As I've been practicing Kanji/Kana this previous month, I've been noticing how much my guitar playing has been slipping, and it's sad to see it slip because my development as a musician is also important. I plan to really, really get serious about playing guitar (more serious than my previous dabbling in the past seven years), but it's hard to schedule this when I have to finish RtK and eventually deal with Tae Kim, KO2001, mining, etc.

And I'm not good at following schedules unless it's monodirectional - in other words, it's just one thing to worry about. There's not much to worry about if it's japanese or guitar by itself. But I need to do both. It's not like I can just go, "hey, I'll do japanese for a year and then do guitar", mainly because I love guitar too much to just shove it aside. I'll even play songs by japanese bands just to get a link between the two. >:|

Here's the thing: I want to write a batch file that'll bring up certain programs throughout the day to schedule my practice for me - I plan on getting in, I dunno, 5 hours of guitar and 5 hours of japanese in a day (I might actually start cutting down on japanese to 3 hours after RtK).

The thing is, I can write pseudo-code and tell myself what I want, but I don't know how to write out what I need because I'm illiterate with DOS. Does anyone else know how to write batch files or know of a good site that'll explain how to open up programs at designated times via a batch file?

EDIT: I also wouldn't mind a point in the right direction of a schedule reminder program, either - just something that'll tell me, "okay, stop doing this, do this now" without having to actively look at it.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...l-the-time

There's the first thing I read about batch files + automated scheduling to call them up (using karen's countdown timer thingy)... He links to 'inspect my gadget' or something that tells you how to customize the batch files. It's all free stuff.

For lists and general scheduling reminders, I procured a program called My Life Organized. http://www.mylifeorganized.net/ - Nice and minimal, with scheduling and cool tree-branch structure thingies. Depending on what kind of person you are in regards to software, you have to 'pay' to upgrade it... ;p

Hmm.. sounds interesting enough, I'll check it out.

Also, I'm still using XP, but I heard Vista has a built-in task scheduler? Plus there's tonnes of other calendar programs such as Mozilla Sunbird (which apparently has an add-on called ReminderFox), I think. But yeah, I was pleased with MLO even though I never use it anymore.

Oh cool, looks like you don't even need Sunbird for ReminderFox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1191

How in the heck did I miss this. I looked all over for programs, hissing in frustration at all the tricky free/shareware download pages, and this was there the whole time?!

You can learn all of DOS/Windows command line and batch file making in a few hours basically.

http://www.allenware.com/icsw/icswidx.htm

http://www.google.com/search?client=oper...8&oe=utf-8