Hello, dear readers!

I hope you've been well! Apologies for the cheesy opening, I'm excited! I want to give you a heartfelt apology for the silence over the summer. Although I had initially planned to dedicate time to ClowderTask, life threw a few curveballs my way this summer and I ended up much busier than originally anticipated. However, I am back on track and super excited to make strides on ClowderTask!

Now, I've decided to start focusing on small chunks so that I can hopefully show you some working prototypes sooner. I want to first provide a straightforward interface where users can view and select currently running processes on their machines and track how long they've been spending on them. I think the focus on trying to have a nice GUI first has made me spend less time on the important stuff, so this is my attempt to tackle this.

Why is this feature so important you're doing it first, you might wonder? Well, by having a clear view of active processes and the time spent on them, users can better align their engagement with their daily tasks, thus making the most out of their time. Also, it’s a stepping stone towards realizing the full vision of ClowderTask as an application to encourage you to focus on your tasks.

I've changed my approach to this for safety reasons. I think I am nowhere near experienced enough to be messing with people's processes so what I'm planning on doing is making it a bit more manual. You can decide on a task and start a timer. If it's been a while, you'll get an alert asking if you're still focused on your task. This should still fulfil our purpose of gameifying task management.

I’ve chosen C# for implementing this feature due to its robust and flexible framework which aligns with the existing architecture of ClowderTask built on Windows Forms. As I venture deeper into the realms of C#, I still find it to be a perfect fit for enhancing ClowderTask.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be knee-deep in coding and testing to ensure this feature integrates well in ClowderTask. I’m looking forward to sharing my journey, the challenges, and the things I will learn with you all. I warmly welcome any insights or suggestions you might have.

Thank you for your support and understanding. Stay tuned for more updates - hopefully meatier ones this year! - and as always, feel free to reach out or drop your thoughts in the comments section below.