On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 7:22 AM, Joel Joonatan Kaartinen <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I used Mnemosyne for a while a couple of years ago and while I had a > goal that Mnemosyne helped me get towards, I managed to use it, almost > daily. However, once that was past, my use of Mnemosyne dropped fast. > Eventually, I was launching it rarely enough that the number of cards > waiting for me alone was enough to keep me from launching it. > > My approach obviously has problems and while fixing my mental approach > would be better, it does appear to be a long term project in itself. > Also, a part of that project would be to figure out what is a good > amount of cards per day and to adjust accordingly. Also another aspect > would be figuring out the times when I'm most likely to be willing to > divert my attention to doing a few flashcards. > > The part of this I'm currently able to do, reliably, myself, is to know > whether I want to do a few flashcards, if I remember they exist. The > problem part is remembering they exist at the times when I'd be willing > to do a few of them. > > So, since my problem is one of persistence in remembering to go through > the flashcards and computer software is very good in persistence, I > thought it'd be a nice idea to have a flashcard software that sometimes > gives me a small transient box for a few seconds in the corner of the > screen that has a link I can click to get a flashcard UI to do a few > flashcards. > > However, just a random reminder would likely get annoying eventually, > leading to the user disabling it. So, it would need some intelligence. > Ideally, it would only show the box at the times I'm willing to do some > flashcards. So, I was thinking that perhaps it could pay attention to > mouse&keyboard usage as well as programs starting and stopping (or > alternatively, being focused and unfocused) on the system and use those > as clues as to whether or not show the box. > > So, it'd keep a log of the times you do click the box to do the > flashcards and slowly learn what events happening mean you're more or > less likely to do some flashcards and avoid showing the reminder when > you're likely to ignore it. > > So, I'd be interested in what people here think about this idea. Would > you like it? Do you have ideas on how to improve this further? If so, > I'd be thrilled to hear back from you. > > Best Regards, > Joel
Thoughts: 1. Why not just use crontab/favorite-scheduling-utility to launch Mnemosyne every midnight/morning? This takes care of your forgetting problem. 2. I don't think a whole special window box thing is necessary anyway. Just run Mnemosyne itself. 3. You seem to want Mnemosyne to run when the user is not doing anything, but present. How could the computer possibly know this? It only knows if I am doing something or not; the case of me being present but not doing anything looks exactly like when I am not present and not doing anything. It's going to have to interrupt you in any case. 4. One heuristic might be, if an app is opened or closed, it's a good time to interrupt. This could easily be done through your window manager, if you have a decent one. For example, I could edit my XMonad config to on every change of the layout, get a random number and with a very low probability (probably have to figure it out via trial and error) run Mnemosyne. If I happen to be busy, I simply kill Mnemosyne with a mod-k and go on. 5. Similarly, just running Mnemosyne at random widely spaced intervals might be enough. AI techniques like learning are often unnecessary; if there is any value to this idea, it ought to have value even if you do something like a script which 'runs mnemosyne every hour on the hour'. 6. To insist on fancy adaptive techniques before the idea has ever been tried is to make the perfect be the enemy of the good. -- gwern -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mnemosyne-proj-users?hl=en.
