Hacker News Reader

Comment by arscan | Hacker News Reader

What tools do you use to collect this data? Looks great, by the way.

a lot of it is just simple python scripts to download/convert data to csv files, and do some simple post processing.

for the computer activity i took a snapshot every 30seconds of what program was active, and how long my laptop was active.

Are these tools open source?

The script I used for extracting sms/iMessages is here https://gist.github.com/4437883

Some of the other scripts just download data from foursquare's API, and post processing transaction download from Mint. Hopefully I'll have time to clean and post those scripts.

I'd be interested in seeing the one(s) that keep track of application usage!

I've dumped the cron job i use for data collection here https://gist.github.com/4477372

My rough approach to post processing this data was to group by 6 minute intervals, and to drop any records where the computer was inactive for more than 120 seconds.

Many thanks for the script :)

I've tweaked it a bit here https://gist.github.com/4478297

- Logs active website from Chrome

- Stores time including local timezone (interesting to see what timezones I'm in)

- File name includes hostname

So you parse your credit card statements (or equivalent) for the coffee & travel costs? I thought the travel was by distance (not cost) at first, which is what I was curious about because it would require a more active role in logging on your part.

Is this purely for kicks, or are you trying to use it to drive behavioral changes (e.g. spend less on coffee)? I ask because I always think about doing this, but I get a stuck on the "why".

coffee data is more driven from foursquare checkins, and only partially credit card transactions.

The motivation for me is a way to learn about my year (not directly to change my actions), and part a fun exercise to get better at data processing, javascript, and UI Interaction/charting. I like the hard deadline that a personal annual report creates naturally (ie: it's no good if i release it in june).

For collecting application usage data, I used to use an application called Timesnapper ( http://www.timesnapper.com/ ), which takes a screenshot every x seconds and keeps track of the application title / etc, with the added benefit of allowing you to automatically categorize usage "Work", "Play", etc.

Found it really useful to be able to literally play back my day in 10 second intervals. Unfortunately it's windows-only. One of the very few apps I truly miss since moving to Linux almost 2 years ago.

-- I have absolutely no affiliation with TimeSnapper besides being a happily paying customer a couple years ago.

I think there is some package for ubuntu that tracked everything written on the keyboard, like a personal keylogger. It was mentioned on HN during december, cant find it now though.

Selfspy? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4590987)

You could use arbtt (http://www.joachim-breitner.de/projects#arbtt) and then just toss your favorite screenshot utility like ImageMagick into crontab set to fire every 10 seconds.

Definitely interesting, and I'll probably try it at some point should I find both the time and the inclination to do so. Admittedly, I paid for that application because I didn't want to implement it myself. But I'm glad there are some building blocks in place that would make rolling my own a relatively easy task. Thanks for the suggestion!

Checkout LifeSlice by Stan James (https://github.com/wanderingstan/Lifeslice) for OSX - the script takes a screenshot, picture of the user and tracks web browser usage. The sample report leaves much to be desired from a design aesthetic but the data is available.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com