diff --git a/README b/README index 0dce92a..8e4cabf 100644 --- a/README +++ b/README @@ -3,10 +3,46 @@ Read about this project on my blog: http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/04/29/persona Inspired by this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html This was developed by Stian HĂ„klev, shaklev@gmail.com, using a few snippets from other sources. I release -it under Public Domain. But feel free to share any modifications. +it under Public Domain. But feel free to share any modifications. I totally wrote this to scratch my own itch, +but if you find this, or a version of this, useful, letting me know would totally make my day. + +"INSTALLATION" + +configuration and running +- first, edit the Categories list in library.rb to reflect the categories you care about. Personally I have chosen + 0 to be "stepping away from the computer", this category isn't counted. 9 is reserved for the status overview, + and I use 6 as "goofing off", ie. doing anything else on my computer. I also left 7 and 8 as two nameless projects, + these are useful if I want to track something for just a day or two (right now I am using project 1 to track time + I spend on this program). However, anything between 1-8 is all up to you. You can also change it as many times + as you want - it writes the entire text, not the number, to the data file, so your data won't be confused if you track + "editing wikipedia" on 3 for two days, and then change 3 to tracking "contributing to KDE" +- for every time you start a new activity (and by extension, end an old one - there isn't a way of "just ending" an + activity, you always start a new one - even if the new one is "resting" (0)), you run entry.rb, with the number + as a command line argument. For example, /usr/bin/ruby entry.rb 4, which will change your status to category 4, + write a timestamp in today's file, and pop up a short message about that. +- to display the current status, you run status.rb + +global hotkeys +- the whole point of this program is to be extremely unobtrusive and "fit in" with your workflow, so of course, you don't + want to have to switch to terminal and type "entry 4" every time you start doing something else. I have tied entry 0-8 + to Cmd+Opt 0-8, and status to Cmd+Opt 9 (note that theoretically, you can tie Cmd+Alt S to status, and you can assign + all the letters in the alphabet to differently numbered categories - I wouldn't recommend it though, the point is that + there shouldn't be much cognitive load when switching tasks) +- I found two ways of assigning global hotkeys, one is to use Automator on Mac, create new workflows that launch the script + with different parameters as services, and then assign hot keys to those services in the keyboard control panel +- The other way is to use FreeHotKeys (http://www.batista.org/freehotkeys.html), a free program which I am currently using. + To configure that program, you need to copy the files in the fhk-files directory to the ~/Library/Preferences/FreeHotKeys + directory (and do a global search and replace to replace the path to the ruby script with the path where it resides on + your system) TODO: - deal with midnight-switch - script that processes timestamp files and spits out lists of activities (what format?) +- replace text files with sqlite? - the ideal thing would be to find existing software/website set up to analyze this data, rather than to do it ourselves (can spit out in whatever format is desired, pretty much) + +IDEA: +- use YAML dumping/loading to keep running tallies of different categories: today... first time run after new day, + add to tallies for weekly, monthly. (or be able to set a benchmark time - from now on)... + \ No newline at end of file