As an experiment, I’ve set up my laptop to record screenshots every minute. My hope is that I can write a program that will automatically figure out how much time I am spending on various tasks by teaching the program what certain tasks looks like. I think my first approach will be to classify based on colour levels.
In case anyone finds this sort of thing useful, here’s the script I’m using (on Ubuntu 11.10):
#!/usr/bin/env bash # take_screenshot.sh # Does the following (optional steps in parens): # * ( Install dependencies ) # * ( Set up hidden .desktop_tracking folder ) # * Take a screenshot and resize it if [ ! -d $HOME/.desktop_tracking ]; then mkdir $HOME/.desktop_tracking fi which import > /dev/null success=$? if [ $success == 1 ]; then sudo apt-get install -y imagemagick fi export DISPLAY=':0.0' import -window root -resize 750 $HOME/.desktop_tracking/`date +%F-%H_%M_%S`.png