aim user information
this will allow you to access your todo list from your phone if you can get to aim via your phone
also I programmed a php script that allows you to access your todo list via the web
these and much more is listed on the main site
that is all
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