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?

Is this my third post in one day?

I realized today that I need a single place to store, save, and refer to lots of little tiny bits of information… things like notes to self, lists of movies, lists of books, things I don’t want to forget, birthdays, etc. It’s irritating as fuck when i write something down and lose the paper, or when I’m curious what my to-do list was like a year ago so that I can compare it to how busy I am during my senior year. So… I have a feeling that I need to get smart with database programming and php like… yesterday.

Idea for a web app:

It would basically be a running list of anything you want, with a ton of meta-data that could be added quickly. The interface would be simple containing (ideally for people like me who want it fast, now, simple, etc) a textbox where you could basically type your item with some kind of syntax that would tell the app that this is the item (maybe put it in [brackets]). Then you could have simple syntax that would quickly tag the item… The trick would be the ability to add all kinds of meta-data and tag each short entry with as many terms or types of information as you’d like.

For example, I could enter:

[revise wr327 paper] cat:assignment due:20060317 cat:writing cat:school.wr327

(’cat’ means ‘category’ btw. I could replace it with ‘tag’ but i want something descriptive so I can have ‘due’ and the potential for ‘name’ or ‘date’ or something at the “level” of category)

and it would store all that info including a date-timestamp or various other types of automated data like ip address, browser, etc. It would be REALLY spiffy if the app would suggest tags based on ones you already have (like gmail’s auto-complete of email addresses… sounds like I need to learn ajax.)

Then, I’d have a nice shiny published interface that would let me sort my list by any of those categories or tags or other data that I’ve created, quickly generate html ordered lists so that I can copy/paste that into my blog to share with others, etc etc.

This wouldn’t be a social-networking tool or group-aggregate-data networking at all. this would be a personal application, ideally web-based and public in order to be easily accessible from any location, and it would be used as a feature-enhanced book of post-it notes or pocket-notebook.

I’m sure that this could be done! I’d like to learn how to create a tool like this. Can anyone here see problems with my idea or forsee things that I may need to learn that I probably haven’t thought about? I’m one of those girls who has crazy big ideas and doesn’t realize that they’re way over my head. From what I understand, I could do this (minus the auto-complete stuff) in php and mysql… and a lot of hard newb-destroying work.

Also, is it weird that I think of my ideas all from a “user” and “this is what I want it to do and result in” standpoint and not from a “hey I know how to program this, maybe I can program something else that’s cool”?

The following are things I don’t want to forget, insights that I need to re-articulate, and possible points of tension/discovery that I might use in my essay on DH Lawrence.

Examination of HOW Lawrence is a modernist

• like Conrad, he’s reacting against old writing styles and cliches and conventions. Content and form changes, but conrad is more impressionistic and symbolic in his attempt to understand the unconscious mind. Lawrence attempts to articulate the unconscious and put into words the inner workings of human emotions and what he believes modern technological de-humanization is stripping from our human experience. (Look at his essays for where he says we are at fault and western world of materialism is bad etc. maybe…)
• critical or complicated relationship between human beings and the change that the modern world brings to them. Technology intrudes on the brangwens, and it is in part good. it brings success, opportunity etc. individuals can search for their Great Meaning in more places.

Lawrence’s ideas in terms of identity and the “social-construction of the soul” (my term)

• different characters find their individual meaning in different ways. Tom=land. Lydia=her secretiveness? Will=art/archetecture. Anna=children. Ursula=literature/school?
• all are still driven to love someone and be with someone else to find meaning. their different identities come into conflict or create tension with the other. (Anna and Will’s object/need-more struggle… Anna “wins” which difuses their relationship. Only after he finds a bodily object identification and feels empowered through that, does it reinvigorate.

Problems with Lawrence’s attempt to articulate what he and Lawrence both seem to realize is not articulatable.

• Conrad uses dense stream of consciousness symbolism and delayed decoding, imitates the thinking of a human being that suggests the effect of discovering and knowing the unconsciousness.
• Lawrence invents a new language to try to articulate what can’t be articulated in our language. I think this is very problematic. In my own reading, after reading his theories, it virtually “killed” the impact of his novel because what had previously been metaphor and subtle became direct and explicit. It just “felt wrong” in that way that can’t be clearly articulated. begs the question… how could lawrence think that he would be capable of doing justice to the unconscious pre-language workings of the human soul.

Other:

• Lawrence’s relationships are an oscillation between being the drive to be independent, and the drive to be with someone else and find meaning through someone else. Lawrence theorizes this in a metaphysical/psudoscientific way in his essays and believes in the magnetic fields etc. but the oscillation and back and forth is key. creates a living changing conduit that contributes to the health of the Relationship as an entity.

Paul armstrong says: power and justice are incompatible (page 5 on my preview)

possible that *shock* the two women characters are the only two heroic/incorruptable characters because they are inherently powerless, and transparent conduits through which male power travels… until the death of the two men in antonia’s life.

antonia as a female politician essay.

A lot of people misunderstand synaesthesis and think that one sense actually gets imposed on or mixed up with another sense… that we have distracting hallucinations or that we’re completely unable to even see the number 2 if it’s written on paper of the wrong shade of green for example. (hahaha.)

So, while reading about cognition and how we create and compose patterns on the information we recieve in order to process it, I came up with a way to explain my type of synaesthesis to people who don’t have it:

If you look at a picture of a heart (like this: ♥) printed in say, black ink on white paper, what color is most likely to also pop into mind? Many people (especially in western cultures) already have a color associated with that icon and would say pink or red, right? If you look at a black and white photo of a banana, what color or smell might your mind also recall? Yellow and banana smell, right?

While these types of associations are usually culturally or experiencially constructed, having synaesthesis is very similar to this type of perception. When I see a number or letter, my mind also percieves or knows that the character is also a certain color or texture, similarly to how someone looking at a black and white banana might also still percieve or know that it is yellow. It’s not that something is imposed on it, and it’s also not as if the text visually is a color that it’s not on the page (the ink really is still black on white). It’s just another aspect of the text that I’m aware of.

Anyway, this kind of analogy or description might be useful to those of us who has ever wanted to explain it to someone else, or whose been faced with a philosophy or psychology teacher (or in my case, a math teacher) who totally botches their description of it.

Cross-posted in my blog and .

I had an idea this morning when I woke up.

the digital music industry people should develop a product that lets people easily rip cd tracks to a digital format and transfer them to a portable player without the use of a computer. If they were smart, they’d try to bypass the computer entirely and create a “legitimate” (*cringe*) way to transfer purchased cds to an mp3 player. “Legitimate” because obviously since playing cds on a computer is a “privilege” and not a right (one of many stories), there’s a need for a “real” way to get legally owned cd music onto a digital player.

I imagine this product to look like a cd player (and maybe even double as one). It would have either a memory stick or a cable that would allow for the easy transfer of tracks directly into a digital music player. The two toys might even be sold together.

Better yet, a new standard in digital music players should be that they’d each come with their own unique ripping device.

They could give the device a limited wireless connection and let it connect to a database of track names and disc names (but probably not an open public one). Or, cd manufacturers could add a little extra data to their cds and digitally write all the tracks in.

You could give the device direct access to digital music stores too. Do everything possible to prevent it being connected to a computer.

The idea needs work, and maybe someone has already tried it. I think it would solve the stupid music industry’s hatred for people ripping and sharing music.

Personally, I hate the idea of this device, and I’d never ever ever buy one. But it would make the transfer of legally owned cds to a portable player a lot easier. I get really annoyed that I have to connect my player to the network in order to transfer files to it. I’d love to be able to just plug it into a cd player.

It would be a little like mini-disc recorders that would let you plug into a cd player’s headphone plug and record whatever was playing.

Someone let me know if someone’s already tried this.

Ok, back to my essay.

I’m probably not the only person insanely irritated by the stupid debate about whether or not Creationism should be taught in school instead of (or along side of) Evolution.

It seems to me that people who believe that ‘Evolution’ or any other scientific theory should be replaced by a creation myth has lost track of what it means to have faith in a creator. Faith is not about proving that God exists or trying to manipulate a religious belief system into explaining physical things that frankly don’t really matter that much anyway. Theology deals with stuff that should be seen as leagues more important than finding out if the layers of that rock over there were created by sedimentation or God’s paint brush. Stuff like loving your family, building a healthy community, raising your children, compassion and selflessness.

I just read this article on BBS News (it was on google news’s front page at the time of this post) and it really started to piss me off. The writer is yet another militant liberal making ALL people of faith look like bush-loving, anti-science cavepeople who are simply wrong about their beliefs.

His tone is hateful, condescending. A quote:

Bush and the ID people are fooling no one. Look who cheers when the president makes such remarks: not scientists–who overwhelmingly reject “intelligent design”–but bible toters, theocrats and preachers. (….) This is not science vs. science. This is poorly disguised religious dogma vs. the fact of evolution.

He goes on to say that Creationists interpret “gaps” in scientific knowledge as evidence that science is at an end and he implies that religious people feel that it is only these scientific gaps that allow room for God at all. He basically characterises people of faith as complete idiots when he says,

Let’s ask creationists: Someday, when these gaps have closed and all your purported examples of “irreducible complexity” have been satisfactorily explained by science, will you abandon your belief in a god?

Hopefully not! Holy fucking shit. when did this become a “you people aren’t allowed to believe in God once science explains everything” issue?

I want to beat someone over the head with a frying pan! Science and religion don’t need to be contradictory entities! Forgive me for taking a stand similar to “can’t we all just get along”, but shit. this is really ridiculous.

I do have to give this writer some credit. His story begins as a criticism of just President Bush and the notion that he is “using his office to legitimize his theistic views, which happen to be the origin myth of the believing bloc that voted him into office,” which I think is a valid criticism and I’m with him on his point of view on that. My favorite quote rhetorically asks if since Bush seems to believe that “both sides ought to be properly taught”, does he advise properly teaching the creation mythologies of other cultures, or other origin theories such as extra-terrestrial origins. Nice one.

But the story degenerates into a spiteful attack on believers that just makes me feel angry at a “fellow liberal”.

*sigh*

a character descriptor: politely clueless

I have a little cloth notebook that I bought in Japan… and I’ve been using it to kinda log ideas, thoughts, rants, research topics, and anything else I feel like writing down.

I’ve realized now that there’s a certain value in posting some of this stuff in my journal. The whole public[private(public)] thing has many pros.

どうぞ：

• Research: “easy solution” epidemic… trace it through time. Q: a us phenomenon? diet fads, frivlous law-suits, internet shopping, editorials blaming the media for bad public critical thinking. Look at other countries… japan, china, canada etc. Is it related to “reductionist” values pervading much of patriarchal science? (Genome project, de-emphasis on research on 3rd-world disease etc) Post wwii physics p163 Barad.
• “interdisciplinary” isn’t even enough to help solve problems in classroom, education, literacy, culture. Worse: artificially enforicng lines between spheres. better: holistic… but how the fuck do you do that? seminar paper idea: look at how structuralism has enforced failures in literacy education. compare with other nations?
• Fiction idea: overwhelmbed but going, chugging along… and in ione fluid motion turn the page and smash th ebagel on my forehead, feeling the cool sensation of chees on my skin instead of in my mouth (java ii… no sleep. no possibility of finishing)
• There are arguments for making academic writing more accessible to the masses. There are arguments for forcing a person to strive and rise up to be able to understand academic discourse. (places value on one, not the other. is this right?) Bridge: there is a gap but someone could build a carreer “translating”… maybe not necessary. Ideas filter down through culture… but slowly. Is this enough? why am I so irritated by how opaque i think aca. lit. is?
• Rey Chow PMLA Jan 01 - equates derridas ‘mistake’ with those of columbus and the modern. so, war being a catalyst ofr new technologies and sciece would be ok too? Deconstruction: define halves then demonostrate motion… more likely that derrida was identifying how we percive chinese? claims D actually thinks the east in essentialist terms. Really? read gramatology. actually finding VALUE in stereotypes? “presense” == stereotype?”
• Screw housewife. marry rich and go to school forever.
• “it shows women in an objectifying way. it showes these men as objectifiers, unconscious of their surroundings etc.
• If we lvalue “unemotional” in getting things done, could ‘klingons and ‘enemy cultures’ or other’ be seen as a place where emotion/anger is effective? Are we incapable of imagining an “other” except by inverting something in ourselves?

There is much more, but i have to go to class in about 15 minutes and I still am not wearing any clothes.

Heh. :)

Something I want to think about later: The biggest problem with social and political criticism is that it is inaccessible to the masses. The masses, with their voting power and simply because culture is created by the entire body of the massive populace, are the ones who could enact change in the social and political structure.

If Foucault’s and Zizek’s ideas were in a form more easily understood by everyone, I think that real change would be inevitable, and much more rapid.