Introduction

I have tried to solve a problem as soon as I come across it. This is my notes on trying to do so.

TODO Consider using QuickSilver for some of the below problems

Details

Rating movies on filmtipset

Problem: "I would like to rate "Back to the future III" a 3/5" It seemed overly cumbersome to log in search for the movie, find it in the search results and so on...

Measures taken: I ended up writing a fast prototype using a ubiquity command using a PHP back-end on localhost. The PHP back-end used selenium. It was fast and easy.

Now I do Shift+Space "filmtipset Back to the future III 3" Enter

Future: You shouldn't have to know the EXACT original title, more on that below: Regarding usability, movie titles should be auto suggested, thus also minimizing the risk of failure. Further down the road the option to rate something should appear just after you watched it --VLC plugin?

Time Spent: Maybe 1-2 hours

Downloading the latest episode of a TV-show

Problem: I was reading my TV-shows feed (where ever I got that from) on Google reader, I wanted to watch the latest episode of American Dad.

Measures taken: I couldn't really figure out how to solve this effectively, so I did the next best thing. Made it easier to download the latest episode of a show. Again I used selenium but also Zend_Http_Client.

Future: Figure out how to watch rather than download, downloading is not very interesting.

Time Spent: maybe 6 hours

Remember to watch "good copy bad copy"

Problem: Seemed to be such a hassle to have to log in to "remember the milk" click tasks->add task and so forth.

Measures taken: Found RTM for Ubiquity, awesome!

I'm going grocery shopping, how much cash do I have?

Problem: Hard to find out balance on account(s). Story 2: I'm already in the store, and I only have my old crappy phone at hand.

Measures taken: None yet

I still have no good way to track this

A plain text document is not very good... And an issue tracker, well I don't know, maybe.

More not yet addressed issues

• When I open my movie folder I can not see which movies I have not watched
• My Buxfer account doesn't synchronize with Swedbank
• I want to watch "The Mentalist" but I don't remember which episodes I have watched
• When I open this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction#Film it should be easy for me to see which movies I have seen, how I rated them and what not. Grease Monkey solves? Same goes for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project Glue by AdaptiveBlue has the engine...
• Browsing this page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454919/ I would like to easier access movie connections. Typing "con" could bring up an overlay? (Grease Monkey)
• Browsing this movie on IMDb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/ I would like to invoke a watch command or at least a download. Possible connection IMDb link in scene releases.
• Browsing a movie on IMDb I would like to be able to see my friends ratings on filmtipset, and filmtipset's idea of how I'll like the movie.
• Browsing a movie on IMDb it should be truly apparent if I've seen it, when, and what I thought about it. It would also be useful to see where I saw it, with whom and what else happened that day, to remember the event...
• I can not reach my Remember the Milk-tasks from my fingertips, I can add tasks from Quicksilver and Ubiquity, but I find no easy way to search them.
• Getting IBAN from Swedbank requires me to remove all but digits from my account number http://www.swedbank.se/sst/inf/out/infOutWww1/0,,21900,00.html
• Have to use mouse (or multiple tab) to execute queries in phpMyAdmin
• When I watch multiple episodes of a tv-show in a row, I don't want to see the intro and outro of every episode.

Random doodles

My computer have no idea of what I'm doing, it is no wonder that it can not assist me very well.

Maybe a desktop feedback agent would be nice, or you could use some screen capture/shot app. The general idea is of course to be able to complain about technology flaws as you experience them.

Epilogue

As I see tools improving and becoming more open, like ubiquity and grease monkey, I see true use of a more semantic web. Now a lot of hacking, wrapping and guessing is required.