Arbtt Notes

Note: Installation Notes are at the end of the page.

Principles

I use arbtt to tell me how much time I’m wasting. So, I should be able to tell that at a look. On a bad day, it should be crystal clear that I’ve got nothing done. I shouldn’t have to decipher some complex report. So, for now, I just want a simple binary classification of my time: Work or Junk.

Note that arbtt measures only how I spend my time on the computer. So, to the best of my knowledge, I can’t tell whether I was goofing off AFK.

How do I waste time on my computer? I browse random sites, I watch videos, or read unrelated books. Cool. I’ve tagged all of them with the “Junk” category.

How do I waste time otherwise? I browse the web on my tablet. So, I want another stat: Time on computer / Total time. I can use the total time logged by the last command. After subtracting my gym time, household chores time, and reading time, what is left must have been spent sleeping or surfing videos on my tablet.

Also, I need to stop using other tools like my very own bscl, so that arbtt gets the TLC it needs to match my needs. Bring the pain forward, as the XP people say.

Useful commands

Note: I use tab-separated values (tsv) as the output format because the raw data will have long names (especially Firefox titles) and you have to scroll right to see much of the data in the table.

To find out untagged data from the last 24 hours:

arbtt-stats -m 0 --output-format tsv -x Work: -x Junk: -x Life: -f '$sampleage < 24:00'

To find out general data from the last 3 hours (to see the actual programs you used):

arbtt-stats -m 0 --output-format tsv -f '$sampleage < 3:00'

Features I want

Tag time spent reading PG’s essays somehow.

Maybe get Firefox to show the url in the title.

Installation and Setup

• [2015-07-30 Thu] Your window manager must set EWMH hints.

  For XMonad, use XMonad.Hooks.EwmhDesktops. (h/t srck.cz)

  Had to change xmonad.hs as suggested here

Usage Log

• [2015-04-23 Thu] I started using arbtt on April 23, 2015
• [2015-07-22 Wed] Had to run arbtt in .xsessionrc cos of the change to xmonad.
• [2015-07-30 Thu] Specified sample-rate in xsessionrc.
• [2015-07-30 Thu] I didn’t specify the config file in the arbtt-stats command.