Tag: Life

Soon Enough: the day you’re waiting for, up in your menu bar

A small Mac app for counting down to the good things. Free for a week, no account, no card.

I kept doing the same arithmetic in my head. How many weeks until the quarter ends? How many days until the trip? How long until the thing I had been looking forward to since March?

The calendar can tell you, but you have to go ask it, and by the time you find the date and count backward, you have lost the small pleasure of knowing. I wanted the number to just be there, the way the clock is there.

So I built Soon Enough. It puts the next big day in your menu bar, and the rest of them in widgets on your desktop.

The next one, always visible

Click the menu bar, and you get the list: what’s next, what’s after that, and how long each is. It counts in days until the last day, then hours, then minutes.

Nothing to open, nothing to search.

Widgets you’ll actually keep

This is the part people seem to like most. A countdown can be a plain number, a ring that empties as the day approaches, or a split-flap departure board that used to clatter in train stations.

And you can put a photo behind it. The beach you’re going to, the person whose birthday it is, the mountain you’re flying out to ski. It turns a number into something you’re glad to glance at — which, for an app about things you’re looking forward to, is most of the point.

Fourteen colors, and about six and a half thousand symbols to pick from, so a countdown can look like the thing it’s counting to.

For students and teachers

If your school uses Canvas, paste your calendar feed link into Settings › Canvas and every due date starts counting down on its own, by course. No re-typing, no keeping two lists in step. Assignments appear as they’re posted and disappear as they pass.

I teach, I use this, and it is the feature I would not give up.

The small things

It talks to Siri and Shortcuts, shows up in Spotlight, and syncs through your own iCloud account if you want it on more than one Mac. It can remind you on the day. Every destructive thing can be undone. It works properly with VoiceOver.

It updates itself.

Your countdowns live on your Mac. No ads, no analytics, no tracking, and no account to make — I never see your data because it never comes to me.

What it won’t do

It is not a task manager, and I have deliberately kept it from becoming one.

No projects, no subtasks, no priorities, no completion percentages. A countdown is a date, a name, and how long is left. If you want to track work, you already have something better than this.

It needs macOS 15 Sequoia or later. That one stings a bit — it rules out some older Macs — but Sequoia is what makes the widgets behave the way I wanted.

It is Mac only. There’s no iPhone app (yet), and I’m not promising one.

Try it for a week

Soon Enough is free for seven days, with every feature unlocked. No account.

No credit card. Download it, and it just runs.

After the week, a license is $9.99, once — not a subscription — and it covers up to three of your Macs. And if you don’t buy one, the app doesn’t hold your countdowns hostage: the menu bar and your widgets keep working. You just need a license to add or change a countdown.

If it turns out it’s not for you, email me within 30 days, and I’ll refund it.

Download the free trial at soonenough.app

If you try it, I’d genuinely like to know what you’re counting down to.

Three Times and Still Surprised

A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from Clark College Vice President of Instruction Dr. Terry Brown. At the beginning of the call, he first informed me that I had not been selected for a sabbatical I had applied for, but then told me he had some good news. During that conversation, I learned that I had been selected to receive the Clark College Exceptional Faculty Award. The recognition will also be shared during the graduation ceremonies in June and publicly announced on the Clark College website during Opening Week events this fall.

I was also honored to be one of seven faculty members receiving the award this year, and I want to congratulate the other six recipients. There are so many talented and dedicated people doing incredible work across this college, and I’m proud to be included alongside them.

What makes this especially meaningful to me is that this is now the third time I’ve received the award during my years at Clark College.

When I first came to Clark College in 2013 after many years working in industry, I never imagined something like this would happen once, let alone three times. Teaching has been one of the most meaningful chapters of my life. Exhausting at times? Absolutely. Frustrating sometimes? Of course. But also rewarding in ways that are difficult to explain unless you’ve worked closely with students and watched them slowly build their confidence.

I’ve always tried to bring a real-world perspective into the classroom. Technology changes fast. Sometimes faster than education can keep up with. I want students to see the reality of the field they are entering, not a cleaned-up version. That means learning technical skills, but also learning how to adapt, communicate, collaborate, solve problems, and keep learning when the tools inevitably change again next year.

Accessibility has also been a huge part of my teaching. As someone who is legally blind, I have never found this theoretical for me. It’s part of my daily life, and I’ve worked hard to make it a foundation of our Web Development program at Clark College.

And then there’s AI, which is obviously the elephant in the room right now.

I honestly don’t know exactly what the future holds for two-year Web Development programs. I think anybody claiming they fully know is probably fooling themselves a bit. The technology world is shifting incredibly fast right now, and higher education is trying to figure out where it fits in. Maybe in the future, it will become less a traditional web development degree and more an AI-first program centered on design, development, accessibility, problem-solving, and human-centered technology. I think we’re already starting to see that shift happen.

What I do know is that students still need guidance, mentorship, honesty, and people willing to help them navigate uncertainty.

What means the most to me about this award is knowing that students are part of the nomination process. That matters to me more than I can probably put into words.

To my students, past and present, thank you. Thank you for trusting me, pushing me, challenging me, making me laugh, and occasionally putting up with my long stories and stubbornness.

And to my colleagues across Clark College, thank you as well. None of us does this work alone. I’ve been fortunate to work with incredibly thoughtful and supportive people over the years, and I’ve learned a great deal from all of you.

I also want to acknowledge many of my friends who may be reading this. A lot of you have helped shape who I am in ways you probably don’t even realize. Some of you are friendships I’ve kept since childhood, while others came from previous jobs, industry work, organizations, and different chapters of my life over the years. Some of you have been there through career changes, personal struggles, difficult moments, successes, losses, long conversations, random technology debates, music discussions, and all the twists and turns life throws at people over the years. All of that matters more than people sometimes say out loud.

And finally, to my family, including my wife Gayle and my parents, thank you for helping shape the person I am today. Your support, patience, honesty, and encouragement carried me through more than you probably realize.

I’m deeply grateful for all of it.

Bruce’s Life Experiences No. 3394

I’m thankful for the experiences throughout my careers at UL, SHARP, OpenNTF, Elguji and Clark College that exposed me to international business, world culture, diversity, and humanity. A day doesn’t go by when I am not working or talking with people from all over the world.

Thank you to all of you who were part of those experiences.