We’ve all sat through lectures, talks, and symposia that went on too long, some of us may even have been guilty of overrunning! Blogging chemist Andrew Sun was worried about this problem and hunted across the Internet in search of a countdown timer that could be run on one’s desktop to alert a speaker to the time they have left. Unfortunately, while there are many timers available online, most of them are either less than serious or else relate to cooking pizza and boiling eggs. He wanted something a little more dignified, that would not look out of place in a scientific symposium and wouldn’t embarass him in front of his Professor.
So being as intrepid a scientist as ever there was, Sun decided to write his own application to do the job for him so here is LectureTime courtesy of Dr Sun ready for free download. The LectureTime readme file) is here.
You can read more about the tool on Sun’s blog here. Please give it a try and let us know how you get on or if you have any problems in the comments box below. Of course, you can still use LectureTime to boil an egg or cook pizza, just don’t do it during your lecture!