John Borwick's blog

Sometimes I use the computer too much–reading reddit, del.icio.us/tag/funny, Facebook, et al.

To help myself be more aware of using the (OS X) computer, I installed a dashboard widget called ProdMe.  This is a neat, simple program that will play a sound on command.

I then got a “chime” sound from freesound.org–specifically, “15.wav“.  I registered to get an account and downloaded the sound.

Next, the sound was a little long for me so I downloaded Audacity and edited the sound to make it shorter.  I also used Audacity to convert the sound into .aiff format.

ProdMe lets you use any sound that shows up as a “system sound” (System Preferences > Sound, “Sound Effects” panel).  So, I took the edited .aiff sound and put it in my “home directory > Library > Sounds” folder.  OS X checks this folder for any user-space sounds that should be listed as system sounds.

Finally, ProdMe is a dashboard widget and the dashboard stops running when you log out or put your computer to sleep.  So, I found “Dashboard Kickstart,” a utility that lets you say you want the dashboard to run after sleep or after login.  It’s really neat and imho should be added to OS X.

So–there you go!  ProdMe has a button you can hit to turn on or off chimes, so if we’re watching a Netflix movie or hulu I can click the button and stop the every-five-minute chime.