2.28
So the 2.28 is out. Seeing people viewing the site somewhat more actively these days, just wanted to give out shout, to find what you think of the new stable and what’s missing for you in this business.
Right now I’m conveying my coding spree to other, non-Gnome related areas, but knowing myself, some time soon I will be back for hamster.
I personally think that tool tips in overview would be nice, and some richer interactivity with graphs would be nice (like clicking in graph to zoom in or something). Also I plan to add end times for tasks, so you don’t have to do math trying to answer question “if i started at 1:19pm and spent 1h27 minutes on the task, when did i finish?”. And observing my own time tracking habits, will add a quick syntax to mark task as started from the end of the last one. That is – if you suddenly realized that since you stopped tracking the last task, all that time you have been doing something else, you will use zero delta, or simply “- other task”.
But those are really small details.
Oh, then there is the “Shh” thing (sssshhhelll). I hope it won’t loose it’s “s” during development. The hype around this redefining product waves me red flags. But I bet everything gonna be all right at the end. I’m just so damn fond of Metacity and how good it works. But back to topic – will see in what hole they decide to poke applets in. Can’t wait, really!
I’m somewhat concerned that the release notes do not mention Hamster, and use the translatable “Time Tracker” instead. Since distributions like Ubuntu don’t include hamster by default (but it is in the repository), I wonder how many will wonder what’s that Time Tracker thing release notes are talking about.
But then again – hey – who needs more users when we have You! And you have been quite kind to us 
You’re right, it took me quite a while to find the hamster package after reading about it in the release notes.
I like it a bunch. The new statistics and overview are really cool.
I need a word on advice on how to upgrade from previous release on Jaunty 64 bit, if anybody has one spare minute to point me in the right direction, I’ll be very grateful!
So far I found: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hamster-applet but there’s the 2.26 only for Jaunty, and the 2.28 for Koala gives a problem with the dependencies from libgtk…
Don’t know about packages, but you could try installing from sources
http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/building-and-running/
We try to not depend on most recent versions of libraries, so that should work just fine.
Thank you Tom that worked perfectly for me.
One word of advice for fellow Jaunty users: the package “python-gnomeapplet” is not in the repo, but hamster will still compile and install as expected.
PS: didn’t know about the psychological profiling goodie… but it was rather spot on: I AM a night owl!
hahaha, you would be the first one then that i know of – thanks for sharing (i was not sure if those numbers are realistic, quite possibly will tweak them over 2.29)! Those classifications are experimental and just for kicks. I hope they won’t offend anybody!
The python-gnomeapplet is from packages being renamed in karmic i think. Before that it was called gnomeapplet if i’m not mistaken. And it could be that it worked for you without the package because you might already had it installed.
Thanks for info, quasi!
Apparently I spoke a bit too early… I am having an issue with tracking “live”.
Indeed when I try to start logging my time, hamster add a “past entry” with the correct starting time, but the finishing time set *prior to the starting time*, resulting in a huge timer value. For example: it’s now 16:06, I start tracking and I find an entry in my log started at 16:06 and finished at 14:57 with an overall time of 22750h 50m.
I did *not* file a but as I assume it might depend from the fact I upgraded an existing installation by compiling the code by myself, but I am ready to do so if it turns out to be a real bug.
In any way, I would love to receive some help in working this around.
(I am using Jaunty 64bit, fully up-to-date, and I live in a +1 GMT time zone).
Thanks in advance!
gah, it smells like 64bit again. i thought we solved that. please file a bug!
For those who might follow this thread: the bug (complete of a screencast demo) is here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=596617
Public note: It turned out to be 64bit aftermath from 2.26 that generated erroneous data. Hamster has no issues with 64 bit any more.
Unfortunately I’m forced to use Windows at work.
I would really really REALLY like to see the Hamster project running on Windows.
How difficult would the port be? GTK is available for windows!
I did not find any project as great and easy as hamster, for windows
Shouldn’t be too hard if somebody picks up the work started in bug 541316 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541316#c6 i’ll do my best to merge it
I will try it out as soon as i’m back on a windows maschine again…
I am not one of the devs nor in any way involved in the project (other than as a daily user of hamster), yet – as a GNU/Linux guy – I would rather like to see development efforts going in the direction of a stricter integration with gnome (of which hamster now is part of) or new cool features, rather than in porting to windows [the more "portable" a program is, the less "integrated" it becomes...].
Lifehacker has recently published a top-5 of the best time-trackers (of which hamster is part of!). Maybe you would like to check there if you missed some alternatives? Some of those working on windows seem pretty cool to me:
http://lifehacker.com/5362829/five-best-time+tracking-applications
That said, you have my sympathy in your struggle with the IT policies of your company!
I just don’t think they are as great as hamster!
I don’t want application tracking or url tracking. All I need is a simple tracker, where I can easyli hit a shortcut-key, change status and continue work. The app should be in systray or wellintegrated like hamster in gnome.
Great integration with gnome is of course importent. I hope the project will continue to be well-designed. Great software design will allow for both a gnomish and windowish UI.
If gnome is missing the features should just be disabled.
What about the KDE users? They would like the hamster to!
I just wish there were a string limit on how far the bar for the taskbar that by default says “No activity”. I use Hamster/Time Tracker for work, and sometimes my descriptions get really long “Working on stuff for case 234234 where the end of the page is broken.” and then is pushes other things on my taskbar around. Would be nice if it were truncated at a certain length, like “Working on stuff for case 234…”
Youd could file a bug!
Worth a try, I suppose:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=597748
I like it, nice work, another thing I recently noted while looking for time management tools/techniques is the pomodoro technique (http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/). Would love to see functionality added to deal with this!
On a more general note… how difficult would it be to implement a plugin system for hamster? I think it would be a nice feature that would boost the userbase and enrich hamster of functionalities.
It would also facilitate contributions if – for example – the API would allow to use pure python code to interact with it. Say somebody would volunteer to implement a taxonomy plugin…
Hello,
It is probably not a bug, but it bugs me a little
The bars in the “Statistics” window do not appear until working time reaches ca 2 h 20 minutes. Can it be changed or configured to show bars even on those days, when less time was spent on tracked activities? One reason could be that currently the graph seems to show disproportionate picture: if you worked for 3 hours on one day and 6 hours on the other, the graph will not show you a bar that is twice as tall, but rather 8 times taller or so. The other reason is that sometimes I track my time for a period ca 2 hours and it does not show on the graph at all, so I can not tell wheteher there was no activity at all or whether there was some.
I know i can check this on monthly graphs, but I would like to use the yearly graph more.
i’m afraid i can’t follow you. could you maybe make a screenshot?
I am not sure how to show the image, but here it is:
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6161/october.png
on October the 1st I tracked 6:22, on the 2nd: 6:19, on the 3rd: 2:16, on the 4th 6:04 etc. The stats graph does not show any activity on the 3rd at all (this ugly blank space), since it was less than 2:20 or so. And had I tracked 2:30 on that day, the graph would show just a tiny bar, may times smaller than the neighbouring bars, which on the whole gives false impression. For instance, the las bar on the following picture shows 3 tracked hours and the one before last shows 6 hours. Still, the last one is not 2 times shorter, but multiple times shorter:
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/879/sept.png
hahaha, since i have 3 years there, i did not realize that the talk was about the top graph.
it certainly is not intended to be precise, and it is quite possible that somewhere in the code is a rounding error. one thing i can promise you though, is that the graph will become less and less usable as you keep using hamster. the main purpose of it is to show the whole picture, in “a lot” and “a bit” qualities.
will check what’s going in the graph though, thanks!
Thank you. And if you have a look at it, you might also notice that there is some inconsistency when you compare the top graph with the others. Apparently, all activities which start after midnight are added to the previous day (until 5 AM i believe). And it shows on graphs, except for the top graph, which I think counts any activity started after midnight as belonging to the new day. That will make the graphs look inconsistent for people who work at night a lot. But then again, it is not really a problem.
Do you have a source repository for hamster? Issues with 2.28 have kinda left me wishing I could contribute to the code, see if I can do bugfixes for it, and the like.
i’d suggest looking on the right side under “participating!” link
Yep, came across it by googling, was jus’ coming back here to say I’d found it. Have you ever tried github?
Hi,
that rodent of yours sure is a life saver!
tracking my time with paper and pencil periodically ended up in chaos for me. especially since 2.28 i would never want to miss it again. there are, however, a few things i would love to see in a future release. preferrably the next one of course
first though: when naming an activity, i just use ids provided by a bug tracker. each note in those bug tracker entries also has a id.
1) i would like to enter the name of an activity and see how much time i spent on that activity overall. some tasks drag along for months, so in the end i have to sum these times by myself. maybe the easiest way is to add a button “Total” next to “Day”, “Week” and “Month”. that would be sufficient for me.
2) when entering an activity (i’m thinking of the popup opening when one clicks the button on the gnome panel) there is a list of today’s past activities. i would rather it showed me a list of the last 24 hours.
3) sub-categories would be neat: sometimes a single BT-entry contains notes regarding things that are not as connected to the actual problem as they maybe should be.
in such cases i type something like:
1234-2345@work
where 1234 is the bug-id and 2345 is the note-id. nicer would be 2345@work/1234.
in the category “work” there would by a subcategory “1234″. when looking at statistics for “work”, i see everything. looking at “work/1234″ i see everything in that subcategory…i.e. everything regarding bug-id 1234. this would enhance usability a great deal for these yet not very common but in my case still existent (and surely f***ed up) situations.
4) of course, as alluded in (3), one would need statistics on categories and subcategories. but since i only have the category “work”, i can’t really say much about that.
this is what i’m sort of missing. maybe quite a lot, but you asked for it
still, i find it appropriate to end my comment the way i started it:
that rodent of yours sure is a life saver!
thanks!
michael
p.s. if i was unclear in any way and you are interested in what i was talking about, just drop me a line.
Oh, man, last 24 hours instead of a nightly cutoff, so you can simply pick up the task you left off the night before, I definitely second that.
thanks for the extensive feedback, Michael!
I believe that at least part of #1 is answered by the statistics tab page.
Regards second point, i am thinking about a preference setting.
For the third i believe tags will be the answer (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=529113)
I really love this application. I’m using it via Ubuntu and found it via ‘timetracker’. I work freelance, and Hamster has helped me track time – it’s really easy to integrate into my regular work-flow.
Another application I use on a daily basis is taskwarrior (http://taskwarrior.org/) which is a command-line based task organiser based on todo.txt. I like it because it’s simple, can be used anywhere I have a terminal open and provides flexibility. What would be amazing is if the tasks that I add there (which are recorded in a simple text file) were available to select in Hamster as activities.
For my own productivity, this would provide the missing link in my work-flow. I don’t know if a plug-in like this would be useful to other people – but I think the general concept of allowing task management applications to ‘feed’ tasks to Hamster could be a good one.
What do you think?
I’m trying out hamster to track my sleeping & self study habits, Hope it works out. I read on wikipedia “Although Metacity is part of the GNOME project and designed to integrate into the GNOME desktop, it does not require GNOME to run, and GNOME can be used with different window managers provided that they support the part of the ICCCM specification that GNOME requires.” So this means that GNOME could continue to be bundled with MetaCity and called GNOME_classic/vintage/mature or something.