Jim Barraud

I’m always excited when I find a solution to a problem that works within my existing workflow. For example, I’ll be attending the Nine Inch Nails show at the IZOD center tomorrow night and I need to remember to bring the tickets. Because for one I’ll be leaving from work so I need to grab them first thing in the morning and two, my memory is crap. I’ve tried various reminder services in the past, but since they don’t fit into my existing workflow I always forget to use them. Ironic, I know.

Since I’m an avid Twitter user and Twitter is a notifcation/messaging service, I thought it would be great if I could tell Twitter to send me a reminder at a particular time to remember the tickets. A quick Google search later and I discover timer. A Twitter bot that serves this exact purpose. Add timer to your following list and send it a direct message with the minute count of when you’d like to be notified and the message you’d like to receive in the following format “d timer 30 Remind me about that thing”. You’ll then be reminded of that thing in 30 minutes via a direct message.

This really shines if you setup Twitter to notify of direct messages via SMS. This allows you to both set and receive reminders from anywhere via your cell.

One downside is you need to set your reminder time via minutes. So if you want to be reminded the next day at a particular time you need to figure out how many minutes that is. It would be great if you could set the units of time. For example, if you wanted to be reminded in two days of an event it would be cool if you could format it as “d timer 2d Do that thing you need to do”.

Other downsides revolve around the fact that this is done through Twitter (which as I’ve said is also the advantage). And Twitter is known for having it’s share of outages. So if Twitter is down, so are your reminders. There’s also no way to edit existing reminders or view the reminders you’ve set. But for me those are minor gripes.

Being a parent comes with it’s fair share of lifestyle changes. Most you come to expect in the beginning of your child’s life. Sleepless nights, dirty diapers, screaming, etc. But no one seems to prepare you for the later years. And by later years, I mean 3-6 years old. These are the years your child will set forth into the world of Preschool, Kindergarten and extracurricular activities. Along will all social training you and your child will need to endure learn, there’s one other issue I’d like to highlight. Paper.

Your child will begin to bring home massive amounts of paper in various forms. From sign-up forms, approval forms, book-order forms, class projects, everyday schoolwork and calendars. This massive influx of paper can wreak havoc on a person who’s attempting to wage a war on clutter. But what I would like to talk about are the calendars.

All of the paper goods your child will be bringing into the home will fall into three categories. Trash material: pointless notices (not as much as you hope). Fridge material: recent class projects to show off and reference material always needed on hand (like calendars). Archive Material: Older school projects and long term reference papers like school policies, etc.

My fridge has no less then 4 calendars plastered on it at any one time. You have items like; Normal school calendar (days off, special events, etc), Lunch calendar (what’s for lunch… if it should be “one of those mornings”), karate schedule (the boy), and the dance schedule (the girl). I say no less then 4 because with my wife being a teacher, there’s usually more calendars involved.

Then there’s the regular family calendars. These are thankfully entered nicely into the computer and are shared between the wife and I. These calendars can all be nicely cross-referenced for conflicts and availability. Works a treat in this modern age. What doesn’t work in this modern age is various paper calendars plastered all over my fridge. The solution? Online calendars.

There are various free online calendars that organizations and users can utilize for posting their respective schedules. Google Calendar is my personal online calendar of choice. These calendars can be shared and then subscribed to by the modern technological parents of the world. Thus freeing them (us) from the fury that is paper calendars. (For bonus points, use a calendar that publishes to an “iCal” format. This is a standard format that most modern desktop calendar programs can subscribe to.) One could argo that we could enter in these events into our own personal electronic calendar. Which is something I’ve done with our garbage schedule. But there’s two main issues with this.

The first issue is time. Modern parents can barely make the time to run their family as it is, much less sit down for a couple hours and enter in your child’s Lunch schedule every month. The second issue is accuracy. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a change in any one of your child’s schedules that you were just notified through your electronic calendar?

I know there are organizations and schools out there that already do this. And I applaud you. But unfortunately none of mine do. So please, embrace the online calendar. It will save you time and resources (think of the trees!) and save us, the modern parents of today’s world, the little sanity we have left.