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I have found that using a flag system works wonders. Luxafor makes a USB powered light that I have attached to my station. Green means chat me up. Red means lea

I have found that using a flag system works wonders. Luxafor makes a USB powered light that I have attached to my station. Green means chat me up. Red means leave me alone. I have it set to an interval of 25 minutes red to 5 minutes green. (Like pomodoro timer). Took some time to get people on board but now its great and has expanded to not only my entire team, but other teams in the org. Note: not in any way involved with Luxafor. Was given their product by a friend.

BossingAround 7y ago
It's noteworthy that Luxafor supports Windows only. Mac is coming "soon", and no mention of Linux. I'd expect a large portion of hackernews readers to be Linux users.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Could be a fun reverse-engineering project. I can't imagine there's that much complexity in controlling a LED.
  - Brian_K_White 7y ago
    Sounds like a generic usb gpio and a couple lines of bash, maybe a cron job. Nothing. Maybe a few more lines of bash to do some sort of dynamic activity monitoring, to detect a "coding" usage pattern vs a "checking email, browsing web" usage pattern and adjust the availability automatically. Still almost nothing.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  For the last 20 odd years I've developed on Linux, today I'm setting up the MacBook Pro (the new 16" so decent keyboard at least) work issued me, I had the choice of whatever I wanted but since the rest of the team Mac and I'm the senior I bit the bullet and switched. Got juniors starting next week and they are issued iMac's so it'll just keep the headaches to a minimum. Gonna miss the hell out of Fedora though.
elric 7y ago
I have a pomodoro timer (hacked into my window manager), but if I can get one uninterrupted pomodoro per day it's been a really good day. Exposing the pomodoro status to my desk might be interesting. Hell, it might even be a fun little project to hack together.
taurath 7y ago
I would simply never talk to a programmer who did this :p
- Aqueous 7y ago
  great - seems like it works :-)

BossingAround 7y ago

It's noteworthy that Luxafor supports Windows only. Mac is coming "soon", and no mention of Linux. I'd expect a large portion of hackernews readers to be Linux users.

Nextgrid 7y ago
Could be a fun reverse-engineering project. I can't imagine there's that much complexity in controlling a LED.
- Brian_K_White 7y ago
  Sounds like a generic usb gpio and a couple lines of bash, maybe a cron job. Nothing. Maybe a few more lines of bash to do some sort of dynamic activity monitoring, to detect a "coding" usage pattern vs a "checking email, browsing web" usage pattern and adjust the availability automatically. Still almost nothing.
noir_lord 7y ago
For the last 20 odd years I've developed on Linux, today I'm setting up the MacBook Pro (the new 16" so decent keyboard at least) work issued me, I had the choice of whatever I wanted but since the rest of the team Mac and I'm the senior I bit the bullet and switched. Got juniors starting next week and they are issued iMac's so it'll just keep the headaches to a minimum. Gonna miss the hell out of Fedora though.

elric 7y ago

I have a pomodoro timer (hacked into my window manager), but if I can get one uninterrupted pomodoro per day it's been a really good day. Exposing the pomodoro status to my desk might be interesting. Hell, it might even be a fun little project to hack together.

taurath 7y ago

I would simply never talk to a programmer who did this :p

Aqueous 7y ago
great - seems like it works :-)