A better portable environment

For a long time I've tried to create a portable environment for myself, without much success.

A portable environment is a collection of all software that I need and use for development available as a set of files on a USB stick. I should be able to put it into any machine (Win, OSX or Linux) and do everything that I want to do.

PortableApps comes pretty close. Portable msysgit gives a uniform bash shell everywhere and as long as i'm miserly with the languages I want to work with, I should be OK. Maybe cheat a bit with an install of Sublime Text (zip install used via Wine on Linux) and I'm golden.

At least that's what I've settled for now.

But sometimes its not enough. You want a full environment. You want to not have to copy files or git rebase. So I tried VirtualBox. The idea was that the only install I'd need was Virtual Box on each machine that I want to use the environment on, and the VDI file would be on the stick. That way everything remains in one place.

Except the VDI files dont work right with OSX. Or at least didnt on Snow Leopard. I've not tried on Mavericks.

But in the meantime, I had an idea: How about a node-webkit based environment? As long as the stick has executables for all OSs, the app itself can be run. There are enough and more terminal emulators, editors and so forth in JS these days. What is still not in JS (versioning, file system, etc) could probably be filled in using emscripten.js maybe?

Its a thought for 2015 :)

The Ultimate Personal Task Manager

I've been prototyping a GDoc-based 43 folders for a few weeks now. The biggest two problems I have to date are:

• the ease with which I miss my daily review of things to do
• "Too much trees, too less forest". I need a dashboard that's higher than the daily, ground level view

In a fit of frustration about the second point (cos there's no point fretting about the first:) ), I set about designing the ideal personal task management system - once again. Here's the result:

The Ultimate Personal Task Manager needs:

1. The open task list: which contains all tasks that are to be started or WIP. Routine/repetitive tasks are represented as new open tasks for the next instance when the current one is completed.
2. The review/decide process: which reviews current status and decides what to do next.
3. The todo list: which contains tasks that have been decided upon, and will be acted on in a particular time period - day/week/month/whatever. <==> 43 folders. no sequencing, just "these tasks mush happen within this period or before this milestone"
4. The plan: sequenced list of tasks. <==> day planner. contains time slots when things will be done
5. The dashboard: "dont break the chain" style display of only top level projects. ideally this should be the top 5 things you care about in life shown as a red/yellow/green style view
6. The nagger: Most important piece for procrastinators. the physical reminder to actually use this system. could be a phone reminder system or a spouse/friend. should know what your frequency to run the decision process is and nag you to do it.

Key point about this system: It could be all in your head or on paper/pencil or software

Yes, this is pretty close to GTD. The additions are the dashboard and the nagger. 

If implemented as software it also needs to:

1. Work offline
2. Works across OSs and systems
3. Allow versioning

Software implementation notes:

- Something that works offline and universally is required. simplest i've seen to date is gina trapani's todo.txt. Using it, the functional requirements:

- #1 & 3 are built in.  Use 'repeat' addon for sub point under 1

- #2 and 6 are human tasks anyway.

- #4 and #5 will need additional dev. In particular #5 will require (at least for me) enhancing the project field to a tree of projects. Some simple testing with bash showed that a format like "proj1/sub1/sub11" will work, as will "proj1:sub1:sub11"

  The non functionals have direct answers:

  - it works offline and across OSs - being text and a shell script

  - putting it in a git repo will handle versioning

- Idea: Create an Outlook plugin to auto convert mail into tasks

- how to run cygwin bash from windows? ans: Cygwin's run command

- how to create an outlook plugin? TBD