Julius F

Time Tracking with TOGGL and git-commit-hooks

2013-01-13T00:00:00Z

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about Toggl a very awesome tool that let’s you track time spent to whatever your doing. You’ll have to install the desktop client to do this. As developers one thing we really want to have is to track our progress and the amount of time we spent in projects, thus helping us create development invoices down the road.

And from time to time, most progress on the project is tracked by your commit messages on the project, that is unless your not using GIT. Enter git commit-hooks.

Here’s how I track my time for every project that I’m working on. I’ve created a post-commit hook that I import to all the projects I want to track time with Toggl. To setup follow the instructions below:

Open up the terminal:

$ mkdir -p ~/.git_template/hooks

Add a new file in named post-commit and copy the contents below

Also you’ll need to get an API_TOKEN from Toggl.

Once you have this, you’ll have to add a new file ~/.toggl and add the token there.

By default it will use the project’s folder as TAG, which makes it easier to generate reports with later on. TAGS can be used as filter in your Toggl report. Another thing you can modify is the default hours spent, which right now is set to 3600 or 1 hour. Modify it as you wish.

The TASK_DATE is related to the date you’ve posted the commit in the repository.

The TASK_NAME is the extracted git commit message you just added.

The TASK_DATA is the JSON data that will be passed into the curl request to the API endpoint of Toggl.

If you have these files setup, time to add them into your repositories. First thing you want to do is to setup your global git config to read the ~/.git_template folder and import that to your repository. If you have this setup and you run git clone it will automatically be imported. Thus creating new repositories in your local machine as well.

To set global git config:

$ git config --global init.templatedir '~/.git_template'

If you have an existing repository and you want to import this post-commit hook:

$ git init

Don’t worry, this is not destructive, it will only copy the files under ~/.git_template into the .git folder of your project. You can add more hooks if you want, but for now I’m more into the post-commit hook.

Right now the state of the script is pretty basic, it will output the JSON response from the curl command to Toggl API. But add more options to the curl command and you should be good.

Still Learning

2012-11-23T00:00:00Z

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” – Albert Einstein

When we were born we started to learn new things, we never stop. In fact we’re learning even if we don’t think we are getting something it.

In the technical world, things are moving fast. Almost everyday there are new technologies, new products and new concept comming out. For a developer like me, new things are built every single day, if you stick to your domain, that doesn’t mean it’ll not change, it is also changing. The only difference is that you are confined with the sandbox that your playing with.

Exploring new things is always part of my day-to-day life. Keeping up with these changes sounds like I’ve been spending my day in front of my computer and just say goodbye to social life. Not sure about others, but that’s not me. I spend an hour max to get into something new, if it’s really interesting, I make it a point I add it to my calendar or even my to-do list. That way I can still do the important things that I have to do, like being a husband and working on a real job.

The beauty of being a developer compared to other vocation, we never stop solving problems. By doing so, we learn a lot from it. I find it really interesting to solve application related problems, not only to comply about requirements but also to add level to your skills. It is very fundamental to understand that there are multiple ways of solving a problem, some may come easy but some may cause you to pull your hair out. Good for me I’m bald, so that’s out of the equation.

For me solving problems is all about knowing it before working on a solution. Making sure that I get all the points needed, or let’s just say the acceptance parameters before moving on. Diving into a problem and giving a quick-out-of-the-blue solution is really a bad thing, may come to you that fast but later on will bite you hard. So you really need to think about before giving a solution.

In the world of programming, or in my world of programming. I find myself going back to basic every now and then. Why? Sometimes the hardest problem can be solved by just the fundamentals of the language, no magic needed from those fancy gems/plugins. If you find yourself mastering or just getting used to frameworks, and completely forgetting about the fundamentals of the language, you will find yourself asking for more later. But if you know the basic and you know how to formulate a solution by just that, you’ll go to a different route and start building your own thing(gem). But try not to re-invent the wheel, if you think you have a better solution, fork-code-pull-profit (contribute).

The Next Chapter

2012-11-21T00:00:00Z

It’s been months since I last posted something here, figure I drop by and add some new things, again trying to make sure I post something every once in a while. Most of the #geeks I know blog-a-log, I think it’s better to have just some small updates every now and then. That’s the purpose of Twitter, good thing there’s a widget that can easily be customized and you just slap it in to any html site.

For the past 9 months things are going OK, not saying they aren’t now, but things are really shaping up. A lot of things going on and those things I completely forget to write about. It’s a growing pain, being busy with Consulting and Development work makes it hard to chime in with this blog every so often. So what happened to me during this past few months.

I’ve been part of a very cool project called PureCharity, I played the role of a backend developer dealing with data aggregations from various Affiliate networks. During that time I was able to work on some cool developers and some cool gems. It’s a very good training ground for me, not only in my coding skills but also on how to work effectively with a remote team. Since my timezone is at GMT+8, technically I am working during the night, which is great.

I started going back to Voice Application Development, that means Rails and Adhearsion revisit. The last time I’ve worked with VoIP application was way back my startup days when I worked on a Call Center Solution platform. Back then it was only v1, now it’s rocking out at v2.x.x. Funny because that’s not really the first technology of choice, the first implementation of the project was running under Tropo, as all projects the first phase is always working but there’s always a time where you expand and the platform is very limited with the project requirements. That’s when I decided to move back to Adhearsion. The move is painful, yet rewarding. Now I have full control of the platform/backend and I can say that it is more stable compared to the first implementation.

During my days of VoIP and PureCharity work, I spent some of my free time doing some mentorship for a startup company in Dallas, TX. Which ended up into a Chief Techie role. It was fun, I got the chance to bring my old team with me and be awesome again. Every startup has its ups and downs, that’s the beauty about it.

Another big thing that happened to me was buying our own house. My wife and I finally decided to buy our own house, we moved there last October. We are very happy and so excited about it.

Things happen for a reason, it takes a positive outlook in life to make all possible.

Installing Asterisk 10.5.0 in OSX Lion 10.7.4

2012-06-05T00:00:00Z

This is a quick quide for install Asteirsk 10.5.0 in OSX Lion 10.7.4. Let’s get started

Since Asterisk is not part of homebrew anymore, the best way to install Asterisk is compiling it from source. Which presents another issue specially if your running XCode 4.2+ because gcc-4.2 was removed from it’s toolchains.

I strongly suggest you download and install osx-gcc-installer and Apple’s Command Line Tools to be able to run this source compiles properly. After installing those requirements, your brew —config should look at least like this, which indicates that you have GCC-4.2 installed.

Download the latest stable release from Asterisk, which is 10.5.0

wget -N -c http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases/asterisk-10.5.0.tar.gz
tar -zxvf asterisk-10.5.0.tar.gz
cd asterisk-10.5.0

Here’s where the magic begins:

CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 ./configure --host=x86_64-darwin

You need to pass your compiler which is gcc-4.2 in the configure command so that the generated Makefile will use it.

make menuselect

Remove res_snmp under Resource Modules. Hit Q then S to save the settings. Then run:

sudo make
sudo make install
sudo make samples

Here’s a quick screencast for the whole installation process: Here

Information Diet

2012-01-07T00:00:00Z

I just acquired a new BlackBerry Curve 9360, a cheap yet powerful smartphone that I think I’ll stick with for a long time. It’s like love at first sight. It has the basic features I’m looking for on a communication device.

With the BlackBerry Curve 9360, I can stay connected everywhere I go, I was amazed about the speed of the device and how it manage to utilize my data connection, even at GPRS I can post a tweet, do my email, checkin with foursquare. With a very good built-in camera, I can snap a pic and upload it directly to my social feed.

Yes, I’m moving all my social apps to this small beast. Need less to say, It’s the best information diet I’ll have. With the Curve always connected, I can shutdown my mail client, twitter, facebook access and just wait for the Curve to notify me when there’s something important.

2012 All Out

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

It’s the first day of the year(2012) figure I whip something out, an blog. Would be great to code or bootstrap something but that’ll take a lot of time.

Looking back 2011, it was one of those years I’ll remember. First year to live as a married man with my very loving wife, trust me it never stops there. First actual year of consulting independently, comming from 2010’s startup fiasco. All is well.

I’ve had a full blast last year, given a chance to work with awesome people and companies, like CodeWranglers, Shwinkers, MojoLingo. I’ve learned a lot, not only in the technical side but most of all about life and the reality of it.

Projects and clients come and go, but the bond and friendship you get take along with you lives forever. I can really say that my personal network expanded vastly last year. And I’m looking forward into getting more people in my personal network.

Blog Again

2011-12-27T00:00:00Z

It’s been a long time since I’ve written or shared anything meaningful in this site. I figure I’d revisit it and make sure I update it once in a while.

Everything seems to move to fast, and the next thing you know it’s already 2012. Looking back this 2011, I’ve been all over the place. As always it’s not so bad.

I’ve focused mainly on mobile development with Titanium even contributing with a very cool tool-chain ti. All is well, got two production projects under my belt and some opensource projects to showcase this.

Still feeling good but not yet enough. I still feel like there’s a lot to do and a lot to explore. Learned a lot of things this year, not only on the geekside but most of all about life.

One of my New Years resolution is to get back to contributing to opensource and writing awesome codes/apps.

Till then.

GeekTool Revisit

2011-04-21T00:00:00Z

I’ve recently upgraded my 13" MacBookPro with 8GB of RAM. Being a minimalist, I’ve revisited GeekTool. I’ve been using this long time ago and decided to disable it since I’m very conservative with resources, now that I have a highway to play around with, I went back.

Here’s a snapshot of my current setup:

Still minimal. Got the wallpaper from SimpleDesktops and some GeekLets. Here’s the rundown from top to buttom.

Calendar

cal | sed -E '1,$'"s/ ($(date +%e))( |$)/ $(echo '\033[1;31m')\1$(echo'\033[0m')\2/"

Top 13 Processes(HOGS)

ps -amcwwwxo "command %mem %cpu" | grep -v grep | head -13

Day of the Week

date +"%A"

RAM USAGE

top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;

System Load

sysctl vm.loadavg | sed s/'^vm.loadavg: '//

CPU Usage(I have 2 cores)

top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/'

You can also check my Pivotal GeekLet so that you can add your Pivotal Tracker Stories into your desktop using GeekTool.

Giving iTerm2 another shot

2011-03-31T00:00:00Z

Now here’s my current setup:

I’ve been playing around with iTerm2. During the first few days, it’s quite a resource hog, and one thing I don’t like is the “lag” on using scrollbacks. Good thing I’ve checked the FAQ portion. It’s really helpful and resolves a lot of issues specially the scrollback “LAG”.

Here are the tweaks I’ve added:

iTerm2
oh-my-zsh
oh-my-zsh theme bira
janus
iTerm2 color pack

iTerm2 is a very feature rich application, with the following highlights:

Split Panes both vertical and horizontal
Full xterm-256color support
Global HotKey just like Visor
Save your Window Arrangement

Stand Up and Code

2011-03-06T00:00:00Z

I started to venture with StandUp Desk, right now it’s all just DIY, things I can find in my house like shoeboxes and old table accessories. I’ve been on a “StandUp Desk” for more than 2 weeks now. During the first week, it’s very hard to endure the pain in my feet, part of it not being as healthy and not being fit. After the first 3 days, I managed to get use to it.

I’ve noticed a major change specially in my concentration, I am more focus and can think clear about things, which is very good. At the end of the first week I’ve read about the Pomodoro Technique, very intersting article and very effictive I must say. Since I’m using Mac, I downloaded the free Pomodoro Timer. I set my pomodoros to 30 minute(s). I take 5 minutes break every now and then, during those breaks, I just sit down, make some phone calls and contemplate.

I can say that I’m making progress, very lean progress when it comes to my day-to-day work, I forgot to mention, I’m working fulltime at home.

I will post the setup I have for the “StandUp Desk” later.