Tracking not just time, but statistics of a task about hamster

[tstriker]

you could use tags and the comments field to add meta info and then aggregate it in some fashion. i imagine that would be post-factum though (that is once you have finished the task you would go back to update it).

there used to be a project on twitter which allowed you to tweet whatever you are doing (with some basic syntax) and then it would show timelines and trends and whatnot. can't remember the name from the top of my head

[damluar]

Tags and comments is not enough, no statistics possible on it.
As I imagine it, each activity should have measure associated with it (pages, km, etc) and when you fill some time slot with activity, you should be asked for a number. Accordingly, when you report on some time range, one should see not just time, but also numbers, telling the progress on this activity.
Would it be difficult to integrate in hamster?
I love hamster for it's simplicity. Other tools I looked at (daytum or beeminder) doesn't fit me.
I think I will end up adjusting hamster for my needs or writing my own tool.

[tstriker]

we certainly won't be adding custom fields. the main focus of hamster is to keep track of time, not a journal, so we will stay at that.

and as for no statistics possible on it - i would suggest to be bit more creative - as long as you control the syntax in which you enter the trackables (like ), you should be golden and able to do simple split(" ", 1) and then go from there.

that would be much more efficient than hacking on hamster codebase or writing your own tool. but all depends on whether you are in for the journey and want to learn writing linux desktop apps, or you just want to reach the goal. for the former it sure could be a fun first project. if it's the latter though, i'd suggest to go the suggested route.

[ikus060]

@tbaugis For the last year, I've enter my kms for each task in a specific format. How do you recommend me to extract this information from Hamster? Should I write a python script or their is a command line I may use?

[tstriker]

i'd suggest either using the python bindings (from hamster import client; help(client))
or the dbus ones. python ones are used by hamster itself and the docstrings should help you to get around.
from there you could do something like a csv import and feed it into any kinds of spreadsheet or graphs app or use hamster graphics lib and make your own graphs.

for some ideas you can look in the experiments project, specifically experiments starting with hamster_ (check out and then simply run them from command line)

https://github.com/projecthamster/experiments