[dev] Re: dwm: suckless way to monitor work hours

Dnia 07.09.2009 Niklas Koponen <niklas.koponen_AT_iki.fi> napisał/a:
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 11:27 PM, Preben Randhol<randhol_AT_pvv.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:07:47 +0300
>> Niklas Koponen <niklas.koponen_AT_iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>>> My plan is to take a snaphot of the root window at certain intervals
>>> if there has been some mouse or keyboard activity. I also record the
>>> amount of activity. Then I store the information and at the end of the
>>> month I just generate a report based on this information.
>>
>> Any reason you need something so complicated? You only get paid by
>> keyboard/mouse activity?
>
> Yes. I do java development.
>
> Actually I'm so lazy to mark down my hours when I do the work, so that
> after a month it is also impossible to figure out if I had a day off
> or if I did only a half day and so on.

There is one utility that does something similar, although for a
different purpose: xwrits (http://www.lcdf.org/xwrits/) monitors
keyboard / mouse activity to force you to break not to kill your
hands. It has some interesting functions like accummulating breaks
you take anyway (going to drink sth., play with the kids etc.)
not to nag you every straight hour.

Looking at the source of xwrits it's quite pleasant and suckless,
so maybe it can be hacked up to provide a report to give you your
activity times.

This could be combined with plain old UNIX accounting (ac(8) on BSD
systems) to accumulate some resource types over time for the very
purpose to bill their usage. Since FreeBSD sends a monthly login
report to me every month I actually see how long my laptop was on.
Probably it could be hacked to track actual X activity time (as
defined by xwrits for example) - the only thing you need is to
manipulate utmp and wtmp - and voila - your timesheet is ready.
You might only need to switch users (login names) for different
projects. Or switch to OpenSolaris and use project management
features there.

(Coming back after dwm/wmii->dev migration, still confused, maybe
the old way was not that bad - somehow I have the feeling that
mailing list manager is slow && the newsgroup subscription
remarks provided by GMANE are not up to date)

-- 
              << Marcin Cieslak // saper_AT_saper.info >>