Can anyone recommend a decent URL blocker for IE along the lines of Leechblock or somesuch?

January 14, 2008 10:38 AM

I'm descending into procrastination-by-browsing meltdown and finding it nigh on impossible to drag myself away from certain sites but it's draining my productivity. I'm covered for firefox with Leechblock but I have to use IE to access our CMS. I checked other answers here, and googled a bit but all I could find was temptation blocker, I installed it but as far as I can see it only blocks apps rather than urls. Anyone know of any other options (beyond developing some backbone!)? I don't have any admin access to my PC so I can't meddle with the settings and I don't really want to alert my employers to the fact that I'm trying to curb my non-work usage!
posted by freya_lamb to computers & internet (13 answers total)

Can you edit your hosts file?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 10:41 AM on January 14, 2008

Nope.
posted by freya_lamb at 10:42 AM on January 14, 2008

And I guess you can't edit the registry (Start -->Run -->regedit)?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 10:47 AM on January 14, 2008

Exit your browser when you are not using it.
Delete all but work related favorites (or the IE equivalent of favorites)
If you are a programmer, write yourself a front end specific to your cms which calls the IE functions, but is unable to easily get to other sites.
posted by caddis at 10:49 AM on January 14, 2008

Bite hard on the meaty part of your lower thumb everytime you stray. Hard enough that it hurts a lot. Do this everytime.

Or you can setup a squid server at home and either mess with that computer's host file or firewall. Then set your IE to use that as a proxy. Keep "Bypass proxy server for local addresses" checked so you can access your intranet.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:52 AM on January 14, 2008

Position your computer screen so that everyone can see what you are looking at.
posted by hooray at 11:14 AM on January 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Because if you can edit your registry, you can change where XP looks for your hosts file to a thumbdrive. Then, edit hosts to block out the problem sites, and then password protect that file on your thumbdrive with a superhard password (use one of the password generator pages), which you can copy, paste in, and forget. Or, if you need an out, you can have a co-worker enter the password and keep a record of it.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:26 AM on January 14, 2008

Would IE tab be able to access your CMS?
posted by missmagenta at 11:35 AM on January 14, 2008

I picked up something similar elsewhere on AskMe:

Every time you feel the drag to procrastinate or catch yourself drifting, stop. Really, in the moment, just take a little pause. And a breath. Ask yourself "what's the right thing to do?"

Then do that.

And perhaps accept that you may never be "perfect" at this, but you can improve yourself greatly over time.
posted by asuprenant at 12:15 PM on January 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm with missmagenta -- if IE Tab will work for your CMS, then you have no excuse to fire up IE directly. You can set IE Tab up to use IE's engine by default for your CMS site, and it should be completely transparent to you. Live in Firefox all day and let LeechBlock be your guide.
posted by flexiblefine at 2:25 PM on January 14, 2008

I thought I had no backbone either, but I am growing one with the help of a new app. I am currently using a program called RescueTime in beta that tracks your computer usage than shows that info to you in various graphs. You tag your applications however you want, so I can see bar graphs with 'procrastination', 'timewaster', 'work'. After I tracked my usage for a week, I was pretty ashamed and shocked to see how much time I actually wasted when I really, really needed to be working. I showed it to my boyfriend, so that I was more ashamed. After that, I put it right on my homepage, so that if I click on my broswer, I am automatically faced with my data. I don't know if you can/want to use this at work, though. (Not affliated with it at all.)
posted by typewriter at 3:55 PM on January 14, 2008

Hmm, that RescueTime thing is pretty cool - anyone know a version that doesn't send all of your data to a third party, but does something similar?
posted by Happy Dave at 1:00 AM on January 15, 2008

Top tips all round - I went for IE tab (cheers muchly missmagenta/flexiblefine!) and this plus the awesome power of Leechblock has proper done the biz. I am now basking in site restricted joy.

Thanks all very much!
posted by freya_lamb at 4:07 AM on January 15, 2008