July 6, 2015

screen_rest: The Simplest Passive Program to Get Off the Computer

The program that I've been waiting for, has now come/been made!

For the past ... years, my dad has been telling me that after every hour I'm on the computer, I should commit 15 minutes to doing something else strictly NOT computer related. I now have finally created a program to help me: screen_rest.

The great thing about it: it is less than 15kB in size (the binary on linux) and it just works! You input the number of minutes that you want it to wait/cycle through (for me it's one hour, built in), then specify the number of minutes that you want your break to last. You run it, and it plays some music to remind you after your computing session. Of course, you can choose to ignore it, or exit out of the program entirely, but for me, it's just enough.

This program uses the sleep function in SFML, so it doesn't use that much CPU power. I originally had it play not music, but a sine wave, which got irritating after testing it for 3 times. Music, is a whole lot better.

Tags: rest computer c++