back

Tantalus and his pommes

2022-11-09

2 minute read

I thought yesterday about making an app for my computer. I was frustrated at how all the pomodoro apps rely on sounds that I find annoying, and they take up too much space on the screen or try to do too much. I wanted one that was like a little window in the corner of my screen, it could just give me a visual buzz when it's time to change modes.

How hard could that be, really? A simple timer, a handful of states, some text. I could whip that up in an hour or two, surely. It's just within my reach.

Grasping the fruit

At this point I've spent 6 hours 26 minutes on Pompom, far more than I intended. Dev projects are dangerous like this, in your mind it's a spotless plane, not a drop of complexity hide nor hair. But there is, hidden in everything, the reality of the world.

I have, in fact, built it to a point that it's usable, and I'm using it right now.

pompom app icon and title

In brief:

a small square app with a timestamp, the word 'focus' and four 'o's. The background is split into 2 different shades of grey Pompom round end animation, cycling bars of colour through the background of the app

Visual studio code with this blog post open, over the top in the corner is the small Pompom focus app

Tech:

Todo:

Questions to follow up

The most important thing is not to touch it for a week, I don't want to get sucked into another 6 hour vortex.

what else?

listening to

questions