I've hooked up the resetCounter function to quite a few events, including "blur". Have you got another window that's stealing the focus regularly, such as an IM client or something?
Mine does the same (Chrome+WinXP). Makes it incredibly hard to sit through when it's yelling Fail at me every time the counter gets to 1:57 regardless of me not actually doing anything. I only think I could sit through about 30 seconds of it flashing Fail until I left (tempted to debug, but too busy with work). I also briefly wondered if that was the test -- to sit through the buggy countdown clock without trying to troubleshoot why it's broken, if that's the test, I failed.
FYI, if I open the page in Chrome with cursor outside of the screen it counts down to 0, if my mouse is within the screen, it says Fail at about 1:57 continuously.
I had a lot of fun writing this, and it's great to see it taking off. Waiting 2 minutes was impossible for me, I had to set the counter to 2 seconds while testing it! :)
Yup, and especially how it correlates against Referrer.
Though the author would probably need to add <START> button, to minimize the unintentional fails. Also failing could be adjusted for accidental mouse movements, perhaps by ignoring distances of just couple of pixels.
Failed for unknown reasons three times in a row. Thinking it was noise on my mouse scrollwheel, I took the batteries out of it. I'm gratified to learn this was unintentional.
This said, the site is really, really making me think about moving back to Puerto Rico.
Nice idea; made me realise how few "do nothing" breaks I take in a day...0. I'd probably like to use it throughout the day if the problems in Chrome were ironed out.
Failed for me every time before I even did anything (Chrome, Vista). When I changed tab, and then came back without mousing into the viewport, the FAIL message didn't appear...but neither did the clock count down.
Passed it on my first try. In fact, I didn't realize it was a pass/fail kind of thing until I came here, I just assumed it was a self test.
I found that the time seemed to pass more slowly when I closed me eyes. I had my eyes closed for the first minute, and I opened them when I thought it should have been about two minutes, only to discover that I still had a minute left.
This would be a lot more difficult if it weren't for the sound and image - it occupied parts of my mind that would go crazy without any stimulation for that long.
I was just thinking about the fact that much of my work requires me to pause for a short time -- while building my project, or running a query, or launching the huge honkin' java webapp and waiting for 10 billion classes to initialize -- but the pause is too short to make a useful context switch, and too long to simply wait through without getting bored. So typically, I often check e-mail, HN, or whatever, but then end up getting sidetracked. Being able to simply wait through these would be great. Unfortunately, developing this sort of mental discipline, along with exercising, making my bed, and eating out less often, falls on my "Things That Are Good For Me That I'll Probably Never Do" list.
Actually, that's one of my biggest problems when it comes to productivity. The REPL (read-eval-print loop) takes too long because the unit tests take too long to run, or the environment takes too long to load.
Recently, I took a day to tackle this problem for myself, and I've found that I'm just much more productive when I'm stuck in a quicker REPL loop, rather than when I need to wait and stare out the window--and then I get distracted.
yeah, I have that problem too. Those short pauses kill productivity. I think mediation may help. I've taken to sitting for 20min a day doing nothing. 2 minutes isn't that bad at all. I don't think it [mediation] requires much mental discipline to start; I still can't be bothered to exercise, make my bed, et cetera.
My day job involves running simulations that take days to run. This has, unfortunately, made me into an epic multitasker, and keeping track of all the things I'm doing at any given time taxes my brain.
I don't think the "when forced to wait, wait" strategy would work well for me.
I had a basket ball coach as a kid who would always ask us if we left our beds unmade after a day of doing horribly, or not better than we should be. Nearly every time, without fail, when I was asked that question, the truth was that I had left it unmade. I also never liked the game, and still don't view the sport favorably, but every day since then I make sure to take the time to make my bed in the morning.
The fact of the matter is making the bed is entirely unimportant. It's symbolic of the state of always playing catch-up because you are behind from the moment you wake up. Nothing is more important than taking a few minutes to organize yourself and your living quarters, as well as everything else in your life, both physically and mentally. Hell, you could stand there and admire the wrinkles and folds of your unmade bed, if that is how you prefer it to be kept, just as long as you stand there and give yourself a minute (or two).
There's a false equivalency here though. Clearing away in my kitchen or keeping papers on my desk tidy both have clear benefits to them; by ensuring the items are in known locations they are quicker to find, by ensuring they aren't spread over other things they provide space to work and reduce the risk of accidental damage or loss.
None of this is true with my bedding. I won't lose my duvet because it's not sitting straight on my bed. I suppose I could conceivably damage nightwear in putting it on but that risk is unconnected with its storage location. Yet, because tidiness has practical benefits in other contexts, it has become a generalised virtue. Which is nonsense.
Rather than hating GCC, I do wrist stretches. (search Aikido + wrist stretch; dojos call them different things) I'm an Emacs lover, though. Vimmers have a leg up, there.
Working with languages that destroy flow probably grounds more programming juju than most other major factors put together. Context switches kill. (PS, is your timesheet ready?)
Timer also doesn't restart counting down if my mouse isn't on the page. (In other words, it will only start counting down if my mouse cursor is on top of the page - focus doesn't seem to matter). It's also failing immediately, probably because I have a ton of windows already open and two IM clients.
Out of determination I succeeded, even though by my calculations doing nothing for two minutes cost me $1.60 that I could have made writing code. Of course, I stopped the clock anyway when I clicked on the HN popup notification.
Edit: Just looked at the code. The programmer missed a great chance to gather some data. I would have tracked the fail events using Google Analytics so I could see how many fails on average per user from different traffic sources:
Great! One more thought I had: also track whether the failure was due to the mouse or keyboard. When you have gathered a decent number of results I will be very interested to see a blog post with some nice graphs.
Average time on site won't be accurate in your case because GA calculates it by subtracting time duration between two successive visits. In your case, it will usually be just single pageview so average time will be misleading.
May I suggest using getclicky.com which calculates time based on actual time spent.
I passed, but it was very hard because I got no waves and so was immediately tempted to view source and find out why not, and also because I kept looking at the horizon of the photo and wondering if it was just me or if it was very slightly tilted down to the right.
For extra difficulty, you should throw in more and more things like the above to make ocd people squirm ;)
pretty cool idea, though I don't think I could have passed just listening to the waves, without my music collection I don't think I'd be able to muster the patience for this, well. maybe.
216 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadHonestly, didn't find it too difficult; just dropped into chair-zazen for a couple minutes.
Fixed that for you.
Though the author would probably need to add <START> button, to minimize the unintentional fails. Also failing could be adjusted for accidental mouse movements, perhaps by ignoring distances of just couple of pixels.
Kinda like my sex life.
This said, the site is really, really making me think about moving back to Puerto Rico.
Failed for me every time before I even did anything (Chrome, Vista). When I changed tab, and then came back without mousing into the viewport, the FAIL message didn't appear...but neither did the clock count down.
Works in Firefox 3.6 though.
Although it seems in Safari I can succeed by loading it in a background tab :).
I found that the time seemed to pass more slowly when I closed me eyes. I had my eyes closed for the first minute, and I opened them when I thought it should have been about two minutes, only to discover that I still had a minute left.
Nice job, bookmarked for future relaxation.
Also the clock on my wall is really loud.
Recently, I took a day to tackle this problem for myself, and I've found that I'm just much more productive when I'm stuck in a quicker REPL loop, rather than when I need to wait and stare out the window--and then I get distracted.
http://breckyunits.com/when_forced_to_wait_wait
I don't think the "when forced to wait, wait" strategy would work well for me.
The fact of the matter is making the bed is entirely unimportant. It's symbolic of the state of always playing catch-up because you are behind from the moment you wake up. Nothing is more important than taking a few minutes to organize yourself and your living quarters, as well as everything else in your life, both physically and mentally. Hell, you could stand there and admire the wrinkles and folds of your unmade bed, if that is how you prefer it to be kept, just as long as you stand there and give yourself a minute (or two).
None of this is true with my bedding. I won't lose my duvet because it's not sitting straight on my bed. I suppose I could conceivably damage nightwear in putting it on but that risk is unconnected with its storage location. Yet, because tidiness has practical benefits in other contexts, it has become a generalised virtue. Which is nonsense.
Reeeally? I haven't cleaned my room or made my bed in a year. Think about how much time I've gained.
Working with languages that destroy flow probably grounds more programming juju than most other major factors put together. Context switches kill. (PS, is your timesheet ready?)
http://www.slideshare.net/captology/stanford-6401325
FWIW, I'm running Chrome on Win7.
Edit: Just looked at the code. The programmer missed a great chance to gather some data. I would have tracked the fail events using Google Analytics so I could see how many fails on average per user from different traffic sources:
to track how many fails were required before success
May I suggest using getclicky.com which calculates time based on actual time spent.
(And I had no waves, because I don't have Flash plugin enabled, meh.)
For extra difficulty, you should throw in more and more things like the above to make ocd people squirm ;)