15 March 2011

Need a 5-Minute Countdown Timer? Look No Further!

Update, 3/10/14: I have posted a better 5-minute countdown timer (requires PowerPoint with macros enabled). If that doesn't work for you, feel free to download the animated .gif described below.

I looked all over the Web for a simple five-minute timer that I could use to count down to the start of our church's Sunday service. After a great deal of fruitless Googling, I threw in the towel and decided to make my own.

This cost me a good amount of time and quite a bit of frustration to finish, so I would love if others could get some use out of it too! Follow this link, then right-click on the "Download" button and choose "Save As" to save the animation to your PC. You can then insert it into a Powerpoint or other slideshow as needed.

Here are the specs:
  • Transparent background
  • Black text
  • Arial font
  • 800 x 400 pixels
  • Counts down from five minutes (5 minutes)
  • Great to track time before the start of a service, class, or meeting; also useful for mid-meeting breaks
  • A little bit wobbly because I messed the alignment up on a few images (but not too noticeably, I hope)
I made this using the excellent open-source image editing program Paint.NET and a marvelous little freeware tool called UnFREEz, from the technowizards at WhitSoft Development. Tedious though this was to create, these two free tools made it go MUCH more smoothly.

I guess this is the place where I should insert the obligatory appeal for remuneration. So here goes: if you would like to show your appreciation for this countdown, please do something to help someone who is truly in need. God loves a cheerful giver, and I've already got everything I want. :-)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Do you have one in white? Looks great otherwise...

luaphacim said...

Unfortunately, I don't have a good way to make it in white text. However, here's a MUCH better way to make a countdown timer, with any background and text format you want (assuming you have MS PowerPoint and don't mind poking around with macros): http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/Animated_Timer2.html

Good luck!

luaphacim said...

I am actually planning to post an example .pptm that shows how to implement this code, for those who don't really understand macros... that will come shortly.

luaphacim said...

That post should be going up in the next day or so...