== What is this?

Agrias is my custom solution to organization. When I originally outgrew the
basic to-do list, I wrote AccomplishBoard (http://www.accomplishboard.com),
but it seems now that I've outgrown that as well. I've learned a lot about the
way I work and stay motivated over the past couple of years since I left school.
Things are different when there is no GPA at stake, and I caught myself becoming
less and less productive over time as I slowly lost the "student feeling."

I am open-sourcing this project as I can't really imagine a situation in which
hordes of other people suddenly want to track their lives in the same way that
I do. In fact, I am not sure how you found this page...

== Why "Agrias"?

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to call this app, but ultimately I
realized (again) that no one will actually see this (except you, apparently), so
it doesn't really matter what I call it. With that said, after spending a few
hours on Wikipedia looking for an appropriate goddess to name my app after (I
was going for some kind of protective/wisdom/knowledge deity), and coming up
short, I went back to my roots. I thought about all the fantasy worlds that I've
enjoyed over the years, from LOTR to Harry Potter to Bröderna Lejonhjärta, and
decided that something from the Final Fantasy series would be appropriate. My
favorite game is indeed Final Fantasy Tactics, and Agrias is a wonderful
character from that game. Indeed, I would often think how much easier life was
with Agrias on my squad (assuming Orlandu is considered cheating). Also, if you
read about her story, you'll also realize what a stand-up gal she is. If I could
stasis sword some of my tasks and get them to stop, I would do better in life.

== Conceptually, how does this work?

There are few different concepts that make up Agrias; they are:

= Buffer
The buffer is the place where you drop all your quick thoughts. It's like task
purgatory. At any time, you can process the buffer, which means sorting phrases
into their rightful types, and giving them some metrics, etc.

= Aspect
Aspects are tree-like structures that help you define the areas in your life
that you want to focus on, or that tasks tend to fall in. You can assign relative
importances to various aspects, which affects the way the tasks show up in
priority view. Aspects are ultimately task containers.

= Idea
Sometimes you have an idea that you want to develop later; just dump this idea in
the buffer, and sort it as an idea later on. You can attach resources and notes
to ideas to develop them further later on.

= Muse
A muse is a baby aspect in that it represents a small interest that you currently
have. You can associate resources and tasks with muses, and if you think it
becomes big enough, you can make it an aspect.

= Goal
You can tell Agrias about long-term goals, and Agrias will remind you daily to
take action on them. If it detects that you've been ignoring your goals for a
while, it will force you to address the goal first before you can do other stuff.
You must explicitly say that you've done nothing during this time, or do something
and record it.

= Appointment
Appointments represent a future commitment. Agrias will send reminders as the date
nears. If you miss an appointment, Agrias will use Holy Explosion on your sorry
ass, so don't miss appointments.

= Task and subtask
The basic to-do entities. Tasks require you to assign an importance and a due date.
Agrias will then automatically prioritize these for you through smart views.
Subtasks are like phrases, and are lightweight todos that ultimately help you complete
a task.

= Visualizations
This is where the rubber meets the road. All the different entities are really just
there to help you distinguish between the different types of obligations in life.
You buffer quickly so that you can capture your stream of consciousness, then later
you go in and sort everything (this is essentially the precursor to "making a plan").
The cool part is that Agrias will apply a few algorithms and let you visualize your
to-do list along different axes, among which are:

* Priority. Agrias will calculate what the priority is. Priority is a measure of
  urgency and importance, balanced by the importance of the aspect that the task
  falls under. Basically, if you follow the priority list, you will end up doing
  important things that are urgent, and not do any of the unimportant stuff. This
  is a good default.

* Board. This is a throw-over from AccomplishBoard. See your tasks laid out on a
  board to get a feel for how backlogged you are. It's also good to visually take
  in how your aspects are balancing against each other.

* Neglect. This is an experimental measure that shows you which aspects of your life
  have been neglected recently (so that you might want to temporarily increase
  the priority of those tasks).

== I don't want to install your app, so can you just explain what the usage is like?

Sure. Agrias is a Rails backend with a javascript command-line interface
simulated in your browser. There is no support for multiple users, although
because I use Devise, you can easily extend it to do so. After you login as
yourself, you can type some commands. To exit, just close your browser (duh).
The available commands are:

  buf <phrase>
  - Add a phrase to the buffer

  process
  - Go into process mode and put buffer items into their rightful types

    make (idea|muse|task|appointment|goal|aspect) <json object>
    - Turn a buffer item into the given type. Pass the object properties as json.

  see (next|board|neglect)
  - Get a visualization of tasks

  aspects
  - Go into aspect management mode

  muses
  - Go into muse management mode

  ideas
  - Go into idea management mode

  tasks
  - Go into task management mode

Inside management mode, you have basic CRUD capabilities.

== Notes

This software is made available under the MIT License, as follows:

Copyright (C) 2011 by Mohan Zhang

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.