COTTSER  This is an almost perfect replacement for MenuShade, the main thing missing is an application exclusion list, so that you can disable menu dimming in certain programs, especially ones where you use the menu bar a lot, i.e. Photoshop.  
(Version 1.3)

COTTSER  This is a great idea, and a nice little app. Love that it's scriptable, and the few options that it has are very smart.

Really, my main complaints are that the timer is jumpy, it doesn't fill up smoothly. This is rather distracting. Needs some better logic for when it's filling up the timer maybe? I don't know.

The other thing is that for some reason, I cannot quit the application by tabbing to it in Cmd-Tab and hitting Q, like every other application ever. Baffling.  
(Version 1.0)