Urge Purge

Urge Purge is an impulse blocker and web app developed to stop those that have low self-control to stay efficient by blocking sites and with a proxy or interceptor and reasonable it at a later time.

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Inspiration

All of us get distracted one way or another, especially when working. We were surprised to find out that this simple idea had not been implemented or created before, and thus we took on the challenge of implementing it.

What it does

Urge Purge temporarily disables apps or sites for a certain amount of time that the user sets to increase work efficiency and break bad habits. You can set the duration for each blocked app.

How we built it

We used a proxy web server to intercept web traffic and an on machine instance to intercept local programs.

Challenges we ran into

  • The internet speed and stability of Conferences@MIP and MIP Internet really hurt our ability to debug as we weren't able to search problems up half of the time. Instead of our usual number of Github commits, we tried to minimize the amount of traffic used.
  • PythonQT threads cannot be killed by Node.js until after the program is finished.
  • What seemed like a simple task of sending GET and POST requests to check which websites were in the list took many hours to debug.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Completing most of the program without Stack Overflow for the first time.

What we learned

  • POST and GET to and from server

What's next for Urge Purge

We want to expand the desktop apps functionality to block buy buttons, for those impulse buying as well as a password that stops the user themselves from changing the duration of the blocked app for a certain amount of time.

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