I finally have my pet project BillReminder packaged for Ubuntu Hardy and Debian, thanks to Diogo Autílio and Gabriel Falcão! The packages (*.deb) can be downloaded from the project’s downloads page, or for the lazy:
As always, constructive feedback, patchs, and sugestions can be provided via our support system.
This is a minor release where a couple of bugs have been closed and some UI work was done to improve the workflow. It is worth to mention the new French translation, courtesy of Robert-André Mauchin, updated Dutch translation, courtesy of Daniel van Eeden, and some UI work done by Laudeci Oliveira.
Changelog:
Grab your tarball now!
Boy was I surprised when someone told me that BillReminder was a Featured Linux Download on LifeHacker! Wow!!! There were also articles on New Linux User and Productive Linux. Thank you all for taking the time to test it and recommend it too!
Some people have asked me if it is necessary to keep BillReminder running in order to get notifications, and the answer is: no. BillReminder has a daemon that runs in the background and will only poke you (with the baseball bat) if there’s something late or close to being late.
Update: Some people have told me that the .deb and .rpm seem to lack the python-imaging dependency. Please use your package management system to install this package prior to installing BillReminder. I’ll try to get updated packages as soon as I can get someone to generate them.
It is with a great pleasure that I announce the release of my pet project BillReminder! The road to 0.3 has been a very educational journey for me, and looking back when I first decided to port my original code written in C# to Python just so that I could learn more about Python, I can say that I have learned quite a bit. I have also met some fabulous people along the way, some of them very responsible for me keeping the project going. I can trully say that whenever I find the time to work on this project, I lose track of time. Whenever I feel insecure about my own skills (or when people make me feel that way) I take a look at what I have done so far… it may not be the best piece of software out there, but it is mine… written from scratch!
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Some people reported dependency errors when using one of the two .deb packages I announced today. Turns out it was due to python-sqlite2 and python-image… Our own Luiz Armesto has whipped up a newer package that can be downloaded here, now with all the right dependencies. Thanks to Diogo Autilio and Alex Bevilacqua again for sending me his packages as well (see comments)!
Today I had a day full of meetings at work and didn’t get to do any development. But I did get some feedback from people who started using BillReminder, and translated all that into newer issues. All the while Luiz is kicking some major ass, resolving them just as quickly as I create them. 
UPDATE: Just as I was about to submit this post, Diogo sent me a newer package with updates up to this second! Wow!
Today has brought some nice improvements to BillReminder, with the inclusion of inline searching and colored categories for (hopefully) easier sorting and some bling. A few more issues have been closed as well, bringing us closer and closer to a code freeze.
Also, thanks to Diogo Autilio and Alex Bevilacqua we now have BillReminder packaged for Ubuntu Gutsy! Please take them (there are 2 *.debs available) for a spin and relate any bugs or feature requests here.
Feel free to contact me directly as well… and thank you all for the positive encouragement and kind words!
Not really… but I did create this small webcast to show it off so people know what I’m talking about. I hope to attract more contributors to the project with my “production”…
If the resolution is too crappy you may want to see the original file (approx. 6MB).
Oh!!! Before I forget, check out the spiffy Screenshots page! Thanks Luiz and Vinícius for your hard work!
A few issues have been closed over the weekend, and new minor ones created just to keep ourselves focused on our goals. Please report any issues you may encounter while testing BillReminder by visiting our tracker page.
Today I fixed issue 1864094 “Time widget for individual alarms are too long“. I ended up creating a brand new widget with gtk.SpinButtons instead of gtk.ComboBoxes, since we determined that it would be useful for a different dialog. This took me a bit longer than I expected because I insisted that the hours should be zero padded (i.e. display 01, 02 and not 1, 2, etc). After spending some time on this I finally gave him and asked Johan Dahlin if it was possible, to which I received a negative answer. I proceeded to code my widget only to receive the news several minutes later that a patch had already been created and is now awaiting for someone to review. Is this awesome or what?
I have also merged all the code being done in the 0.3 branch back into trunk. So if you’re looking for the latest stuff:
svn co https://billreminder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/billreminder/trunk billreminder
Luiz today merged some code that should take care of localized currency, so please test it!
Today was a day for some basic bug hunting in BillReminder. I managed to file a few new issues in our tracker, which were quickly resolved by Luiz! They were:
We still have a few issues open that should be closed over the weekend.
On a different note, Vinícius surprised me today with a new favicon for the site! We also spent quite some time getting some javascript-based slideshow application embedded into a WordPress page, but were unsuccessful in our attempt. Tomorrow I’ll give it another go!
Today the web site got a spiffy new header, thanks to the work of Vinícius Amaral! I’d still be fighting with the css for this theme, wasn’t for his help! Needless to say, he is now responsible for the look and feel of this site from now on!
I have also received a Mandriva package done by Felipe Rafailov, based on an earlier snapshot of the 0.3 branch. Anyone out there brave enought to take it for a spin?
Finally, Luiz Armesto has single-handily closed almost all of the pending issues in order for a 0.3 release. At the rate he’s going, we should have something ready way before my planned February 15th release!