Remembering the Milk via iPod (saving task lists as notes)
In my desire to get more organized I’ve started using this cool task management service:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com
It works well and it’s AJAX/Java Script is impressive/quite usable, especially when one learns the keyboard shortcuts. (It’s integrations into other services (Twitter, Google Calendar, etc.) helped sell me on trying it, liking it’s direction and deciding to go along with it for the ride.)
That said, I needed to be able to take task lists with me on the go (especially those tasks/projects that start with getting supplies). Living in the mountains the cell phone (network connected or smart) is not my device; I carry my iPod for podcasts (and Storynory for my daughter). As such, I used the RTM RESTful API with a small Ruby script to sync task lists as notes on my iPod.
Under http://neukadye.com/code/ see rtm_ipod_sync.rb
Note: This was (is) a “teach yourself Ruby” project, so I didn’t use any RTM gems, I hand rolled the REST calls, and have no error handling. The hard coded path to launch the browser is an obvious non-scalable hack, but it suited my needs at the time.
To run it you’d need to acquire your own API keys from RTM and store them in the environment, along with a path to your iPod (acting as a file system) notes folder. For me that is E:\Notes\
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/api/keys.rtm
as such I have a simple (and yes, pedestrian) rtm.bat file like:
SET RTM_API_KEY={Insert your key here}
SET RTM_API_SECRET={Insert your shared secret here}
SET RTM_NOTES_DIR=E:\Notes\
ruby rtm_ipod_sync.rb