Lately I’ve been using timers daily.

By that I mean timeouts, for example 20 minutes:

• Start at 20 minutes

• Slowly goes down to 0

But it mostly makes sense if I add a visual widget for it.

So I built one baked into my wm:

This appears on the panel once I start a timer.

It will update every second.

Eventually it goes into seconds:

Then it reaches 0 and disappears.

Actions

I can map a function as an action for when the timer is done.

It can be a simple “Timer Ended” message, or an action like “suspend the computer”.

Now I don’t suspend the computer immediately, I activate a 60 or 90 minute timer.

Which gives me time to go back and check something without having to turn the computer on.

Time to Think

I’ve been using timers before releasing new versions of software.

Before, I would publish pretty much immediately thinking there’s nothing more to do.

But now I start a timer depending on how confident I am about the changes.

The bigger the change the higher the timer.

And I won’t consider releasing the version until the timer ends.

This gives me time to test the application and find flaws or missing things.

And it actually happens very often, that I find things to add or polish.

Mouse Wheel

An interesting feature I added to the timer widget, that I actually use a lot.

I can use the mousewheel when hovering the widget to increase or decrease the timer.

It increases or decreases by 5 minutes.

And it will round to the nearest 5 minute step.

For instance: 3 minutes -> 5 minutes -> 10 minutes -> 15 minutes.

It allows me to adjust how much I’m willing to wait for something.

Depends on my judgment if a timer should increase or decrease.

The minimum is 1 minute, it won’t go below it with the mousewheel.

Middle Click

Middle clicking the widget cancels the timer.

Multiple Timers

Any number of timers can be started.

As long as they have a different name:

Counters

The timer widget/library also supports “counters”.

These are the opposite. They start at 0 and go upwards.

They don’t end or run a function, they just keep going until stopped.

Code

Some code of how I start the timers with my wm:

function auto_suspend(minutes)
  autotimer.start_timer("Suspend", minutes, function()
    suspend()
  end)
end

function timer(minutes)
  autotimer.start_timer("Timer", minutes, function()
    msg("Timer ended")
  end)
end

function counter()
  autotimer.start_counter("Counter")
end

Other Uses

It’s also useful for measuring non-computer activities.

Like waiting for food or drinks to be ready.

Starting Timers

Since my wm can be called through a special program, I can make a ruby script to start timers.

I made a script that makes it easy to detect if I want hours, minutes, or seconds.

So I can easily start a 20 minute timer, or a 5 second timer.

And I can do it directly from my launcher:

Fixed Width

Like I usually do with my widgets, I try to keep a non-dynamic width on them.

1.5 hrs, 30 mins, 05 secs, they all occupy the same width.

So when changing units there’s no movement in the panel.

I do this by using the same number of characters with a monospace font.

Repo

The code for autotimer is here.

The ruby script is here.