"Ah, time for yet another post about procrastination," she said (putting off a more pressing priority to compose this post.)
Have you heard about "Temptation Blocker?" It is free software developed by B. Adam Howell a web professional and entrepreneur in North Carolina. Here's how Howell describes his software:
"In a nutshell, Temptation Blocker is a piece of software that lets you choose certain programs you want to block from yourself for a set amount of time. So, if you just can’t stop playing that new PC game you bought, even though you have that deadline you have to meet, just block it for a couple hours using Temptation Blocker and get your work done despite yourself."
Temptation Blocker seems to get good reviews from the people who use it, based on the comments on Howell's blog.
I'm a bit too much of a technophobe to try it myself - but the idea seems great. Please let me know whether you find it helpful if you decide to check it out.
Well, I was going to check it out, but figured I would wait until next semester ....
Posted by: jo(e) | September 09, 2005 at 08:17 PM
LOL at Jo(e). :)
Posted by: Pink Cupcake | September 11, 2005 at 02:10 PM
Huh. I guess it has come to that! I have heard of those games as being addictive as crack.
Posted by: Running2Ks | September 11, 2005 at 03:35 PM
This sounds like a terrific program! Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Windows XP if you've installed SP2 (ServicePack 2, which fixes a lot of security issues in XP). What a shame! It's open source, though, so I'm hoping that someone comes up with a fix.
Posted by: Ani | September 12, 2005 at 12:26 AM
Ani,
There seem to be many people working to make freeware "fixes." Did you check the comments at the links provided in this post? You may want to contact Howell and see what's up.
Posted by: Academic Coach | September 12, 2005 at 07:58 AM
Adam Howell will not further support the program and has open-sourced it.
There was a project started for Temptation Blocker on SourceForge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/temptblocker
Anyone that can contribute is invited to join the effort.
Kay
Posted by: Kay | September 14, 2005 at 03:25 PM
Thanks for that link, Kay!
I read the comments and did google searches on various forms of Temptation Blocker + SP2 and couldn't find anything, but I will check out the page Kay posted. I can't contribute, unfortunately (terrible at computer programming- couldn't pick it up when I had to do it in college!), but I will keep an eye on it.
Posted by: Ani | September 14, 2005 at 05:22 PM