Quicksilver Quick Timer
 
 
Hello dear Mac user. If you have Quicksilver installed (if you don’t it’s time to learn how to improve your productivity with one of the many tutorials available) and Growl notifications (even though this is not strictly necessary) the following trick will allow you to create countdown timers on the fly in a few keystrokes. In other words you won’t need to install any specific application or widget to create a timer.
 
There are many reasons to use timed reminders especially in software development. Time boxing drastically reduces the risk of Yak Shaving and helps maintaining focus and rhythm, thus improving productivity. Personally I use timers to apply an agile technique called “The Pomodoro Technique” that I  first heard from Bruno Bossola and then learned from the main creator directly, Francesco Cirillo. I use countdown timers also when I’m not developing, just to set a goal in time and see if my estimate is good enough. For this reason is important that the action that starts the countdown is fast and doesn’t stop my mental flow.
 
There are other solutions to setup a timer in Quicksilver, but the problem is that you can’t assign them to a trigger (a keyboard shortcut) and so they require too many keystrokes and brain load. I decided to try another solution using this AppleScript as a starting template. The script tells Quicksilver to send a message to the Growl notification engine after a delay. I just added a bit of customization (you can’t copy and paste from below, download it here):
 
 
So here’s a step by step guide:
  1. • Quicksilver needs some plugin to be installed: the Growl Notifier plugin and the NotificationHub plugin.
  2. • Paste and save the above script in the ~/Library/Application\Support/Quicksilver/Actions directory. Call the file “growl_alert.scpt” for example. Quicksilver (after a restart) will let you call this script as a new action.
  3. • Now open Quicksilver, type “.” to enter the text entry mode, then tab, then type a number of minutes (say 0.1 to have a 6 secs delay), then tab, then type “growl” and let Quicksilver complete the rest of the action name for you. Hit return and the timer will start (see picture at the top of Quicksilver right before running the script).
 
At the end you should see an alert (like the picture here on the left)popping up on the right-upper corner of the screen. The look and feel and the position on the screen are customizable using the Growl configuration interface. If you use always the same time for the timer, say for example 25 minutes, you can go one step further and create a trigger for it. I assigned for example the keystroke sequence “Command + Alt + Ctrl + C” to start a 25 mins timer when needed. The Growl notification is cool, but you can tell Quicksilver to display the usual “Large Type” notification on the screen instead. Well, let me know if you need help to make this trick works.
 
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

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