-----
title: "Introducing RedBook (and the new Code section)"
content-type: article
timestamp: 1191024720
tags: "ruby|productivity|software|tools|redbook"
-----
<p>I'm somehow pleased to announce the opening of a new section on this site. Nothing too big actually, it's
	just a <a href="/projects/">page</a> with a few (one for now) brief descriptions of open source programs and scripts
	I
	made and I'd like to share with my readers.</p>
<p>Don't expect fancy stuff: (luckily) I don't code for a living, I code for pleasure and I code small
	things. Lately I've been trying to write a small Ruby program able to log my daily activities and also display
	them in a pleasant enough way, so I started using my lunch breaks at work more constructively and I came up with <a
		href="/projects/redbook">RedBook</a> an interactive command-line program written in Ruby.</p>
<p>Main features:</p>
<ul>
	<li>Log timestamped and <em>tagged</em> messages to a single <span class="caps">YAML</span> file</li>
	<li>Load and display messages containing a certain string, or certain tags or within a time frame.</li>
	<li>Calculate the time elapsed between two or more tasks.</li>
	<li>Export loaded messages to <span class="caps">YAML</span>, <span class="caps">TXT</span> or <span
			class="caps">CSV</span> format.</li>
</ul>
<p>All done via command line via simple commands:</p>
<p><strong>&#58;log</strong> This is a test message <strong>&#58;tags</strong> test</p>
<p><strong>&#58;load</strong> <strong>&#58;last</strong> 30 <strong>&#58;from</strong> last week</p>
<p><strong>&#58;timecalc</strong> 2 5</p>
<p><strong>&#58;save</strong> test.txt</p>
<p>Thanks to the wonderful <a href="http://chronic.rubyforge.org/">Chronic</a> library, you can specify your time frames
	using natural language expressions like &#8220;8 in the morning&#8221;, &#8220;this tuesday&#8221;, &#8220;last
	month&#8221; and so on&#8230;</p>
<p>Here's a screenshot showing RedBook in action:</p>
<p><img src="/images/redbook.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>RedBook is of course free, open source software licensed under the terms of the <span class="caps">BSD</span>
	license. It can be installed on any machine able to run Ruby and there's also an <span class="caps">EXE</span>
	version for the lazy windows folks who don't want to install Ruby, packed with <a
		href="http://www.erikveenstra.nl/rubyscript2exe/index.html">RubyScript2Exe</a>. A more in-depth article
	explaining how RedBook works <del>will hopefully be completed soon</del> is available <a
		href="/articles/redbook">:here</a></p>