Rainlendar, or "How to Organize Life"

 

Still trying to get my laptop situated the way I want it, I had completely forgotten about the one thing that had made my hectic college life bearable in terms of keeping up with meetings and homework assignments and meetings and field trips and meetings and....

Yes, I was extremely bogged down with work and school and my personal life during college.  I was so bogged down that I actually look at the previous sentence and go "What personal life?"

Back to the topic at hand, I had found this little gem of a program that helped change the way I did random scraps of paper and post-it notes.  Instead of trying to remember to write everything down on my wall calendar and into my tiny pocket calendar and onto my daily planner and....

At that point in my life I was never too far away from my laptop computer.  If I did not have my computer bag slung at my hip, it was either in my studio or in my sleeping quarters.  Rarely did I go out of either situation without it, but there were times where one needs to go outside with nothing important just to be able to scream into the void.

This recount has a purpose, don't worry.

I enjoyed the Sticky-Notes program that I had found not long after I had purchased my first ever laptop computer -- but it was just a program that got in the way.  My computer looked like my wall, cluttered with things that I couldn't sort through because it was completely random with lots of little icons shoved in between each little note that was over another little note.

Piled up, notes fall under the "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" category.  I was not getting anything done with the Sticky-Notes program, and I just kept going with my normal jottings on paper and taping them to the wall or tacking them to my corkboard and hoping they would jump into my memory when needed.  My work- and living spaces were both a complete mess.

As an artist, organized chaos is actually a blessing in disguise to me AS LONG AS my work area is neat and tidy.  My notes started creeping into my workspace and I was not pleased.

Out of nowhere, I saw a different program - or, rather, I saw a skin for a different program.  This was completely by accident, as I was looking for skins for a messenger program (remember the days of AIM?  Yes, I am that old) to sort of integrate it into my computer's aesthetics.

Rainlendar.  (This is their official website.  Also, here's the Wikipedia article!)

An app originally created in 2000 to help sort out life's nuances and put them into your daily digital life, Rainlendar has everything you might need in regard to the exact same things you manage to obtain through Google Calendar (beta tested in 2006, and available to the masses in 2009 on the web as well as for iOS and Android; Wikipedia) today.

"What's so special about it, we have Google Calendar.  We don't need another app."

This isn't an 'app.'  This is a way of life that sits on your desktop and, as long as you clear out your other programs and allow your desktop to be the main viewing area when you close everything else out?  It will stare at you every time you get back onto your computer.  Everything that you put onto the lists and into the calendar will be there waiting to remind you to do something about it.

You can also connect your Google Calendar to it, so there's that -- as well as the fact you can add a holidays calendar to it, have a backup file, create a detailed calendar where you can see things at a glance, and so on.  There's a lot more to it than what I'm telling you, but I'm just not that in-need for all of the bells and whistles.  I like the fact there's a To Do list!

Mathie Tremas' desktop, complete with Rainlendar.

Why bother with it?  Well, it's completely up to you if you want to try it or not, I'm not going to force your hand -- I am just a messenger, not a declaration of 'do-or-die.'  Here's how I see it, though:

Pros:

• Has both a free version and a paid version
       (I'm using the free version)
• Works with Windows, Apple, and Linux computers
• Comes fully furnished with three unique skins (one shown)
• Many other skins available online
• User friendly with easy + add buttons

Cons:

• It doesn't work if you don't actually use it
• It cannot read your mind
• It does not have a corporeal body, therefore cannot shake you to make you see you forgot something

I'm being flippant in the cons, obviously, as I don't see anything else wrong with it beyond human error on the user's part.

If you find this is an awesome program that you didn't realize you needed, let me know how well it has helped, as now I'm curious!

-- Mathie Tremas.

P.S. I'm definitely not getting paid for this open advertisement of a program that was originally created twenty-five years ago.  If you would like to show your support for my work here, feel free to buy me a coffee. <3

(I'm going to go scream into the void first, though, to start my day off right.)