Short time tracking with a push.

[Kellemora]

Don't know how to word this question, or what type of program can do this.

A Calendar won't work for this either. I tried. A spreadsheet became too complex with manual changes.

What I want to do is record the time of an event, and the events take place about once every 15 minutes or so, some longer than that, some shorter. I want to track these events for either one week or one month.
That's the easy part.
Once I have recorded the events, at the time they took place.
On the next cycle, when no more events will be recorded, but will now be used for extended spacing between the events.

Let's say I want to add 1 minute per day to each event before the event starts.
The trick here is, the duration between each event has to be moved also.
So let's say Event One is at 8:10am, Event Two is at 8.25am, and Event Three is at 8:45am, etc. for 7 days.
However, if I add 1 minute to each Event, adding 1 minute to original event one would make it 8:11am on day two.
But I also need to push up all the events by 1 minute, so 8:25 would become 8:26 when 1 minute is added to event one, but then event two also gets one minute added, so it becomes 8:27am on day two, not 8:26.

In other words, each event gets increased by 1 minute each day.
Which also increased the time between the events by 1 minute each day.
So, if I started with 96 events on day one, a couple will scroll off the list for day two, and a couple more for day three.
Due to 1 minute being added to each individual event before or as it gets shifted up from the previous time.

On a new day, we start back over again with event one, and it should show the Day and Time to start event one.

Is there a program that does this, or a simple way to write a program that does this, or cause a spreadsheet to do this.
Remember, I don't know BASH at all. But I guess I will have to learn it to do this, unless such a program exists.
And if so, I have no idea what you call what I want to do here.

[yogi]

Wow. Just WOW. LOL

I'm intrigued by your question because I know it can easily be done, but I don't know exactly what your requirements are. I read through it a few times and it's something just about any program that can manipulate variables would be able to do. From what I can surmise you want to :

• Log the time/date for the occurrence of a chain of events -- this will be known as a cycle
• Track the cycle over a period of one week OR track the cycle over a period of one month (or both???)
  
  This is where things get murky in the requirements description. Correct me if I'm wrong here:
• On each successive cycle, the start of the first event is delayed by one minute from the start of the previous cycle. It's not clear to me if the duration between events remains constant or if that duration increases. Likewise, the duration of the event itself is not clearly stated. At this moment in time I am assuming the duration of the event (EVENT) is constant as is the duration between successive events (SPACE).

My perception at the moment is that you wish to record the start time/date occurrence of a chain of 96 events that begin one minute later each cycle. The length of the chain is constant. Let's see if I can reproduce it here:
EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE ... (continues for 96 EVENT_SPACE occurrences)
_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE...
__EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE...
___EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE...
____EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE...
_____EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE...
______EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE...

Alternately, I could interpret your requirements as follows:
EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE_EVENT_SPACE ... (continues for 96 EVENT_SPACE occurrences)
_EVENT+1_SPACE+1_EVENT+1_SPACE+1_EVENT+1_SPACE+1_EVENT+1_SPACE+1 ...
__EVENT+2_SPACE+2_EVENT+2_SPACE+2_EVENT+2_SPACE+2_EVENT+2_SPACE+2 ...
___EVENT+3_SPACE+3_EVENT+3_SPACE+3_EVENT+3_SPACE+3_EVENT+3_SPACE+3 ...
____EVENT+4_SPACE+4_EVENT+4_SPACE+4_EVENT+4_SPACE+4_EVENT+4_SPACE+4 ...
_____EVENT+5_SPACE+5_EVENT+5_SPACE+5_EVENT+5_SPACE+5_EVENT+5_SPACE+5 ...
______EVENT+6_SPACE+6_EVENT+6_SPACE+6_EVENT+6_SPACE+6_EVENT+6_SPACE+6 ...

Regardless of which scheme you are describing, it's easy to see a formula that can be created to describe the situation. I'm sure you would have no problem creating the formula, but then what? What do you do with it? The answer depends a lot on what the events are and how you want to record them. Are you trying to simply come up with a schedule, printed or displayed on a monitor, or are you trying to initiate the event/space in the real world too?

If, for example, you are trying to start the chain of events that happen on your Linux based computer, then maybe a cron job would be appropriate. This assumes you have the hardware/software interface that can record the event times and trigger their occurrence. The formula you derive would be written into the cron coding which is run at successively later times consistent with your requirements.

If, on the other hand, you merely want to display or print the time/date stamps, then any number of program languages would be able to accomplish that task. It can even be done in a spreadsheet. You would not need to manually update the times on a spreadsheet if you could write the appropriate macro to do it for you. In Windows a GUI can be written in Visual Basic quite easily. This is one situation where Windows has the advantage of being easier to learn than Linux. Anything from C to Python to PHP could construct the table of start/stop times associated with this problem. My guess is that learning Visual Basic would be easiest in that you have that kind of programming experience in your past; distant past, but still.

Most of those languages can be installed on your Linux machine and used (with the proper program modules) to control hardware that might be associated with the events in question. That control boils down to creation of the basic formula that would be embedded into whatever program written in the language of your choice.

I'm not sure I can add much more until I have a better understanding of what you are trying to accomplish.

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi

Looks like I wasn't real clear, even though I tried to be with my excessive verbiage, hi hi.

Back in the 1980's, there was such a program written as a DOSAGE.BAT file for DOS.
Although it was designed to ween folks off of pain killers slowly, my late wife used it to ween off of an ice cream addiction. She got it from one of her therapy doctor friends.

Perhaps if I called it a Phase Out Program.

Basically, how it worked was this, during Part One. Each time you took a pain pill or two, you pressed the letter T.
Pressing the letter T caused the date and time to be recorded of the key press to be recorded on Session One Day One Log.
On day two, pressing the letter T caused the date and time to be recorded on Session One Day Two Log.
Each Session was 1 week (7 days) long. If you decided to go for a month, the Session Logs would increment as Session Two Day One Log, Session One Day Two Log, etc.
I do NOT need it to go for more than 7 days though. One week is enough.

So, in Part One you recorded when You took the pills.

Now, we start Part Two. Part Two now tells you When you can take the pain pills.
The program looked at the Session One Log file to see when you took your pain pills.
I also think it may have done some type of averaging of the 7 days and created a new Log, but I'm not sure about that.
Assuming you took your first two pain pills at 8:00am on day one a week ago.
The computers internal beeper would start to beep every 15 seconds starting at 8:01am.
When you took your first two pills of the day, you pressed the letter U key, I think it was.
Now let's assume the next time you were supposed to take your pills was at 10:15, but you didn't take them at 8:01am like you were supposed to, and didn't press the letter U key until 8:10am, I'm pretty sure the program pushed the 10:15 time up to 10:25, but it may not have. There was an option to prevent this by pressing the letter S key to tell the program you Skipped taking them at 8:01am, then the computer would beep at 10:15am like it was supposed to.
But I don't want to get into anything that complicated.
I want it to assume I DID do the event when I was told to, and not adjust the next time I do the event.
This should simplify the program considerably.

In my case, the time interval between each event is not equally spaced.
It may be only 15 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 8 minutes, which is why the time the event took place needs to be recorded. But how you did things on one day may not be the same way you did things on day two, or three, up to seven days. This is probably why I think the program took the entire week and created an average for each day.
Then after the first week of recording your daily routine, it came up with a schedule of when to tell you to do the event.

Once the computer was telling you when to take the pain pills, it gradually spread them out. You still had your 8:00am dose, but it was pushed up by an extra minute each day. Which would then push your next dose up by 2 minutes, third dose up by 3 or 4 minutes, and the last dose of the first day may have pushed off the list by day two or three.

I realize the program she used was really complicated because it also allowed for you to press the letter O if you took a pair of pain pills when you shouldn't have. Which I imagine readjusted the entire dosing schedule.
I don't need that part either.

Now, although you only record events for seven days. It could take more than two or three months to finally clear your dosage list. It seems the program also cut the user down from two pills to one somewhere along the line. Or in Ruth's case, from 1/2 cup of ice cream down to only 1/4 cup of ice cream, is how she used it. But I don't need that in the program either.

And now that I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking there was other programs behind that BAT file, and was only used to start the program running. I say that because she could reboot her computer without it affecting or restarting the program, it just started where it left off based on what time it was. In other words, she couldn't cheat by turning off the computer for awhile, hi hi. She could also open and close the BAT file and the computer would still beep when it was supposed to. She did have to open the BAT file to press the required key though.

OK, looks like this is more complex than I thought it would be.
Perhaps if I only recorded for one day, and then based the part two part on that single day?
If so, then perhaps I can write a simple spreadsheet to record the events, and simply add a minute to each recorded time for the next event. That would still push the time between events further apart, while keeping them around the same time plus an extra minute each day on each. Hmm. I'll try it that way.
Won't be able to make a beep, but a spreadsheet would complete itself and could be printed out for a day or a week at a time.

[yogi]

It helps to attach some real world events to the requirements of this yet to be created program. At least now I know we are talking about human events and not computer processes. Unfortunately, I'm still a bit in the dark about what your exact requirements are. I get the idea of how a program could help wean you off an addiction. It's a bit amazing to me that a .bat file, DOS program, could do the predictions that you describe. The fact that there was so much capability in that program tells me how good the program developer was.

You are correct to assume this isn't simple, but then, I don't fully understand what it is that you want to accomplish. Predictions are something easily handled in the world of statistics so that you would need to apply some statistical analysis to make the kind of predictions you describe. The data, however, cannot be very useful from one set of numbers. One day's worth of input events is not enough. You would need at least 32 days in order to do a credible analysis that may predict what the schedule of events should be. A trend line can be derived if you graphed such a matrix. All things being equal that line would be fairly flat, but you want it to slope toward zero if you are measuring events or infinity if you are measuring the interval between events. Either one of these things can easily be plotted inside a spreadsheet. If you need more than a trend line, you might have to learn some programming language to create something more sophisticated.

I'm going to go out on a limb here because I have not done the research to confirm my highly intuitive suspicions, but, I'm willing to bet there is already an app for some Android smartphone that can do what you are trying to do. I know you don't own such a thing, but your mate does if I recall things correctly. It seems there would be a lot of people with addictions who would pay for an app that could help wean them off it. All you need to do is find it.

[Kellemora]

Besides what I mentioned to you, I did a little research myself.

There was once a computer about the size of a small calculator named LifeSign, designed for smoking cessation.
Although they no longer exist, a new company does, and sells a device that looks like a mouse sorta.
It sells for 30 bucks, and can only be restarted twice.
Reading the comments, apparently LifeSign worked the same way, only without all the glitches and problems the new device has, which renders it fairly useless and a waste of money.

Here is a link to the device called QuitKey that looks like a Key Fob. Grossly Overpriced based on other sellers prices.
https://www.healthchecksystems.com/smoking.htm

Unfortunately, even if I wanted to waste the money on such a device, it wouldn't work for the purpose I intend.
What I want to do is only track 8am until 8 or 9pm and only between those times, not 24 hours.
And more than anything else, it has to do with time wasted on projects that should have been completed.
Or worded this way, a means to cut out procrastination, while extending the time on remaining projects, once a few are finally completed.

I did find a Case Load Manager used by some courts to assign how long short cases should take. But it was of little help.
You simply enter the number of cases for the day, and it tells you how many minutes you have for each case to be heard.
I don't see how that would help in any courtroom I've ever been in though. One person may be fast, and one as slow as molasses.

Don't worry about coming up with a program. I think I can do what I want on a simple spreadsheet easily enough.

[yogi]

When I had a job the need for staff meetings was based on a program the boss used. It was one of many such software programs that could manage projects. The staff in my office was around a dozen, but this project manager could handle any number of people and the projects they worked on. I don't know what kind of inputs the boss used to make it work, but the output was a bunch of timelines for the active projects. His job was to coordinate things so that projects were completed by a given date. His performance was measured by that completion rate. It was a fairly simply graphic and my block was always the smallest entry. LOL What my boss was doing seems to be closely related to what you are trying to accomplish. All us techies had to justify our progress to The Man, but you would only have yourself to keep the program disciplined.

When I sold my house in Illinois I had an inspector come out and look things over before I put the house on the market. His report was massive. There were several dozen things that needed fixing, patching, and replacing all before we called in the real estate lady. I used a spreadsheet to categorize the projects and to show their progress/status. This was not as sophisticated as what you are trying to do, but it falls in the same ball park.

I can envision a spreadsheet and a couple macros embedded therein, all of which could produce a timeline for your activities. Again, I don't know how you could plan things to be efficient nor do I have a lot of confidence you can keep to the schedule. But, it is an interesting challenge and I will give you inputs if I find something I think is relevant.

[Kellemora]

When I was in the restaurant business, we had a program named Space Manager.
No not the one to condense hard drives that came out years later, hi hi.
This one was designed for grocery store inventory control, but it worked just as well in the restaurant business too. Except for the End Cap suggestions, hi hi.
What was unique about it was it tracked expiration dates, some of which were only three days.
It actually balanced out ordering based on sales so that we were never out, but used up everything before the expiration dates too. On items that had a one month expiration date, when they were close to 3 weeks old, it told us to move them to an End Cap. This was our cue to put it on sale or use more of it and less of something we were lower than usual on.
Computers were technically available but not yet up to the DOS days back then either. So it was a powerful program for what little computing resources we had, if you want to call those early machines computers. They were more like glorified calculators with a display. It was a Xerox computer, a part of our franchise package and control system. It only did what the company put into it and that was it. It was NOT used for POS, stuff like that wasn't invented yet, hi hi.
It was so long ago, I don't remember a whole lot about all the things we had, but compared to how pizza's are made today, we were really high-tech throughout. We had hand-held slicers for the meats, shredders for the cheese, etc. Our food was basically untouched by human hands, except for loading the guns, which were sorta like a salad shooter of later years.

Wish I could figure out why I find BASH almost impossible for me to learn. I remember you said I understood BASIC and HTML because they are linear. However, the CSS part doesn't seem to be linear at all, since I can put an instruction nearly anywhere in the list and everything works as it should.
All of the books I picked up to learn BASH were no help to me at all. They are all missing the vital info I need to understand how it works. Seems Odd I can do the exercises, but they are really meaningless to me, since I don't know why they do what they do. Confusing to me big time!

When I bought the old vacant houses for renovation. The only inspector I called in right away was the Structural Inspector. I wanted to know if there were any major issues with the house before I dumped money into replacing all the plumbing and wiring. If he said it was sound, I would just go get my permits for the sanitary plumbing first, get it in and inspected before I started on the supply plumbing rough-in. I would often go ahead and get my electrical permits while I got the supply plumbing permits, so I could start on the electric while waiting on the inspectors. And they NEVER get in a hurry to show up, often not even on the day they say they will be there.
If all of my work was in the same zone, it would have been much easier on me. But I had to buy houses all over the city when they came available for pennies on the dollar. So each location had its own raft of inspectors to deal with.
And yes, they all have to come up with something wrong, even if it isn't, just to make it look like they are thorough with their job. In many cases, I didn't change anything he marked because I knew it was right, and why he marked it. So on the next visit he would mark them all corrected.
By the time I earned my General Contractors License, I knew most of the inspectors, and they knew my work, so would only stop long enough for a chat, not check anything, and write off on the whole job. But these are not the drive-by inspectors who always find something they want you to fix on the outside of the houses.

My biggest problem was I worked on all the big jobs and let the little jobs that need done slide, and many of them are needed as a part of the big job. The sad thing is, I know what order to do them, but then one thing needs something from something else I had not yet done, and sometimes I need things to jive with each other before I can do something else. It just got to be too much to keep it all in my head, so I run out of time and don't get done what had to be done.

At least I have all the paperwork I have to take to the doctor on Thursday (tomorrow) done. But here too, I did not keep up with entering the data, and he doesn't like me to give him a copy of the scanned pages from my notebook. So, at the last minute I have to type everything up onto the pages I print out to take with me. Plus the USB stick with a copy that we swap back and forth.
I have to keep track of my blood pressure twice a day, Blood Glucose four times a day, and O2 readings four times a day.
Also, my medications list with the times I take each med, including taking my Nebulizer treatments. The meds list rarely changes much, but there are a couple of pills I take that change with every visit as to whether I take them every other day, three times a week, or every day for two or three weeks then back to every other day. My lab results show if I'm over or under on how much the old bod is retaining. And the only way they can check my retained CO2 is with blood tests. Although I'm beginning to see some correlation with my O2 and CO2 that I plan to mention to him tomorrow.
Seem like if I'm having a hard time breathing, yet my O2 reading is higher than I expected, doing my pursed lip breathing which should bring up my O2, is really getting rid of some of the CO2 so my O2 drops instead of goes up. Then after it drops, I can get it back up a bit again and I feel a whole lot better.
Sadly though, my daily average O2 has dropped considerably since my last visit. And on any type of exertion, it drops below 90 quite often now. Not good Yogi, not good!

[yogi]

I've met a few people who freeze up when they have to use a computer. And that is for even the most simple of tasks like going to a web site in a browser. Then, if they have to download or print something, it's a total disaster. LOL There is no explanation for why they freeze other than some kind of mental conditioning. They can read a book but can't read a browser. The same skills are required but the fact that one is on a computer and the other is a paperback makes all the difference in the world. There is something psychological going on with these people and I've not be able to explain it. I have walked them through a few exercises and they complete the tasks successfully. On their own it's a different story. Why is that?

I'd guess you and Bash have the same kind of relationship as those people who freeze. There is nothing especially difficult when it comes to using the command line other than the fact you have to know what you are doing. All those commands are actually little programs and all those parameters you attach are simply instructions telling the program what you want. It is not logical or rational as would be writing the program itself. You simply need to know all the details required to run the program somebody else created using linear logic. You understand structure very well. The command line however is free style. There is no structure other than you want to perform a task. Therein could the be problem. You have access to the tools, but you don't know which tools to use or which exist. That would indeed make Bash a challenge.

I think you are experiencing the kind of realization I have come to when I think about running that final lap. All my life I placed a high degree of value upon the mind and intellect. The body, not so much. Those sensory inputs to the brain is what life is all about. Processing those inputs into a consciousness and self-awareness is paramount to maintaining one's well being. I never achieved the level of intellect, self-awareness, or mindfulness that I thought was adequate. However, I did and continue to make an effort to keep the brain and mind functioning at max potential. The underlying thought behind all this is that I'd be able to endure old age and the process of exiting much better as a mentally alert being. I even sleep the minimum amount of time so that I am not deprived of any noteworthy experiences. There aren't many to take note of, but I don't know that in advance. LOL So here I am mentally alert and cognizant of what is going on around me. My body is falling apart and now I'm wondering if I really want to know why and what is happening. Do I really need to be so self-aware that I can see myself deteriorating? Wouldn't it be a lot better to be demented and not able to care about my physical condition?

That's not an easy question to answer. It is certain, however, that none of us are here forever. It's impossible to know the future but we do know and live out the present. Thus taking a somewhat existential approach seems to be the purpose of our being. That is to say, we are here to just exist. Our mission then becomes a constant effort to achieve our maximum potential under the current circumstances. This is called humanism in some circles and it makes sense to me. Our self-awareness is about being a human and all it implies. It is our obligation and responsibility to be the best humans we can be all the way up to the bitter end.

And that simply brings me back to the original question. Do I really want to know all that?

[Kellemora]

Believe me, I HEAR YA Yogi, Loud n Clear, hi hi.

I do a lot of things using command line because it is usually faster, and does what I want it to without guesswork.
Similar GUI programs that use the underlying BASH commands are sometimes tricky to figure out exactly what will happen.

I'm the type that wants to know the how and why something does what it does.
I understood BASIC when I was using it. I understand HTML enough to write my web sites using a simple text editor.
But when it comes to BASH, I don't see any logic. Although I'm sure it is 100% logical, but only IF you knew why.
I'm getting a little taste of it with CSS, but that is sorta like an alphabetical list that is not in order. The HTML checks the List and hunts down what it needs, whether in order or not. Although some things do have to come before other things or it messes up, hi hi.

Here is one I use all the time, it does what I want it to do, but I have no idea why. # means be root, but that's all I know!
# sync; echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

And here is one I use several time every single day. At one time I did figure out what each part of it did, but no longer remember.
$ date +%A_%I:%M_%p -d "today +12 hours"

Here is what it looked like in use on the Ubuntu machine when I saved it eons ago.
gary@Asus64AMD5200Ubuntu:~$ date +%A_%I:%M_%p -d "today +12 hours"
Tuesday_10:35_AM
gary@Asus64AMD5200Ubuntu:~$ date +%A_%I:%M_%p -d "today +80 hours"
Friday_06:36_AM
gary@Asus64AMD5200Ubuntu:~$

I then tried making it do both the start and end times and for some reason it stopped showing AM and PM.
This experiment is working
~$ date +%A_%I:%M_%p -d "today +12 hours"; date +%A_%I:%M_%p -d "today +24 hours"
Using 12 and 24 just threw me off not seeing the AM PM.
I never had time to go back and play with it further.
I think you are the one who wrote the first example for me to use, and it works great.
Seems like you also explained it, and I also looked up things in the MAN pages for BASH.
But even the tutorials I've studied don't say what to use where or why.
Which is probably why I gave up.
BASH is more like, as you said earlier, using existing programs and writing what order you want them to do something.

[yogi]

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is not a program, nor are you programming anything when you use it. Same goes for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). HTML is ... well ... markup. It's just a way to instruct a browser how to arrange data it requests from a server. As you know HTML code is a single long string of serial instructions intended to arrange text on a web page. It's about the same thing as that format ribbon above the text area in every word processor. In fact what you see in that word processor editor probably is HTML. LOL

Cascading Styles are ...styles. This is identical to the styles you create in your word processor. Thus CSS is simply additional markup instruct ions to the browser.

How that markup language and it's associated styles actually get rendered, is the end result of browser programming. It's all transparent programming inside the browser.


BASH (Bourne Again SHell) is one of the first arguments I had against using Linux. The requirement to know how to use it is asking too much. They claim it's not necessary to know how the command line works, but you would be at a loss not knowing it should you do anything more than web surfing and reading your e-mail. If you are technically inclined in the slightest, knowing how to use BASH is a requirement.

There is no way you can convince me you are not familiar with BASH. It is a widely known version of the Bourne shell on which Linux and similar OS's run. In other words, Linux is actually a program that is run from the Bourne shell. You got to have an idea of what that means in order to use it successfully. The concepts are simple, but the details are overwhelming. People spend entire careers learning how to program in shell languages. Thus, if you go beyond the tip of the BASH iceberg, you are neck deep in technical black magic immediately. I'm not surprised that it is daunting to you, but I am a little taken back that you have not learned more after all these years messing with Linux.

Yes, I did give you that date script. I recall working on it with you. At the time I knew what it all meant and did my best to explain it to you. I could do that because I spent at least half my life at Motorola on a Unix terminal reading man pages and trying to figure out how to use that command line. I was fortunate to have engineers that would help me though some situations, but a lot of what I know was OJT. There were no courses on how to use BASH because no two versions of it are the same. Basically you learn as you burn.

When you open a terminal you drop down one level from the Linux operating system you see when you start up your computer. Everything you see on that monitor is generated at the shell level by calling up the program vmlinuz-5.4.0-26-generic, which in this particular case is the generic Linux kernel added to the linux shell all of which is stored in the /boot directory. In other words that's the Linux OS distribution program you happen to be using. It needs the Bourne (or some other) shell in order to run properly.

So ... the whole shebang is run from the shell. If you look in the /bin directory of your current Linux session you will see a list of commands that can be run from the shell. What you don't see is the options that can be added to the commands. The "print" command is in there for example, but you need to execute "man print" in order to open the manual page that gives you all the options that can be attached to the print command. This is simple and easy to understand. Now multiply that by the thousands of bin programs that are possible to run and you will have a complete understanding of BASH.

But ... why would anybody want to do that? Beats me.

[Kellemora]

Well, maybe this explains why I could learn HTML so easily.
What is the easiest programming language to learn for beginners?
Here are the top 10 easiest programming languages to learn, and the percentage of developers who designated them so, according to WP Engine.
HTML (13.3%) ...
Python (9%) ...
Javascript (6.2%) ...
PHP (4.9%) ...
Java (4.6%) ...
R (4.4%) ...
Shell (4.4%) ...
Ruby (4.1%)

I've had a few folks tell me to learn Python Javascript and PHP. Because with those I could do almost anything I wanted, then some dude comes along and says, why don't you just get a WYSIWYG program that creates the program for you, like using a word processor to create html pages, hi hi.

There must be over a million BASH programs already written so you just grab one to use.
Trouble is, you then need to know a million strange names used for those programs.
And know where to get them so you are not downloading Malware or worse.

I started studying PHP but didn't get very far along when other things took precedence of my time.

Oh, I figured out, even if I had a program do what I wanted it to do, it wouldn't help one iota.
I figured this out after keeping track of each projects start time.
It may only take 12 minutes to do what needed to be done on one, before I moved on to the next, which may have taken 25 minutes, then the next one only 8 minutes, followed by one that took a half hour. That was on the first day.
On day two, it took 20 minutes on the first, 8 minutes on the second, 15 minutes on the third, etc.
Plus I finished two in three days that are now no longer on my list of ones to get done.
It's sorta like waiting on customers as a cashier, how long it takes with each one depends on how many things they have in their cart. So I guess I was barking up the wrong tree with my idea.
I've tried lining up jobs by their order of importance, which has caused things on the back burner to always stay on the back burner and I never get to them, until they become a priority and I have to forgo a lot of other things to get them done right away, hi hi. My problem is, I have too many things to do.
Or as my dad said. "I have so much to do, I don't know how I ever found time to go to work."
My poor dad had to be at work around 7:15 am every day to unlock the doors and fire up everything.
Many days he did not come home for lunch, so mom would send one of kids with a brown bag to him.
And although the place closed at 5:30 pm, he usually didn't get out of there until close to 7 pm, sometimes later.
Dinnertime at our house was technically 6 pm, but we never sat down to the table until around 6:30 pm, this way were were close to finished when dad got home. This way he and mom could eat in moderate peace.
It was not uncommon for him to have to go back to work after dinner at least once a week, more often as holidays closed in on us. And during holidays, we all worked 14 to 16 hour shifts, and some of us just slept at our work station.
Heck, that is probably illegal these days, hi hi.
There were many times while I was growing, old enough to work in the greenhouses, where we went there after school and worked until well after midnight trying to get some crops in and into the coolers before we were hit with a bad storm. Or so we didn't lose the crop for some other reason, such as the boilers broke, both of them at the same time. Or since we used gas instead of coal now, the city would turn us off because there was not enough gas for the homes for some reason. I only know that happening three times after we switched to gas, and it was only for like two hours, but enough that the greenhouses would drop below freezing.
Crazy business for sure!

[yogi]

I still like the spreadsheet idea, but a simple To-Do list would seem appropriate too.

List all the projects in the order in which they materialized. One project per line. Then start working off the list, top to bottom. The status of the project could be made visible by highlighting it's line with a different color. Green, for example, would show that it is in progress and being worked on. Red would mean crisis - do it now. And something like yellow would show it as complete or discarded. Those lines without highlighting are just things that should be done; sometime; eventually; when the gods are willing. You can tack this sheet of projects on the wall in front of you so that you can't avoid seeing it several times a day. That would be the motivation to get things done. Priorities change, and that is understandable. The beauty of this kind of To-Do list is that there is no timeline. It's just a representation of what is important or not. You can adjust your time on the projects accordingly.

I insist HTML is not programming!

A program in any of those languages you listed can do things HTML cannot do. For one, a program can manage memory. There is no memory management in mark up language. Programs also have variables to which you can assign values and store in memory. There is no way to pass variables in HTML. Programs also use logical operators to make decisions about the flow of the instructions. Not so in HTML; it's all a single string that gets executed sequentially. No variations in the flow. All those things that HTML lacks is what makes it easy to learn. However, learning HTML is on the same level as learning how to use a word processor. Easy peasey, but not programming.

You can embed program like modules into HTML, such as javascript, but that's an add-on and not markup. HTML uses third party apps to play music and view video because it cannot do those things on it's own. I'm not saying HTML is trivial, although it is, it's just doesn't meet any of the criteria necessary to create a stand alone program. HTML needs a server and a rendering object (browser) to be useful. You don't need any of that for a program to do it's thing.

In your particular case I agree that learning javascript and PHP would enhance your web sites tremendously and make your maintenance a lot easier. Becoming familiar with databases would help a lot too. Unfortunately, it would take a long time to learn those things and you have limited use for them. You also are too far along to use those web page makers. You know too much to be happy with what they do. The next step up for you would be a huge leap. Not sure it's worth the effort.

[Kellemora]

At my age and health conditions, and what little time I have to even keep my web sites updated, which is like never most of the time. Trying to learn programming languages would, for me, technically be wasted time I could use to get other things in a simple order for my kids to have.

My little spreadsheet has helped considerably believe it or not.
I learned something I didn't actually think about before.
I get 10 smaller things done in the morning, 8 medium size things in the afternoon, and 6 larger things in the evening.
Knowing this has helped me to figure out what undone things and things not started I can add into which slot for them to work. I finished one medium size job yesterday, so today a new medium size job will take its place.
This will work better than adding it in the morning where I don't really have enough time to get started before I have to stop to move on.
I'm still jotting down what time I start each project, and how long I work on it to get the days stuff done regarding that subject, topic, or job. I also leave some room for entertainment too, like playing a game between projects, like a round of Spyder or a game of Free Cell. They go fast and break up the all work and no play problem, hi hi.

I had used BlueFish a couple of times, and found I could work faster and better using just Gedit.
One fellow I talk with every so often writes web sites for a living. He has some expensive programs he uses for that too.
But the type of web sites he builds has everything from blogs to shopping carts, and everything between. Not simple web sites like I have that are only for display. The only thing I don't like about programs that make web sites is, they all look like cookie cutter websites. Not much different between them.

[yogi]

Your comments about spreadsheet analysis touches upon one of the advantages of using databases in general. You can often see things in the data that would not be obvious in the real world. In your case you can predict which projects are most likely to be completed by starting them at the right time. Only a review of the data could make this kind of revelation possible. What you did was hindsight in a way but big data is used to make predictions in many fields. Commodity brokers for example can predict the price of corn in August by looking at the rainfall in during May. Athletic scouts can pick the best draft choices depending on their statistical performance in high school. Webmasters can tell what content would bring the greatest response from their target audience. And, medical diagnoses by robotic doctors are highly accurate due to the data they have to work from. It goes on and on.

Web sites are indeed looking more and more alike as each day progresses. They are in fact looking a lot like the screen of your average smartphone. I wonder how that came about?

[Kellemora]

I do think robots for diagnosis are already out-performing doctors. Especially when it comes to things they don't see very often. It still takes doctors to do some of the tests, but inputting the data from those tests, and what they found then or later, is building up quite a huge database.

I imagine the database used by St. Louis County is much larger than the one used here in Knox County.
Even so, it is quite impressive now that it has been in use for several years.
It has helped to clear up shelf space for more books of the titles requested most often.
While still keeping enough of the slow ones on hand without having too many.
I used to know the folks responsible for stocking the St. Louis County Book Mobiles.
This was back before computers too, and it was an arduous task to handle.
They had to keep abreast of what each school was teaching, so they knew which books would most likely be checked out, and make sure there was enough of each title on the shelves of the Book Mobile.

One thing interesting about our Knox County Library is they have SHS section which is hard to find out about. It stands for Secret Historical Section, and it is not open to the public. You almost have to know somebody to get a book out of that SHS. What's in it? Books that have been banned and removed from most libraries, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, etc. books that used what today are racial slurs. There are also books about people and what they did in their former lives, which some libraries still keep, but most don't anymore. Like about a book on (I may get the name wrong) Margaret Sanger, aka founder of Planned Parenthood, and her ties to the KKK and her many quotes about wiping out undesirable races.
Speaking of which. I had many of those books myself since I was a kid and sold all of them on eBay for big bucks too. Mostly because of their age. But none of these books were first editions, although I did have several first editions of many books. Some were even Leather Bound. I just gave my son the entire large set of leather bound Shakspere books, and yes that is how it is spelled on the early editions. It was filled with engravings too.
I know a fellow who bought some of these editions and took them apart to get the engraved images. He sold them for 35 bucks each loose, or between 75 and 200 dollars each framed, depending on the type frame used.
I did sell a few books I wish I wouldn't have sold. Some of which belonged to my late wife. I sold most of her medical books first because I knew they were already obsolete, but were still bringing good money. But some Jewish books she had I sold because they were still on the market and sold fairly cheap. But the early three book set was selling on eBay for like 150 bucks, so I put her set up, and ended up getting 95 bucks, which wasn't bad considering new they only cost like 10 to 12 bucks each. But then they discontinued that book and the three book set is now selling for over 300 bucks.
I had a lot of old catalogs from Heathkit, parts books from Walter Ashe and Allied Electronics, plus a few other I sold.
The only one that didn't sell was an old Grainger Catalog from 1977. My first Ham Radio Handbook from 1959 sold for triple what a new one today sells for. I really expected more for it though.

Speaking of Schmartz-fonz, there was an ad on a cable TV channel for a Menu Driven Schmartz-fone. I didn't catch the name, but saw the screen. It had boxes marked Apps, Phone, Pixs, Tools, and First.
Under Phone was Msgs, Call, WEB, and a few other things.
Under Tools was a Calc, Keyb, and several other things.
You could move any item under any heading over to under First.
If the phone rang, all you had to do was hit the big white button at the bottom to answer.
There were two smaller white buttons on either side, which I think had to do with messages.
But what stood out most was the fact the screen was fairly clean, only showed the time and date.
I think it showed the temperature, battery level, and signal strength in the bar above the boxes.
Unlike my wife's phone where you have to scroll through a long array of pictures icons, these were mostly drop down boxes you selected from.
Seems like going back to the tried and true method of finding things might be what they are after, hi hi.

[yogi]

Way back when (prior to 2016) as I read about the power of databases the prime example was medical diagnosis. Companies existed back then just for the purpose of supplying data. The idea in medicine was to amass a nationwide database (an idea promoted by a president not held in high regard today by some folks), so that everybody in this country would have access. This involved getting all medical services computerized and formats standardized, something that is really taking shape today. The larger the database the better the results from any inquiries. The current pandemic and all the video "office visits" is bringing a new awareness to what can be done with technology. It will be a long time before doctors are replaced, but I can see a time when the only need to see one will be to perform certain procedures in a hospital environment. Everything else will be done remotely with databases.

Many years ago I read books instead of using computers to entertain myself. I concentrated on hard cover books because the paperbacks never seemed to me like a real book. LOL I never read an e-book, by the way. I used to hunt down books that did not sell when they were first published because now they were at least 50% off the initial retail price. Most of the time they could be had for less than that. The topics were not always current, but the idea was to be amused more than informed. The Marx Brothers were one one of my most admired comedy acts ever since I was a baby boomer. I found a book with several, if not all, their radio broadcast scripts. It was a gold mine of comedy in my opinion. The most amazing part of that book was what we call racial slurs that were commonly used in skits. They didn't use nigger a lot, but it was in there. The fact that these were actual scripts that supposedly were broadcast was shocking. The times certainly have changed.

Now that I have a clever phone I know what can and cannot be done with that clutter of icons. The bottom line is that the smartphone is really a computer with a much smaller desktop. I have a couple dozen icons on this desktop and a lot of space left over. Those same icons would fill two or three screens on the clever phone just because of it's diminutive size. When Windows 8 came along, Microsoft introduced the idea of charms. I think they had to change the name of them but the idea remains. The long gone START menu is now a fly out window of small boxes which may or may not be animated. You've seen it, I'm sure. I hated it at first and still am not all that comfortable using it, but there is some utility to it all. All those icons I now have on my desktop can be put into a single box. Actually, three or four boxes with several sub-boxes inside them. LOL The big boxes are catagories, News, Games, Messaging, Photos, etc, etc, etc. So, now, that fly out which has migrated from Windows 8 to Windows 10 is very compact. The reason I'm telling you all this is because I can do almost the identical thing with my Android phone. I'm sure others have the same capability. If I chose to do so I could have the time, date, and weather displayed prominently and a few icons spread across the bottom, or along the side, or scattered about. Those few would actually be categories just like the Windows desktop. Dropdown menus don't work well on mobile devices which is why you don't see too much of that. Even those web page crumbs can be a problem for many phones. I'm not surprised that mobile devices would try to appeal to the Retro crowd. It turns out you can get Linux in a Windows XP desktop version if you look hard enough. It's all very interesting but not the direction the world is moving.

[Kellemora]

Debi's Schmartz-fone is also Android and she does a lot with it. She also has replaced most of the icons that came on it with those she uses most often. Instead of one line she can scroll, she has two lines and likes that better.
Some buttons on the side of the phone save the time of her scrolling through the icons.

What kills me is when I see people trying to play some games on their Schmartz-fone than one normally wants a big screen to play on. Games like Farm Town where you have to plant and harvest crops on ever increasing size fields.
I'm on a big screen and only have my farms up to 24x24 plot size, but some people are all the way up to 36x36 or 40x40. That would drive me nuts on a standard monitor. So I don't see how they do it on a Schmartz-fone at all.

One thing I've noticed is the photo quality of cell phone images has come up a long way. Many are better than the early digital cameras.
But for me, I'll just stick with my little ole flip-fone, hi hi.

[yogi]

I have a few time-waster games on my clever phone. These are not as complex as Farm Town, although there are quite a few that go well beyond that. Most of those high end games are either subscription or multi-player, neither of which I am interested in. So playing Tetris genre games on the clever phone when there is absolutely nothing else to do is my time wasting mechanism. Mobile devices are a natural for such things. Favoring simple games is not to say the graphics isn't up to par. The graphics far exceeds expectations. I can read the lettering on the smallest drop down menu, but my big fingers find it difficult to select the right item. That kind of thing carries over to the games as well. My understanding is that you play Farm Town for the diversion between projects it provides. You can be diverted with any number of games suited for the small screens too, if you had a smart phone, if you ever had a desire to have one. I don't use that Android very often, but when I do there is no substitute. I certainly can live without it, but I'm very well pleased that I have one now.

[Kellemora]

The Farm Town game is basically a 24/7 job. It ceased to be a game when it controls your time, hi hi.
For little breaks between projects I play either Free Cell or Spider, either only takes a minute or two per game.
Now, when I'm sitting on the Throne, Reigning over my Kingdom, I have two hand-held games. Solitaire and Black Jack.
Hard to find decent sized hand-held games anymore since everyone now has Schmartz-Fonz, hi hi.
My little flip phone has several games in it also, even a couple of arcade type games, but I've only played a Pong type of game if I would be seated for a long time somewhere away from home. Which isn't very often in the past several years.
Now, if I take someone to a doctor, like I used to do Debi's mom, when I knew I would be their for at least an hour. I have some level 8 to 10 Sudoku puzzles I keep in the car on a clip board, those harder Sudoku puzzles can take an hour or longer to figure out. I also have a few harder crossword puzzle I do between Sudoku puzzles if the wait is super long.
Debi's mom often had 4 to 6 doctors appointments per week. Even though most of them only came up once a month, the overlap with so many doctors meant I was sitting somewhere waiting on her. Thankfully two of her doctors appointments were in the same medical building, and she always scheduled them back to back, so I was only taking her like 3 or 4 times a week, one week, and only 2 to 3 times the next week, it more or less alternated back and forth that way.

My son, who doesn't play games much really surprised me in his new house.
At his old house, he had a theater in his basement. He does here too but not as big, and not exactly set up like a theater.
But in both bathrooms he has a wall mounted framework that holds a small netbook sized computer.
The one in the master bathroom is a computer. But the one in the hall is basically a small game console that uses plug in cartridges for some games, but all I ever saw in it was the collection of common games you normally find on computers.
It has the usual card games, a few tile games, and a few drop games like Tetris, and I think I saw Mahjong too. The only two times I visited him at his new house, I only played a little bomb drop game where you had to catch the bombs from hitting your three base stations below, since that is what came up when I sat down, hi hi.

[yogi]

The world of trivial and entertaining games is endless on those smartphones, or any device which you can use to download apps from the company store. There was one I used for a while that you might have found interesting. It was run by an organization who kept pictures of every plant they could gather. They identified all they could so that if you found something growing in the wild and needed it to be identified, you could snap a picture of it and upload the picture to their website. Then it would go out for all the members to review and identify. I looked up poison ivy once just to get an idea how many varieties of it might exist. It's in the hundreds according to all the variations I found in this app. It was pretty cool but it helped if you knew something about plants to begin with. You would have an easier time searching things out. I took a picture of what we call a Christmas Cactus when it was in full bloom in our basement. It had flowers all over the plant and was gorgeous. I uploaded it hoping to get an official name for it, but nada. Nobody so much as looked at my picture. So, after a few months of that I dumped the app.

Another picture taking app is called Rando4Me. In this case you take a picture of anything around you. Then you upload that picture and it gets sent to somebody else who has that app installed on their mobile device. A random picture is received in return. All this is done anonymously. The location of where the picture was sent or received from is all you get for an identification. Quite a few of the pictures I received are from Russia, which isn't too surprising. Brazil is probably next most popular. So far I never received a naughty picture, but there are no controls to prevent one from coming. It's all anonymous after all. Most of what I get is inane but there are some very interesting landscapes and people out there. I could possibly show you some of the pictures because there is a URL associated with each one. In fact you can't download the image file itself. When you request a copy all you get is the URL.

Then there is the metronome. I downloaded it because I was listening to music one day and was wondering how closely they were keeping to the rhythm. Apparently a lot of musicians know nothing about timing. Unfortunately the app is more complicated than I anticipated. There is more to it than just setting the number of beats per minute. You need to know how many beats per measure, for example. There also are accent beeps for things like , 1, and, 2, and, 3 , and, 4 ... well, you get the idea I am sure. You were a musician once. LOL