Generic Life Activity Data Organization System (GLADOS)

glados.demo.mp4

If the above video does not work, you can also watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd3JJi8zSk4

Rationale

• Over the past decade, I have tried using various todo-list apps, but none of them really worked out for me: the motivation never seemed to last beyond a few days. But when I encountered the idea of an anti-todo/done-list in some blog post (maybe this one?) I was fascinated enough to give it a try, and it actually proved valuable!
• Additionally, back then, it was fairly easy to measure my productivity at work in terms of the amount of code generated, so I would only make notes about important/memorable events. But in the last couple of years, as my job has evolved, that metric is no longer a useful proxy for my effectiveness. This transition strongly correlated with an increasing reliance on these done-lists to feel satisfied at the end of the day.
• I was using Evernote to manage these notes/lists for a few years, and once I had a good understanding of how I like to use the tool, I found myself wishing for the ability to add more structure to the data being generated, so that I can do more interesting things with it, like building custom visualizations and graphs.
• Looking at the options available online, I did not find anything that did everything I was hoping for, and more importantly, it hurt my pride as a Software Engineer to pay for something I knew I can build. I also did not like the idea of relying on an external product that might go out of business at some point in the future: having complete control over my data was a major design goal. As a result, this tool might not be suited to a larger audience, but it definitely works for me! :)

Warning!

• Since it is primarily designed for an audience of one, this tool is continuously being modified as I find new ways to improve my workflow. It most definitely is NOT perfect, containing edge cases that I have not yet encountered or fixed. But for what it is worth, I have been using it almost daily since July 2020 without any significant issues.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/kaustubh-karkare/glados
cd glados
cp config/example.glados.json config.json
mkdir data
yarn install
yarn run build
yarn run database-reset

• The default config.json file specifies the data subdirectory as the location of the SQLite database and the backups.
• I personally made data a symlink to another directory that synced to my Dropbox.
• You can theoretically change the config to use whatever storage you want, as long as it is compatible with Sequelize.
• And once you're ready,

yarn run server

Demo

• In order to show off what I have built, I used to manually create videos by recording my screen as I performed a predetermined set of actions. This was obviously very fragile and involved multiple attempts until I finally made no mistakes.
• I got annoyed at this process, and so automated the whole thing using Selenium Webdriver to perform those actions and ffmpeg to record that part of the screen.

yarn run demo

• You can see the result at the top of this README file.
• An auxiliary benefit here is that this functionality can be used as an E2E test for the client code.

Backups

yarn run backup-save  # Can also be done via the right-sidebar in the UI.
yarn run backup-load  # This involves a database reset, so be careful!

• Backup files are created by loading the entire database into memory and then writing that as a JSON file (less than 10MB for data generated over a full year, uncompressed).
• This makes it very easy to apply transformations on the entire database when needed. Eg - the database schema has been updated, or if you just want to change how you organize things.
• These are also useful if data needs to be moved from one storage to another.

Community

• https://www.reddit.com/r/glados_app/
• Hacker News: 2022-01-01.