• The Reminder Manager will play a cheerful noise when your Mac load drops back to normal levels.
• It also plays a noise every 15 minutes to remind you to slack off. This is especially helpful for hackers, who would gladly keep typing until their horribly foreshortened fingers fell entirely off. Then they'd actually try to buy Lee Press On Limbs. Stupid, Stupid Mole Creatures.
Well, why would anyone want that???
• It will make a noise when your finder copies are done.
(Why don't they BRING BACK SONIC FINDER!!!! WHAAAAHHHH!!!!)
• If you launch it at system startup, it will make a noise when your Mac is finally done booting.
• It will play a noise when your MPW compiles are done.
• It will save you the heartbreak and embarassment of missing limbs.
How do I use it???
Put an alias in your Startup Items folder. That's it. Or, recompile it. Or, steal all the code.
Why doesn't it have about 15 more features???
It's a hack, for crying out loud.
It should be a faceless background 'appe'. I have the code. I got tired.
Note also that there are almost 40 convenient global variables that really oughta be in a preferences dialog box. If you don't have a compiler, shut up.
How the heck does this thing work???
Believe it or not, Freud had this "steam plumbing" model of behavior. No wait, it kinda makes sense, see. Pressures get built up and then released. When pressures built up enough, they exploded, or perhaps found an outlet in some other direction, a concept now known as "sublimation." Anyway, go read "King Solomon's Ring" by Konrad Lorenz for a nice critique. It's an awesome book, and really fun.
Anyway, the Reminder Manager uses a pressure model to operate. Think of it as simulated steampunk computing. (By the way, "The Difference Engine" by Gibson and Sterling was REALLY long.)
The "load average" of the Mac is computed by watching how often we get WaitNextEvents, and computing a rolling average. This load is called "starvation" because I like anthropomorphizing everything. There's also a first-derivative calculated. It's conveniently called "deltastarv."
There's also a sort of an integration of the starvation kept. Whenever the load goes above a scientifically-determined fudgefactor, the extra load is heaped up into a variable called "dissatisfaction." This normally dissipates over time, but when the deltastarv is dropping and the starvation is low, additional dissatisfaction is relieved by making noise.
In a semi-realistic way, the noise is rapid at first, and then trickles down. Cool, eh?
So what about the code???
The shell of this code was written in 1989. It still runs. That's cool. No, my code isn't cool, the Mac is cool for keeping code running for so long.
You may steal this code. You may re-use it. I grant you full license to all the letters and numbers therein, so if you cut an "A" from my code and paste it into yours, I won't sue you.
If you do anything cool with the code, drop me a note. I like email. Don't send me money, I'd just buy CDs with it or something.
Note to prospective employers: This code was written in two 16-hour sessions. It's not very well documented. It uses waaaay too many globals. It's not good "C" style (whatever that oxymoron means...) It does not use "Hungarian" notation, because I am incapable of tolerating it. Sorry. If I wanted crypt, I'd use it.
About the Author
My name is Bill Coderre. I write Installer Scripts at Apple. The hackers here like to make fun of the Apple Installer, mostly because it's hard, tedious, and they can't do it. Hah! Well, I write them all day long, AND I write Mac code. So be nice or I'll put more copies of SimpleText on your disk.
