dale lane

I am a big fan of Remember The Milk (RTM), the online to-do list manager. It’s one of the few sites (like flickr) that I’m happy to pay for.

For some reason, the logo for RTM is a cow’s face. Which means that I get a cow staring at me when I’m deciding what I need to do next.

I had a random thought this evening – that the cow should really look more sympathetic when my task list is so full. Because he’s really quite heartless, even when I’m manically busy. 😉

And once I had the idea, I kinda had to give it a quick try. (And I wonder why I’m busy…)

So I’ve knocked up a quick Greasemonkey script – which should work with Firefox with the Greasemonkey add-on, or with Google Chrome.

If you have no tasks due today in a list, the RTM cow smiles.


If you only have a couple of tasks due today, the RTM cow is his usual inscrutable self.


If you have more than a few tasks due today, the RTM cow is sad.


If you have more than five tasks due today, the RTM cow gets scared!


And if you have eight or more tasks due today, the RTM cow goes a little manic.


Okay, so this is all a little silly. The number of tasks doesn’t really mean a huge amount, and my choice of numbers was a little arbitrary.

But it was distracting for a bit. And I do like the idea of a todo list UI that panics with you when you get busy.

Tags: greasemonkey, javascript, rememberthemilk, rtm

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 9:06 pm and is filed under code. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.