The Midnight Commander

For the last month, I have been at the keyboard for sixteen hours a day (and nights), seven days a week, as I have a few people waiting for the latest issue of my TaskMaster program. I really wanted to have it done by the end of September, but have allowed myself a bit of mission creep, as I have moved it on from being just a facsimile of my old DOS program, towards a much more integrated workplace. I now find that I can use it for my own work all the time I'm at the computer, as it does all I want, plus (rudimentary) linking into other applications, and the web.

As well as the traditional workshop tasks (job reports, PM planning, parts inventory etc.), I have now incorporated my diary and note-taking programs into TaskMaster, together with reasonably extensive reporting and printing facilities.

So now I'd better get on and get it ready for distribution. It looks likes it will take a few more days yet, but I reckon it has to be done!

It may be interesting to note that the screen-shot above was saved using Screen Thief 3.6. The original file was a 1.8 Meg bitmap (.bmp) with excellent resolution (identical to the original screen), but when uploaded and shrunken, it looked lousy! Next I loaded the .bmp into MS Paint and saved it as a .jpg file of 123 K. This also gave poor results when uploaded. I then tried a .gif file of only 69 K, and this gave the best result. That is the one you see above. Not brilliant, but the best possible on the Blogger, it would seem.

TaskMaster is a computer database program constructed as an equipment maintenance management system. It is intended to assist in organizing the work of hospital medical equipment engineering departments and independent repair and maintenance service providers.