Hey guys!

A small update for you. I've been dorking with Zen Alarm against my better judgement... it is afterall more fun to do than my actual work. ;) he he. But, here's a small update:

1) Applescript Studio is very very cool... I'll have a little application with an interface now, so I'm capable of the terminal mode operation... to stop the terminal mode, you'll have to hit the "quit" button.

2) I'm working on having preferences in the application (I'm not a coder, this is all in applescript, so it's taking me some time to get this setup)... the preferences in the first version will be extremely stupid simple... it'll check to see if a soundfile has been indicated in the past, and if it has, it will go ahead with the alarm... if it hasn't, it will hopefully prompt you for a sound file you wish to use for the alarm. This will enable us to use sounds for various chimes and gongs etc. we find online. As well as mean you don't have to compile the application each time you want to change your sound file.

Issues I'm dealing with at the moment:

Primary issue (why I can't release this silly little application): There is currently no way to set the sound file for running... so it only works on my machine with my sound file at the moment. ;)

1) There seems to be a slight problem with chimes on the exact seconds I set. This may be an idle event issue, I'm unsure. The chimes generally happen within 1 or 2 seconds of when they're supposed to, and in the terminal mode, it appears to be appropriately every 5 seconds.

2) There are some questions I have about whether or not it will still allow the computer to sleep, or whether it will keep the computer active... if you wake the computer, play the alarm, and your sleep time is quite short, then what happens? ;) So, I'm just in the initial stages here, and have to do some actual testing.

3) I'd love to have a system/sound volume setting, this should be fairly simple to setup, but I haven't gotten there yet. ;)

4) It'd be wonderful if the application would be able to set the system wakeup event time so that when you first run it, it would check to see if the time is very close to the wakeup time you previously set... then go off. Otherwise, stay silent, allow preference changes etc. Including having a system sleep command when the alarm is set if you wish.

5) I also have some issue with various other chimes in the system... it'd be really nice if I could quiet everything other than the Zen-alarm during the wakeup-period, but I have no idea if that's even possible... so that'll have to wait. ;) [Example- if I go to sleep with Pzizz... I also want my Chimes on the hours/quarters to shutup, and when I wakup for it to be quiet as well...]

6) The last issue I have is how do you actually launch the thing? I should be able to enable the little application to accept apple Events... if that's the case, you could essentially write small applescripts that can be used in iCal to launch the alarm... which of course would go off if the computer was actually on. This seems like a nice option, as you could then setup different alarms throughout the week in iCal. [But, of course, I have no idea if iCal would be able to change the wake-events for the next day- so perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves on this one...]

BUT- the good news, is this was fairly easy to setup- it took a lot of fiddling with the idle events in AppleScript studio, but I'm almost there. :) It works on my machine. I really really want the ability to set the soundfile to play, as this will enable us to use some cool sounds, rather than say just a midi-gong or something. I currently am using the zen-alarm clock's actual sound. ;)

Finally, I'd love to have a graphical display of where the chime is in it's progress... I won't disclose how the display will look, but I hope it'll be cool... if I can find/create the right images. Right now, the current time is displayed, the next chime time is displayed, and a status line tells you which chime has been completed, and if you are in the terminal mode.

Ok, so where is the Application? Sorry- not there yet... when I get the preferences ability working, I'll be back to let you know!! :)

Cheers, all!!
-Allen