XXLog, The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread
(If you’re a freelance artist)
Article by Kenray

Freelance Artist. Sounds like a great career choice, right? Well, it is. Good for the soul, good for the body, good for the mind. And one of the best things about being a freelance artist is that there are very few physical hassles involved in your work.

And now, there is one less.

I can remember the first time I took a job assignment on an hourly basis. I was very happy to get the work, and very happy to be in my own home on my own machine, and the rate was wonderful. Then I discovered the hassle that I had been missing whilst working on salary.

I sat down to start my work, opened my little notebook, wrote down the correct time of day, and started the project. About thirty minutes later, the phone rang. Being of honest Southern Baptist/Marine Corps upbringing, I dutifully noted the time as I took the phone call. When the call was over, I dutifully noted the time that I restarted working, and went to it. A short time later, I got hungry, and decided to go for lunch. Again, I noted the time and...well, basically this is how it went:

Every time I took my hands off the machine, I was writing down the time. Cigarettes, coffee, meals, phone calls and a myriad of other distractions later, I had finished the project. I had also created three pages worth of time-card. And doing the math on that sucker gave me a headache!

And so, I was completely overjoyed when I was made aware of a great new freeware application called XXLog. Imagine having your own little time clock sitting in the corner of your desktop, which you can start, pause or stop at the click of a button.

This is how the programs's author describes it:

"'XXLog is a simple program designed to keep track of a work project, graphic or otherwise, with the ability to attribute a fee structure to account for the charges to your client. The stop-watch effect is equally suited to tracking any time-lapse function, with its ability to export to text record' "

Super convenient, eh? Well, it gets better.

Not only can you keep super accurate records of your work hours, but also you can have as many “Jobs” as you want on file. You can also tell this wonderful little app what your hourly rate is, and have it calculate what you’ve earned. And XXLog will export that info to a text file for the greater comfort and confidence of your clientele...

And best of all, you can skin it!

This is a screenshot of XXLog running on my desktop, using the default skin, by Bakerstreet.

Rolf Redford, a resident of Washington State, USA, created this wonderful treat of a program. He’s a hobbyist who enjoys programming and 3d art. XXLog is not the first or the only program in Rolf’s portfolio. His first app was XXCalc, a freeware, skinnable calculator. Rolf once told me that he created few apps, because he wanted “to avoid creating the same skinnable app as anyone else.”

At the time XXCalc came out, it was the only calculator you could get that was completely skinnable. As far as we know, XXLog is the only skinnable application of it’s kind.

From the experience of creating XXCalc, Rolf learned to turn to the community of skinners as part of the development process for his latest app. The original idea for XXLog was found on a message board. The development of the XXlog application, and the default set of skins for it, were done with the voluntary assistance of some prominent skinners, including (but not limited to), Bakerstreet (who designed the default skin), Jafo, Paxx, and Virophile. This group created the skinpak that comes with the XXLog application.

Rolf also makes sure you know it. When you load a new skin for XXLog, you get a window showing the authors name, email and site addy. And that's a whole lot more credit than most applications will show when loading a skin.

Being that XXlog is so incredibly useful, I asked Rolf if he was going to upload it to any of the big freeware sites, like NoNags, Filemine or ZIffnet. A useful program appearing on one of these megasites can lead thousands of visitors to an authors website, and generate a lot of respect and interest.

Rolf told me, “No”.

He says he isn’t really concerned with such things, but if the sites wanted to add his program to their database he wouldn’t mind. It is very seldom in the tech world that you will find a programmer so willing to share his work, and so humble as not to be screaming about it from every rooftop....

SO, if you know an artist, or anyone else, who might find XXLog useful, please send them a little email about it, or send them this article. Word of mouth is the best advertising, y’know.

XXLog is freeware. It is available from http://xxcalc.redfords.net/xxlog.htm. The program comes with a package of five skins. The download is 293k, and the XXLog program is 301k. The program has options for “Always on Top” and “Minimize to Taskbar”.

If you find the program useful, please be sure to mention it to a friend, and perhaps, drop a note of thanks to Rolf.

As part of the research on XXLog, I designed this skin, called Kallisti.
I am happy to offer it to the readers of Teknidermy.
Click the image to download the file.