Penny Hero (dot) Net

I want to log notes on a calendar on my iphone. I also want to be able to log several different types of things separately, but have the option to view them together on the same calendar.

For example, say I want a food log, a workout log, and a mood log. I should be able to thumb an icon, quickly type an entry, select the log name from a drop-down menu, and hit submit. Then, when i want to analyze what I’ve logged that month, I should be able to pull up a calendar-like interface that has my different logs visible across the whole week, month, or year.

Long story short: I want this application, it doesn’t exist, and I can’t create it myself. Let’s call this app “Daily Log”. Interested? Read on…

Stuff I’ve tried already:

• iPhone’s regular calendar:
  Creating an all-day event on the calendar and adding notes is a cumbersome process. Plus, between a log entry and a regular calendar event on the calendar
• iPhone’s Notes application
  manually entering the date at the top and just having a list of unsortable entries in the Notes interface is no more useful than carrying a notebook around in my purse.
• GoalKeep ($3.99 on App store)
  Goalkeep has something like the type of Calendar interface that I want. It has a cool “zoom in” feature that lets you see the day you click on in more detail, and each entry is displayed visually on the calendar with different colors. However, goalkeep isn’t a log application at all, so obviously it doesn’t serve my purpose.
• Any kind of blog client
  Blog clients have the whole “automatically date-stamp the entry” thing down, but they post the entry online, and the calendar view is only visible from a web browser assuming that particular blog has a calendar view (Livejournal does.). I want my entries private and viewable locally.

Here’s how Daily Log would work:

The user thumbs an icon, and Daily Log opens a “Write Log” interface including a text entry box, a pre-filled datestamp box (that can be manually edited), and a drop down menu with a few labels, the option to edit existing labels, and to create a new label. The interface also includes a menu either at the top or the bottom that gives access to the “view logs” interface (more about this later too) and “settings/configuration” where you can create labels, or change other settings.

The user types an entry, selects the label for the entry, and hits submit. Daily Log returns to the Write Log interface, ready for the next entry.

If the user clicks on the “View Logs” button, the app displays a calendar with an overview of a period of time (year, month, week), and displays color-coded previews of the log entries on the dates (a different color for each different label). The user can click on the preview to see the full log entry.

The calendar view also has a link to the app’s configuration, where users can select colors for different labels when in the calendar view, and can show/hide different logs.

Backup through itunes or the web:
This application should only come paired with a web-based service if it is for backup purposes only and does not prevent the user from writing logs without internet connectivity. I personally want to use my Daily Log at any time, any place, for personal, medical, or just plain TMI purposes, so I don’t want anyone but me looking at my log entries.

If possible, application data should be backed up when syncing with iTunes and not require internet connectivity at all.

Here’s some example uses for Daily Log:

• Daily food journal (without extra “count your calories etc” database lookup crap)
• Mood log
• Workout log
• Dream Log
• Menstrual / PMS log
• “here’s what I did today” task logging

Here’s what Daily Log would NOT be:

• NOT a to-do list application (omg there are a million of those.)
• NOT a reminder application
• NOT a social networking client
• NOT be dependent on internet connectivity to use

Anyway…this is one of the reasons I wish I could have taken more (read: some) engineering stuff in college. I’ve got ideas for tools, and the ability to describe them and design them… but I can’t make them. :(

Want to help?

I met Randall Munroe today.

Still sorta swoony. :) I’ve now got a signed copy of this comic:

I’m totally regretting being so damn shy and not talking to him more. *sigh*

In Other News: After nearly 5 months of no music in my car (due to that stupid theft thing), I have a new stereo in my car! I even got to learn how to install it! (Funny though that my friend seemed so surprised that I already knew how to strip wires.)

Yesterday evening, I finally launched the new design for my WoW guild’s website. If you feel like it, check it out: A Horde Dazed Knight. It’s not 100% finished though. (12/15/07 edit: I’m no longer webmaster. This site is Shadowfox’s creation.) Some things I still need to do:

• create thumbnails for all the images (instead of just resizing them in the html)
• Add some way to contact me about site problems
• perhaps link to mozilla and put a happy note somewhere in the footer saying the site works best in Firefox (which of course it does)
• Finish the archives. I’m missing the Gnomes’ Night Out stuff
• Fix some random grammar typos and a link in the guidlines
• Pull out the non-guidelines info out of the Guidelines page and create a “resources” page in the main nav (with Dirge’s permission).

These are not in any particular order. :)

In Other News

My job sort of starts today. I’ve had a million technical difficulties since I got hired involving Comcast, which prevented me from being trained with everyone else and caused me to miss one meeting (the second meeting I missed was due to my own stupidity… grrr).

The project seems cool. Improving an existing technical document for ease of translation later. Very awesome and right up there in “some of my most loved things to do… fix other people’s writing!” (no joke. seriously. yes, we’ve long established that I’m a nerd.)

The software we’re using requires windows though… which forced me to hose my linux box… at least until March anyway.

And last but not least

I had an interview with Google last week. That was very very exciting. I don’t know exactly how “well” I did, but I know that I gave a pretty accurate picture of my abilities and my skills, so now it’s up to Google to decide if they want me as a tech writer. I’m crossing my fingers, but Plan B is still a strong possibility in 2008. Yay for more debt! At least this would turn into a USEFUL degree.

I was reading the bio for Sarah Brightman on last.fm, and read that not only did she once lead a “raunchy” disco group called “Hot Gossip”, but they had a hit song in 1976 called “I lost my Heart to a Starship Trooper”.

Now… how can a title like that NOT make you giggle with geeky joy?

A few seconds of google-fu later and I found a youtube video of that very song being performed.

Here are some highlights from the lyrics:

Hey, Captain Strange, won’t you be my lover
You’re the best thing that I’ve ever discovered
Flash Gordon’s left me, he’s gone to the stars
An evil Darth Vader has me banished to Mars

Tell me, Captain Strange, do you feel my devotion
Or are you like a droid, devoid of emotion
Encounters one and two are not enough for me
What my body needs is close encounter three

*snip*

Space suit is lying on control room floor
Pulse rate increasing as the heat factor soars
Take me, make me feel the force
Ignore the computers, we’re locked on course

*snip*

Chorus goes like this:

I lost my heart to a starship trooper
Flashing lights in hyper space
Fighting for the Federation
Hand in hand we’ll conquer space

Isn’t that awesome?

At last at last at last!

We’re finally imortalized on Google Maps and Google Earth!

Here’s the Digg story, a direct link to the google map (I’m the little dot on the far right in the picture of us near the trucks), and a article about the crop circle being in Google Earth!

I’m so stoked. I’m risking persecution by blogging at work while my bosses are down here because this is just THAT exciting!

btw, here’s the article that talks about the circle project and the the documentary that documented it all!

A couple of my friends plus two of their friends (who are no-doubt equally cool) are trying to get to linux.conf.au and need the internet’s help to get there.

You can do one (or more) of the following things to help:

1. Digg this: How to raise 10,000 grassroots style
2. spread the word by blogging and linking to their website
3. DONATE!!

I donated $50. Beat that, suckers!

Last night, Graham called me 3 times and I never even knew it because my phone was not notifying me in any way that I could see that I had a missed call. I periodically picked up my phone and pressed a button, assumming that somewhere on the display, I would get a missed call message. Nope. I only got the “unlock keypad by pressing menu and *” message. But really… the “3 missed calls” note WAS there… it was just not visible until you unlocked your phone and it popped up.

Stupid.

My roomie and he both tried to convince me that I had my phone settings wrong and tried to show me where to set “notify” or “alarm” or “reminder” to vibrate or beep. I did. We tested. Still didn’t notify me of any missed calls until AFTER I picked up the phone and unlocked it.

We all agreed that this seemed wrong, so I googled, and found the general forum chatter of people asking “how do I turn on notifications” and everyone advised everyone to do exactly what I had just done. No one ever confirmed that this had fixed their problem though.

Graham’s phone notifies him periodically. So does my roomie’s previous motorola phone. granted, the L2 is newer… but whatever.

This notification/reminder feature seems like a really basic thing. What happens if I miss a call while out of the room? What if I actually prefer NOT to physically pick up my phone and unlock it every couple of minutes to see if I missed a call?

I’m already compulsive enough when it comes to checking my email. I think my phone should be smart enough to let me know when I missed a call. So did Graham. So did my room mate.

So I called Cingular. Cingular claimed that the L2, and most other motorola cell phones, do not have a feature to notify people of missed calls OTHER than that missed call message. They referred me to Motorola.

So I called Motorola, who had me do a master reset, and told me to change the alert and reminder settings just like everyone told me to. So I hung up, tested it, and discovered that it had not in fact restored (created?) any audio or buzz missed call notification.

I called Motorola back, and described the situation. What followed was a long round-about conversation about how according to whoever he talked to while he put me on hold, no motorola phone has this “missed call reminder” notification.

Graham’s phone does. I told him the model.

He replied with “perhaps older models have it, but the L2 and other phones with its OS don’t”.

So I asked him for more detail like, “what’s the difference between ‘notify’ and ‘reminders’. After putting me on hold again for about 15 minutes (no joke. Dean called me and talked with me for a while while I was on phone), he finally replied that one is for notifying you of text messages, and the other is for your calendar reminders…. which is slightly funny because I realize now that I mis-asked my question. My phone doesn’t have a ‘notify’ setting. It has “alarm” and “reminder”. So… how on earth he figured out that “notify” means “for text messages” is beyond me. Maybe that’s why I was on hold for so long. He was off inventing truth somewhere in a motorola back room. :)

So… in conclusion, the Motorola cell phones don’t have any audible “missed call” reminder or notification whatsoever. it’s not a bug, and it’s also not user error.

This feature simply doesn’t exist.

Reading digg and jumping to Wil Shipley’s blog post slamming Larry Bodine’s essay on why he hates Macs… is hazardous to my attention span.

Yes, if you insist on running a ten-year-old browser on your Mac instead of any of the five or so alternatives, some web sites may not work. In other news, if you spread rotten shit on a hot dog, it doesn’t taste as good.

Can’t… stop… laughing.

Basically, it’s a case of Bodine being both totally incompetent and a crappy writer. None of his claims are substantial or substantiated, it’s obvious to anyone who knows ANYTHING about technology that his few “real” complaints are actually Microsoft’s fault, and not Apple’s, and he implies that the things people claim are great about Macs (like the whole “less viruses” and stuff) are not true, but doesn’t address one way or another if he had a problem with it.

Anyway, i’ll let you read the article yourself. It links to Bodine’s essay.

I’m just… very disappointed that someone like this is a member of any kind of Law Technology News Editorial Advisory Board, although his other title is “Law Firm Marketing Consultant”…(oh and he can be reached at Lbodine@LawMarketing.com btw.)

I think I’m almost at the very end of Dirge of Cerberus, and I’ve only logged about 5 hours of game time. I could be totally wrong though. I’m not cheating and looking up guides or anything. hm… btw… god. Vincent is so hot. (*snickers*)

so… time for some Dirge of Cerberus reviews and reviewing by penny!

I like:

1. The style/tone of the game.
   With the exception of one small side-scene where the point of view shifts to that stupid cat Cait Sith… the entire game is pretty dark and serious. I like the odd combination of mysterious-vampire/demon-like-magic that vincent seems to radiate, combined with the political/technological/environmental stuff that final fantasy VII is all about.
2. Vincent (duh).
   I like his character, his story, his twisted and broken body. I have to admit that I HATE his stupid cell phone and it’s stupid gothic silver cross style. it makes his character more like a costume complete with matching accessories! omg ponies! … but whatever. He was my favorite character from the original game… his story never got explained fully. Now it has, and my jaw has sorta… dropped. (nope, no spoiling.)
3. Gameplay style:
   I love the 1st/3rd person shooter thing. woo for mixing it up in the FF genre. And as far as the 3rd person action style game goes, it seems like the time the creators spent on Kingdom Hearts influenced this one… it’s sort of like KH, only you’ve got a gun in your hand (well, 3), and you actually have to fricken aim. Not that aiming is all that hard or anything. It’s like halo without the funky controls, and with a lot more auto-aiming. So… Halo minus about 200 in difficulty. plus mele combat. and materia. woo shiny materia.

What I don’t like:

1. The leveling system.
   I HATE that the whole “leveling up” system is now pretty much non-existant. Unless you’re really really good and get a really high score at each chapter, you’re not going to get all that much experience. The drop-rate of items is also really controlled, so you can’t gain enough gold to upgrade your weapons very well… which I suspect is one reason the second thing I dislike about the game is a problem for me:
2. The Tsviets
   Granted, I haven’t beaten any of them yet (not for lack of trying), but the fight with Rosso the Crimson (and I assume all the other Tsviets, although I haven’t gotten past her yet) is DISPROPORTIONATELY hard compared to all other battles before her. It’s really fricken annoying. I’ve only died once in all the other boss fights, and I can’t get her down past about 1/2 health before she wipes the floor with me.

What I’ve got mixed feelings on:

1. Inventory limit
   The limit to how many items you can carry makes the game a major challenge. At first I thought this was really really lame, but now I realize that the challenge is there for a reason. It keeps people “playing fair” and keeps people from just stocking up and maxing out on all the potions you can hold. it makes sense, considering ALL of your items are a usable at any time. The creators put a lot of care into the small logistics of the game to make sure that even the most experienced FF player isn’t going to be using any of their old tricks to get through unscathed. On that note… next item:
2. The lack of any save-points.
   Probably for the same reasons that they’ve limited your items inventory, they’ve also limited how games are saved. For one thing, you can never actually “save” your game in the conventional sense. You can’t save a copy just before a boss you like and then re-play it later (or even just as a precaution before a boss in case you die). There are NO save points. Your game is auto-saved, and I still haven’t quite figured out how all that works because when I return to a game, I sometimes expect it to pick up in a place a little farther along from where it ends up starting… I don’t know. I’ll leave that to someone else.
3. Related: the Temp Save system
   Both this and the lack of save points is frustrating PROBABLY because I’m used to being able to be a little more reckless. Back when I knew I could just make a temp-save, go nuts and learn the level, and then just restart, I’d do it. But this temp save system is meant to prevent that. Once you re-open a temp save file, the file is destroyed, preventing you from just resetting the console. It’s pretty obvious that the creators know the kinds of tricks players like to use to “cheat.” On the other hand, this system solves one of the biggest problems of any other RPG with fixed save-points you have to manually access: you can save and quit your game at any time. So, if your mother tells you to get your ass down stairs and do the dishes, you have no excuse (or in my case, if my ride is about to leave or something). I love AND hate both these details. They show the kind of thought that was put into it, and it steers players more into playing the game how the creators want it to be played.

Overall, I love the game so far. I love the FF saga, and you really can’t have that saga without vincent (Soooo odd that vincent is an optional character in the original game.)

I also find it kind of strange and cool that I bought the game only a few days away from Oct. 13… Vincent’s birthday (according to the original FFVII booklet).

I wonder why they didn’t try to release the game on that day and see how many fans would notice.

(or titled “part 2 of the “hole in the wall” India literacy experiment post!”)

Google announced yesterday that it’s launching the Google Literacy project to help spread literacy and provide resources and lots of other stuff for teachers, parents, mentors, students, and just regular people (with internet access) to help do so.

While promoting literacy worldwide via the internet is not a new thing (just do a google search. basically every self-respecting university, and a number of big organizations also are working to create a more literate world), I think google’s visibility, their philosophies, and their resources can add a lot to this.

Google’s literacy project basically acts as a portal to some of its services, like book search, google scholar, and other things, all acting as a kind funnel and pointing to things related to literacy. It draws attention to literacy, education, and pro-actively does something about it in the google-way of doing things… by organizing information and making it more accessible.

That’s way more powerful than you’d initially think, really. Honestly. Because most people in “literacy initiatives” or projects try to open schools, try to gather volunteer support, write and publish, or they manually collect links to resources and re-post them. But google uses it’s own technologies to sort and find these resources for you, so there’s no manual lists of resources to sort and maintain, and all the results are current, relevant, etc.

Plus, making this kind of portal (rather than yet another technology/news/omg-cool-stuff! portal) shows what kinds of values Google celebrates and wants to promote.

So… India. The googleblog announcement talks about India, and how it has 1/3 of the worlds “literacy problem”. And just yesterday, I blogged about the hole-in-the-wall experiment from India, which showed that there was some exciting and active research going on involving literacy, technology, and accessibility to this education.

Coincidence? maybe. Awesome? yes.

Gotta read more.

But first, must go back to work.