Participating!
Code is here (git url checkout url: git://git.gnome.org/hamster-applet)
The more the merrier, so your company is greatly appreciated.
How could you possibly help, you ask?
0) Bug reports – help us iron out those corners. A patch would be even more awesome. Before you file the bug though, please check that there is no similar bug and also verify that the bug can be reproduced when installed from sources.
1) Suggestions – nothing fuels a project like fresh opinion – if you have an idea how to make hamster even better, file an enhancement – just remember – be nice, we all are hoomans 
2) Coding! – All is done in sweet Python. Don’t know how to code in Python? – Well, that’s simple, you could start with this nice online book, and don’t be afraid to ask questions!
Any way or other – company is nice, so just Jump in!™
We also have a low frequency mailing list which might be worth checking out or subscribing to!
Works great, but
1. Maybe you can change the 0.5h, 0.3h … to 30min and 1h 20min, or maybe you can make this as an option in settings.
2. The buttons doesn’t look very GNOMEish.
3. When I make the panel transparent, the background of Hamster stays gray.
Thanks, man!
I converted #1 and #3 to bugs:
http://code.google.com/p/projecthamster/issues/detail?id=8
http://code.google.com/p/projecthamster/issues/detail?id=9
#2: if you are talking about looks, then it is work in progress – the panel itself doesn’t look too god for now since it has no decorations at all.
Hamster is a great peace of software. Thanks for it!
I have modified it a bit by myself to display current salary next to the time. Maybe this can be useful for someone else.
Here is howto (however in czech): http://www.abclinuxu.cz/blog/Dundee5/2009/1/hamster-applet-pridani-aktualniho-vydelku-na-panel
I’m looking forward to the next release, with drop-down categories (I only have 3 but they’re important – my 3 employers).
I have a problem with categories and activities though – because it’s currently possible to start typing an activity name and then hit return by mistake (before selecting the text from the drop-box) I regularly end up with an orange bar in my chart which says ‘other’. This can make the difference of a few day’s work sometimes being mis counted. These activities don’t show up in the list to be exported to HTML, so I can’t begin to work out what they might be. Is there any way of accessing this data and editing the activity?
Thank you!
the orange “other” bar groups all the activities after 11th most worked on, so they are actually typed under other names and for certain should be available in the list in left side of overview. You could edit the ones with non-standard names and move them to the ones you are actually using.
just checked 2.24 – uh, it seems that we really have moved forward in 2.26
Ah! OK, so it doesn’t represent lost data, just fitting everything important on the screen! That’s very reassuring Toms.
I didn’t say, but Project Hamster really is a killer application for Linux – I have Windows friends who are green with envy, and at least one has tried running Linux under VirtialBox just to use PH!
Looking forward to the latest version, whenever that hits the Ubuntu repositories.
Hi, can someone help me with this?
I want to move my db location from the default
$HOME/.gnome2/hamster-applet/hamster.db
to my “dropbox” folder so that I can use the same db (but not at the same time!) on different machines.
I log using my eeepc 701, but it’s easier to work on the reports on my desktop at home.
Many thanks
if you are not afraid to edit code, you could adjust USER_HAMSTER_DIR in hamster/__init__.py
The other option would be to make a conduit sync conf.
And the third option would be to symlink hamster conf directory into dropbox
Restarting hamster is not necessary because we don’t keep open connections, but it might lead to interesting results though
tm, many thanks for reply.
edited
$ /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/hamster/_init_.py
as suggested on my intrepid install (hamster-applet 2.24.1) which worked like a charm.
However on my desktop which is running jaunty (hamster-applet 2.26.0) I can’t find the _init_.py file to edit.
Has the location been moved on this updated version?
Mark
It’s ok! now found it!
/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/hamster/_init_.py
Many thanks
Mark
Ummm, not so good….
Newer version 2.26.0 doesn’t seem to like me editing the location!
I log out then back in and I get an error message about loading applet.
Should I keep the folder name the same?
i.e. I’ve located the db
$”~/Dropbox/Time Tracker”
which works fine on 2.24.1, but should I relocate to
$”~/Dropbox/hamster-app”
Any suggestions?
Mark
Mark, i’d suggest you read the error message and solve it.
Or, maybe just leave the file where it is and symlink it into dropbox.
I also hope that you are not trying to use same database both with 2.24 hamster and 2.26 hamster, because hamster is backwards compatible, but not future and that may cause some trouble.
it’s a 2.24 db I’m trying to read it on a 2.26 install so should work.
When I copy db into the 2.26 version (pasted into $~/.gnome2/hamster-applet)
I get the following error
The panel encountered a problem while loading “OAFIID:Hamster_Applet”.
Do you want to delete the applet from your configuration?
same error if I try to move the db location.
If I delete the db it works again (fresh db with no entries)
Cheers
You can get access to the real error message when you run hamster from terminal with the -w switch.
that is
/usr/lib/hamster-applet/hamster-applet -w
here’s the error
Data Dir: /usr/share/hamster-applet
SELECT version FROM version None
ALTER TABLE facts add column description varchar2 ()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/hamster-applet/hamster-applet”, line 60, in
hamster.__init_db()
File “/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/hamster/__init__.py”, line 90, in __init_db
storage = Storage(dispatcher)
File “/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/hamster/storage.py”, line 26, in __init__
self.run_fixtures()
File “/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/hamster/db.py”, line 689, in run_fixtures
self.execute(“ALTER TABLE facts add column description varchar2″)
File “/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/hamster/db.py”, line 506, in execute
res = cur.execute(statement, params)
sqlite3.OperationalError: duplicate column name: description
nyah, this is the 2.24 -> 2.26 case.
install sqlite3 and after that do
sqlite3 ~/.gnome2/hamster-applet/hamster.db “update version set version=5″
the error will keep popping up if you switch between 2.24 and 2.26. Essentially there was bug in 2.24 upgrade script that kept downgrading version number. It has been fixed 2.26 so it’s gonna be alright for future releases.
Yay TOMs,
you might tell me, how you code? I mean, what env. IDE, strategy, approach, etc. etc. do you use? Just starting with good ol’ python (2.6), and it actually rokxs! Tnx!
Hey Ro – i use Open Komodo to do python stuff, and the ui is done with glade.
I use devhelp extensively for lookup (info on packages), and sometimes ipython to do some on the fly tests.
I guess that’s pretty much it.
Oh, and i have couple of python projects in my version control folder when i want to take a peek how this or that has been solved in other projects.
Hey,
I love using Hamster, but would be really interested in seeing Google Calendar integration. Like as you enter and do tasks, they’re posted to a Google calendar of your choice. I was looking at the G calendar api, and this doesn’t seem too hard, and I’d be interested in helping code it if this seems like an interesting addition to Hamster’s abilities. Anybody else see this as a worthwhile feature?
Hey aaron!
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545816
since DBUS support has been much improved in git master, what is needed, is a conduit plugin, errm, configuration thingy.
I am doing sync with dropbox…the easiest way is to go into dropbox folder and then just
ln -s ~/.gnome2/hamster-applet hamster-applet
but there is one problem…if I go on my second computer, it starts with hamster applet, then dropbox syncs, but hamster keeps the non-updated database…I have to restart X, and only then do I get updated hamster database. If I don’t restart X (or logout and login) I work on the the old database, and then I get of course problems with syncing. (basically, I lose the changes I made the last time I used computer 1).
is there a quick way to restart hamster applet? any other idea about how to fix this? thanks!
killall gnome-panel would be a quick fix. other option would be to close db connection after each data retrieval.
if you talk python, and are on hamster’s bleeding edge, you can check out db.py fetchall.
Not sure, but it might be worth filing a bug.
Thank you Toms.
I’m not really into python, so for the time being I’ll just use the “killall gnome-panel” workaround, which works just fine (i added a launcher next to the applet).
I wouldn’t call this a bug…and honestly I wouldn’t know what are the pros and cons of closing database connection after each data retrieval.
Anyway, thank you all for Hamster, this applet is really helping me organizing better my time and getting things done.
Hey! long time eh! I hear about this new project called Getting Things Gnome (GTG — http://gtg.fritalk.com/) which is meant as a task tracker / todo list type thing. Maybe it’s time to integrate these, so that hamster can find it’s tasks from the ones listed in gtg? I think the dbus support in both these projects is good enough to handle this type of thing. What do you say?
BTW, I was wondering where is this mysterious git repo? All thats listed up here is the svn one. Sure, I could keep using git-svn, but… =)
I updated git url. Thanks for noticing!
As for GTG, i wonder if it is using evolution backend. in that case something could be done in that field. Any way or other, feel free to file a bug if you start doing anything.
Hi,
have you considered using Launchpad for translations?
since hamster is part of GNOME, translation is being done upstream with the GNOME localization team (everybody can join!)
As far as i know, Ubuntu also provides downstream localization which is then sent back to gnome or how was it how it works, hmm
Hi, I’m no programmer but I can read a bit of code and I’m trying to find a place in the source where I could disable the notification of the current task, but keep the notify if no task. Could someone at least point me to the py file, or better yet point me to a method or something???
I want to remind users that they have forgotten to punch in a task after 5 mins of logging in, but I don’t want to bother them every 5 minutes with the task that they are performing, it will be the same task all day long.
Thank you for any help.
You have a point there. Could you file a bug please?
And the code is in applet.py
Great app!
I was thinking, why not have one export format XML, then apply various xslt stylesheets to generate TAB delimited, html, ical, etc. User could write their own stylesheets or modify the existing ones to address their needs.
xml, tsv and iCal report is in gnome 2.27
Yes, I’m running the latest code and these various formats work great. I’d like to generate even more formatted reports, and was thinking, “why not off-load this task to xslt?”
This way end users could write their own xslt stylesheets for whatever their obscure needs might be. This would be easier to maintain. And you’ll never be able to, or would you want to, add every export format that some user has requested.
Keep up the great work!
ah, errm, didn’t get it for the first time, i think.
tsv generation as well as xml is done using python’s standard libraries, so off-loading goes that way.
Linking an xslt file that resides in some default location in home folder and adding a shortcut to edit it from the app would be really too hacky. It certainly allows to state that we have “fully customizable reports” but the bragging would happen at cost of usability.
I say, the simplest way if you want to generate even more formatted reports, is to grab TSV, shove it in your favourite spreadsheet and then format away.
Aw, Python, probably takes me out of the running.
Does hamster play any sort of sound or alert when it pops up at the end of a tracking period? If not can that function be added? Sometimes I don’t notice the visual indicator but a sound would be helpful in grabbing my attention.