Everyday Systems

[reinhard]

I just rolled out an improved version of the habitcal. It doesn't have all the features people have requested, but it has enough that I figured it was worth releasing now. Have to save something for version 3, after all.

At first, you may not notice much of a difference. All the old urls still work pretty much as they used to, and show you the same calendar view that's been around since May 2007. But I've added 3 new views in addition to the traditional calendar mode. You can choose the view from the drop down list right next to the "load" button (the default is "calendar").

The new views (with links to my habitcal) are:

Table View

This is similar to the calendar view, but more compact. It makes it easier to view and edit many tags at once. Calendar view gets cumbersome if you're dealing with more than say 5 habits at once. Table view makes it easy to get a handle on 10, 20 or more (note: it may not actually be a good idea to tackle this many habits at once, so be careful and don't go nuts just because the technology makes it easy). In edit mode, you can use the "batch input" arrows to color in all the blank sqaures in a row or column.

http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/view/?o=2&v=ta&sc=1&m=9&y=2008&t=nosdiet&t=shovelglove&t=glassceiling&t=weekendluddite&t=tasks&t=blimits

Stats

This gives you a statistical overview of your compliance over the selected period of time, the percentage of which you marked as success, exempt, or failure. "Special" (non-weekend or NWS) days are reported in a separate column to give you a quick overview as to whether you're abusing them. There's also a pie chart, a summary compliance score, and a personal olympics medal (if you deserve it!).

The summary compliance score is calculated by the following crude formula:

green / ( green + red ) - ( special percent exceeding 7%)

I realize that this isn't a perfect scoring system for all people and all habits, and version 3 will let you choose between several scoring systems for each tag. I already hacked something for weekend luddite so that special days aren't counted there.

The personal olympics medals are given as follows:

>= 98% Gold
>= 96% Silver
>= 92% Bronze

This is more or less in line with what I've previously recommended for personal olympics (an average 0,1,2 failures per month, respectively).

http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/view/?o=2&v=s&sc=12&m=9&y=2008&t=nosdiet&t=shovelglove&t=glassceiling&t=weekendluddite&t=tasks

Export (tab)

You can now download your precious data to back it up or view it in excel or something. And if you're a programmer, you can build your own visualizer for habitcal data. The format is simple, 3 tab delimited columns: date, tag, and score (reported as 1/0/-1 for success/exempt/failure, respectively).

http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/view/?o=2&v=tab&sc=1&m=9&y=2008&t=nosdiet&t=shovelglove

What's left for version 3?

A lot. The biggies are:

Timeline view: a compact but way of looking at (say) a whole year of compliance data at once. This might make version 2.5 because it doesn't require any database changes and I have a pretty good idea what it should look like.

Tag Properites Editing: a way to set things like what scoring system to use for each tag, maybe adding some descriptive text, and other options. Also the option to rename tags.

Add Note: a popular request, but tricky to add to the current interface unobtrusively. I'll probably add a "journal view"optimized for note viewing and editing and just make notes with a hyperlinked "*" or something in the other views.

Track arbitrary numeric data like weight: this is tricky because except for the pending timeline view, it's a little tricky to squeeze into the other views (what if the numbers are too big to fit in the date cell? etc).

More attractive "RESTful" urls: I doubt anyone cares about this except other programmers, but I'm a programmer after all... My primary concern is how to clean them up without breaking exisiting links, because aesthetics ain't worth inconvenience and cool urls never change.

Let me know if there are any other features you're hankering for, or if you run into bugs with the new release. It seems to work fine on firefox, safari, and IE 7 at least. (Chrome test pending)

Reinhard

[JackHacket]

Reinhard,

Wow! Great new functionality. Many thanks. I already love the table view and the statistics have made me feel much worse about my failures than the regular view , so well done indeed! My hat's off to you once again!

As for feature requests, I'll repeat: the ability to rename a tag without losing all its data would be excellent.

Best

[anndelise]

I love the table view. Upon seeing it for the first time I got all sorts of excited. This morning I made one that I could print off for October's goals.

Your habitcals have totally changed my 'to do' lists. The goals I set for myself are now more geared to developing a habit instead of just a final result. Result lists get a separate small folded paper to be carried around on errands, etc.

Also, the light system makes me more desiring to get a green instead of just a checkmark. Also, having the yellow days allows me a chance to 'plan' off days instead of being so sick of always doing it that I start the habit of skipping on days.

Everything on the habitcal seems so 'doh' i shoulda figured that out already'. Their like so obvious, and helpful.

I'm glad I ran into this site last month.
Thank you

ann

[kbits]

*applauds*

[reinhard]

I'm glad you all like the changes -- and no bug reports yet.

JackHacket -- "Tag Rename" will come with the tag edit panel. Thanks for the reminder.

One remaining issue: printing is (still) annoying with the habitcal. It is actually possible to get it to print out with all the colors, but you have to set your browser to "print background colors." In every browser this option is hiding in a different totally obscure place. I'll track down instructions for the big three (IE, Firefox, Safari) and link from the main habitcal page.

Reinhard

[Neptunus]

Reinhard,
I don't know if you've found out about the color-printing options of all the browsers, but for Safari (at least Safari 4, don't have any older versions), these images might help:

Safari how-to 1
Safari how-to 2

Simple, but easily missed (that blue button in the first image isn't very obvious, I think).
This site might help you with the other browsers.
_________________
- Your friendly neighborhood vegan, proud shovelglover!

[KCCC]

I like it a lot conceptually, but I think some of the algorithms don't work for me.

I do my S-days from 6pm on Friday to 6pm on Sunday. I color code Friday and Saturday yellow as S-days on my HabitCal, and consider Sunday green if I'm back on track by 6.

For exercise, the goal is to get exercise "any five days," because my schedule is erratic. So my yellows are scattered throughout the week. I only get a red if I miss 3 in a (calendar) week.

When I run the stats, they look like I'm taking a lot of NWS... but I'm really not.

In version 3, can the algorithm be adjusted to look at the week overall? Or is that too complex?

[reinhard]

Thanks for the link, Neptunus, going to the main habitCal page... now.

[Neptunus]

Pleased to be of assistance, I'm really quite honored to see my name posted on the main habitcal page.
_________________
- Your friendly neighborhood vegan, proud shovelglover!

[droth]

Is there any way to see all habits in one table view, for example if for the month you want to see all of your habits in just one table for the month? I'd like to be able to view all of my habits on just the one calendar month table.
_________________
Started No-S 04/07/08
Need to lose 80 lbs.

[reinhard]

droth,

If I understand you correctly, table view lets you do this. Just hold down the shift or control key and tick multiple habits. I meant to show this in the url above, but accidentally limited it to a single habit (I'll edit the link now).

http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/view/?o=2&v=ta&sc=1&m=9&y=2008&t=nosdiet&t=shovelglove&t=glassceiling&t=weekendluddite&t=tasks&t=blimits

There's also (now) a screen shot of this on the habitcal home page.

Reinhard

[droth]

Thanks so much - you are the greatest!
_________________
Started No-S 04/07/08
Need to lose 80 lbs.

[gratefuldeb67]

Hi Reinhard! I just wanted to tell you that I finally got to see the new features on HabitCal, thanks to Richie showing me how to use them! LOL
I have to say they are really awesome additions to this already amazingly helpful tool!
Thanks for your work on them.
Hope you're well and enjoy your weekend with the Fam.
Debs x
_________________
There is no Wisdom greater than Kindness

[gratefuldeb67]

ps.... DRoth above is totally right!
You *are* the greatest!
_________________
There is no Wisdom greater than Kindness

[reinhard]

Deb,

I'm happy you and Richie like the new features!

It's going to be a few weeks before I can start thinking seriously about version 3 (big deadline at dayjob), but keep the suggestions coming...

Reinhard

[Blaze]

Can I request a JSON dump of the data?

Like a &f=json that can be appended to
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/view/

[reinhard]

How's this, Blaze?

http://www.everydaysystems.com/habitcal/view/?o=2&v=json&sc=1&m=6&y=2010&t=nosdiet&t=shovelglove&t=glassceiling&t=weekendluddite

To generate your own, select export (json) from the view list.

Unlike tsv, there are a bunch of different ways I could emit JSON. I haven't thought about it a whole lot yet. This seems like one of the more obvious ways to do it, but I could also/instead make it record oriented (like tsv), have date come above tag in the hierarchy, break date into three levels, etc.

Reinhard

[Blaze]

Man, I was hoping to be able to slack off for a while while you implemented that.

http://www.scottbrooks.ca/habitcal/
is something I'm just playing with right now.

It's using
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/view/?o=2&v=json&sc=5&m=9&y=2008&t=nosdiet&t=shovelglove&t=glassceiling
for the source data

[reinhard]

Very cool!

It's is a great milestone for the habitcal that other developer(s) are creating their own views using its "API." I'm honored!

I see you generated this using Jit -- coincidentally I've been playing around with Jit, too.

Here's a "treemap" of a snapshot of the entire habitcal database:

http://www.everydaysystems.com/habitcal/tags/

Although this is live, I haven't announced it yet because there are a few finesses I'd still like to add to it (plus write the script that regenerates the data every hour or so or whatever). Also, it's a little slow depending on where you are, so I've got to compress the data somehow (it's much slower in Madrid, where I am now for a conference, than it was back home in Boston).

Reinhard