Birthdays and Such is an application meant to be launched on daily startup, to remind you of the important birthdays and anniversaries in your life.
To use Birthdays and Such, just:
• Follow the steps below to set Birthdays and Such to run every time you start your Macintosh.
• Personalize the sample “Reminders” file (don’t change the file name) by typing in your own list of important dates.
Then every time you turn on your Macintosh, it will start up Birthdays and Such. The program will look up the current date, scan the Reminders file for upcoming events, and display just those you need to do something about.
If you leave your Macintosh running for days at a time, that’s ok, too. Just leave Birthdays and Such running: its window will update to the next day’s reminders every night on the stroke of midnight. (I specifically designed Birthdays and Such both to launch super quickly and to run all the time: it’s absolutely the smallest executable I could make it. In fact, it’s probably the smallest program on your machine!)
And one more step. After you try it for a day, a week, or a month, you need to decide what Birthdays and Such is worth and send a check or a money order for that amount to:
Ron Lichty, P.O. Box 27262, San Francisco, CA 94127.
Include your email address, so I can send you the bonus “Listmaker” application -- it transforms your reminders into a shopping list -- complete with the age each recipient will be in the coming year. Printed out, the list makes it easy to review your list of important dates, or buy your whole year’s cards in one shopping trip!
Trying out Birthdays and Such
To try out Birthdays and Such, double-click Birthdays and Such… I’ve entered the four changes of season into the sample Reminders file so you can get a flavor of Birthdays and Such right away. (If you’re using other than the U.S. system software date format, you’ll know right away; you’ll need to edit the sample dates in Reminders to your country’s date format.) (If you have any other troubles, see Chapter 6 in the manual for help.)
Setting Birthdays and Such to run every time you start your Macintosh
1) Open the Birthdays and Such folder on your hard disk.
2) Select the icon labeled Birthdays and Such… (click once on the icon).
3) Choose the Make Alias command from the File menu.
(Note: if you're still using System 6, see the instructions in Chapter 2 of the Birthdays and Such manual.)
4) Drag the new file labeled Birthdays and Such… alias into the Startup Items folder (located in the System Folder).
Now every time you turn on your Macintosh, Birthdays and Such will start up, look through the Reminders file, and remind you of the upcoming events in your life.
Setting up your Reminders
The file you create of all your important dates—a text file called “Reminders”—is the source of information for Birthdays and Such. The Reminders file must always be located in the same folder as Birthdays and Such.
Double-click the sample Reminders file. SimpleText (a simple word processor supplied by Apple that was once called TeachText) will be launched to display the sample reminders and let you enter and edit your reminders. (If you want to use any other word processor, see Chapter 3 of the manual.)
You’ll see that each reminder consists of a series of lines, the first four always in the same order:
date date of reminder (in non-English-speaking countries, see Chapter 3 of the manual)
warning-period number of days prior to date to begin reminding (up to 99)
Reminder message the line you’d like Birthdays and Such… to remind you with
- reminder separator (a dash as the first character on the line)
No blank lines are permitted.
Here’s an example Reminders file with three reminders:
January 14
2
David’s birthday (1955).
-
Jan 23
0
Grandma’s birthday .
-
7/19
10
Author Ron Lichty’s birthday, P.O. Box 27262, SF, CA 94127.
-
So in the example, you would be reminded of David’s birthday from January 12-14, Grandma’s birthday on January 23rd itself, and Ron’s birthday from July 9-19, long enough to buy him lots of presents. :-)
There’s information in Chapter 4 on:
• how to create reminders that are only good in a particular year or years;
• how to enter reminders so Birthdays and Such will calculate your friends’ ages on their birthdays and the years they’ve been married on their anniversaries.
The Manual
Remember, there’s a whole manual full of details (sometimes fun, usually helpful), if you want them.
Don’t forget to register:
Ron Lichty, P.O. Box 27262, San Francisco, CA 94127
(be sure to send your email address with your shareware contribution so I can send you the bonus application)
