Bellygraph Blog

My hosting provider is having some issues. Working with him to get it straightened out.

Update: All better now!

Hi all,

I haven’t forgotten about Bellygraph. I’ve been working in the background on a couple of features. I plan on upgrading the software this weekend.

Here’s a rough list of what will be available:
* You can add comments to your daily updates
* There’s a “graph gallery” where you can quickly page through large versions of your graphs, and see all your comments. Note that these are public comments - other people can see them as well.
* You can set the start and end date of your graph (Edit Graph)
* I changed the way the data is plotted on the graph, which makes the graphs less “dense”.
* Bug fix: If you had two or more graphs with the same metric, only one would be updated.

The general consensus seems to be to allow multiple metrics for one graph. That’s going to require a few significant changes, so that will take me some time, but I will do that next.

As part of Tom Evslin’s ‘Blook tour’ concept, I’ve created a blog where I will serially publish my book - Stone Magic, one chapter at a time.

It’s a fantasy novel, set in the Stone age, and it is the adventure of a group of primitive men and woment witnessing the dawn of the age of magic.

(Think high fantasy, like George R.R. Martin or J.R.R. Tolkein meets Clan of the Cave Bear or ‘People of the Wolf’)

I’ve had a bunch of ideas/suggestions on how to make the service better, and I thought I would share them with my users, and get your feedback:

1. Add textual descriptions to graphs, and comments to daily entries, and make it easy for you and possibly others to see the descriptions and comments
2. Change the image image, so when you put it on your site, when someone clicks on it, they get a bigger picture of your graph, possibly with your comments and/or descriptions
3. Countup graphs - for example: “Days since my last drink” - it would automatically update each day, and you would reset it to 0 when appropriate.
4. Countdown timer - either a static one, with just a number, or a dynamic one that would countdown days, hours, minutes and perhaps seconds, that you can put on your own site
5. An API so you can write programs that update your graphs automatically
6. Email you a reminder to update your graph(s) regularly
7. Multiple lines (series) on one graph
8. A Gallery - organized by metric. Potentially with the ability to post and share messages and ideas

Any of those sound interesting? Let me know.

John

Richard Brandt suggests using Tinyurl, to convert long, unwieldy graph names into short, delightful names that you can tattoo on your thumb. (Well, he didn’t actually say the last part, but I digress).

For example: http://tinyurl.com/aljdc is the same as http://www.bellygraph.com/graphs/5_18_medium.png.

This image’s src is the tinyurl, for example:

Bert Webb discusses creating visible charts on the walls for describing project state. I submit that you can also use Bellygraph to create charts on your virtual walls - Wiki pages, home pages, blog pages, etc.

It’s all about increasing honest communication.

Charts, Bellygraph, Projects

First, I want to give a round of applause for those who are using this service to help reduce their smoking habit. Good luck with it.

What are everyone’s strategies for quitting? Patches, Gum, Cold turkey?

Everyone has their strategies to lose weight, and I invite them to post them here so we can all discuss.

Here are mine:

• Reading while walking on the treadmill and/or stationary biking
• Not eating foods containing High-fructose corn syrup.
• Don’t make the goal too ambitious

Its definitely done some good:

I think my last point definitely deserves some additional comment - I’ve seen a lot of people setting 50 pound weight loss goals, and that seems more than a little intimidating. I worry that people are going to despair and give up if they manage to “only” lose 5 pounds, and they are only 10% of their way to their goal. Remember, if you set a 5 pound loss goal, you can reach it, and then set another 5 pound loss goal.

What are your strategies?

The biggest call, right now, is for a better design for the site (in process) and allowing the users more control over the top and bottom of the scale.

I’ve been looking at the library I’m using for graph generation, and I think I know how I can do that. I’ll starting working on that today.

Thanks, everyone, for your help!