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HabitCal Habit Calendar (Alpha)

Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 11:23 pm
by reinhard
I've been talking about doing this for ages -- well, it's finally done. "Done" is probably too strong a word for it -- let's say it's finally ready for someone besides myself to bang on.

http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/

I'd be very grateful if some brave souls would be willing to try it out. If there's a spark of interest and it seems to be useful, I'll invest more work in it and push it on the main everydaysystems pages.

If you're baffled or stuck, or intrigued but not quite ready to use it because it lacks some critical feature, please let me know. I'd love for this to be a useful tool to people, so don't worry about hurting my feelings if you have criticisms that might help get it there.

Thanks in advance!

Reinhard

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 11:12 am
by Sinnie
I love the idea. I am definitely going to try using it starting today.

Thank you Reinhard! Your work is really so much appreciated.

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:17 pm
by Brandon
Great idea, and I like the display. I've got my own in Excel, but I didtn' take the time to make it as pretty as yours. Mine's just one long straight line down.

I tried to set one up, but after going to the edit page, I don't see a calendar display. It's got everything on the page short of the actual calendar itself. There are no days available to click on, so I can't flag them one way or the other.

Thanks for taking the time to set this up. I'm looking forward to using it.

Brandon

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:24 pm
by reinhard
Sinnie,

I'm glad you like it! Let me know if you have any problems/questions/suggestions.

Brandon,

You have to select the habits you want to display from the list, then hit "show." By default no habits are selected, so no calendar is displayed.

I admit that's not immediately obvious... I'll think about how to make it clearer. Maybe something as simple as if no habits are selected it will say "please select a habit and hit show."

Thanks both of you for trying this out! Keep the feedback coming...

Reinhard

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:26 pm
by Xtal
Hi Reinhard!

I love the idea, however, when I sign in, no dates are appearing. Let me know if you would like me to email you a screenshot.

Xtal

UPDATE - just saw this
reinhard wrote:You have to select the habits you want to display from the list, then hit "show." By default no habits are selected, so no calendar is displayed.
Oh! I see.

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:55 pm
by reinhard
Xtal,

Thanks for reporting this problem even though you figured it out in the end! It helps me prioritize what to fix. I'm sure others will not be able to figure it out and just silently give up...

OK. I fixed it (sort of).

Now there's a message that says what to do. I'm not sure if this is the best solution, but it was the easiest.

Reinhard

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 6:39 pm
by Brandon
Thanks Reinhard.

Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 1:20 pm
by London Mum
I love it. I will be starting today. What a great tool to have for free!

LM

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:42 pm
by KC 7707
Reinhard,

Great idea

Thanks Alot,

Kevin

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:45 am
by roseha
Hi Reinhard,

Just de-lurking after a long time to tell you I really like the Habit Cal! I think it's the simple graphic nature of it, no need to say why you had a bad day, whatever.

I set up a second category (after nosdiet) for walking, by which I would mean walking for a certain period of time for exercise. That one worked but I also tried to set one up for 7 hours of sleep (which I don't always get) but though I tried "7_hrs_sleep" and "sleep" neither worked (it didn't save the entries). Is there a limit to the length of the tags?

Update, I got it to work, I didn't realize I wasn't highlighting the tag I guess?

Anyway great idea!

Roseha :D :D

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 12:44 pm
by reinhard
Hi Roseha,

"sleep" should work.. (as should "7_hrs_sleep" -- it accepts letters and underscores, I can make it accept other characters if people really care). There is a limit to the length of the tags bug it's much longer (and there's no limit to the number of tags).

Ah, I just read to the end of your post and saw you got it to work. Yeah, that highlighting the tags thing, even with the note I added, is a little baffling... I may have to reconsider how that works.

Glad it's catching on, in spite of these quirks! I'm enjoying using it myself. There's something disproportionately satisfying about ticking off those colors.

Just a reminder if people have ideas on how to make HabitCal better, please let me know. I have a few ideas on the main HabitCal page (toward the bottom), but if you don't see yours there, or even if you do but one looks much more useful than the rest, let me know. I'll prioritize based on what people are asking for.

Reinhard

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:23 pm
by Xtal
Reinhard,

Would it be any trouble to put a link to the Habitcal at the top of the Everyday Systems bb page? It won't let me edit my calendar without going to the bulletin board first, even if I am signed in. That way I could just go to the bb and straight to the Habitcal from there.

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 5:44 pm
by reinhard
I added it (to the main everydaysystems page, too). Thanks for the suggestion!

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 4:54 am
by roseha
Hi Roseha,

"sleep" should work.. (as should "7_hrs_sleep" -- it accepts letters and underscores, I can make it accept other characters if people really care).
Thanks Reinhard, I went with sleep7 and it's working now...really good concept! I just said to myself, oh I have to input those habitcals..

Also the site looks fine, your move seems to have gone well.

Thanks, Roseha

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:18 pm
by kccc
Just started using it, and like it. Thank you! I'm finding it very motivational.

Some suggestions...
- A "Refresh" button (that basically does the same thing as "Show", but positioned to the right, so it's sort of in processing order) would add clarity, IMHO.

- I'd love a text box where I could put my "habit definition." It's just helpful to see it in front of me.

- Wish I could mix habit views (okay, I know that's getting into serious programming). For example, my exercise routine is three "real" sessions a week (classes, running) and a 15-minute stretch routine on "off days." I'd like to see them on one calendar for exercise, but know which is which. (Right now I'm putting them all under "exercise," and remembering... but that kind of defeats the purpose of mentally off-loading.)
- Alternatively, a "comment" section (sort of like Excel comments) would take care of my issue above, plus allow other annotations.

(Take what you can use, and let the rest go by... but since you're in Alpha mode, thought you might like to hear ideas.)

Again, thank you for developing it!

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:00 am
by reinhard
Thanks for these ideas, KCCC!

Habit definition definitely sounds like a good idea (and not hard).

Mixing tags is a bit tricker, but here's a way I might do it... you could select multiple tags and tick "composite view" or something. I'm not quite sure what would happen in the case of conflict (red in one vs. green in another) but one naive approach would be to just give green a score of +1 and red a score of -1 (blanks and yellow would be 0) and then make higher positive numbers a darker shade of green and lower negative numbers a darker shade of red. This would be easy to code, pretty intuitive to understand, neat looking, and possibly even useful. I think it would handle the case you describe, and others as well.

Reinhard

Comment and question

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:39 am
by mondurvic
I love HabitCal and look forward to it each night almost like a date.

A question: How do we view the HabitCals of those willing to post them for public viewing?

Judy

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:03 pm
by reinhard
Hi Judy,

I'm glad you like it!

At the moment, you can browse people's HabitCals by tag here:

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

I have a few ideas for how to improve this (like some indication of who is actually keeping their calendars up to date, maybe even how they are doing, with perhaps greenish or reddish glows of varying intensities).

Reinhard

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 2:11 am
by gratefuldeb67
Hi there Reinhard!
I finally checked out the HabitCal.. Very cool.. Once I figured it out.
Neato!!!
I'm gonna use it everyday!!
Thanks for that :wink:

I can't remember further back than the last few days so I didn't bother filling in the other days of the month.. I'd say though that I only had about a 70 percent successful month.
That's okay. I still lost a few pounds and I have started going to the pool and doing water jogging, and a bit of yoga too :D

Really like how HabitCal ended up looking, and it's easy to use..
If at worst I don't get to post a lot these days, I will really make my best effort to regularly check the little (hopefully green!!) boxes, everyday!

Peace and Love,
8) Debs xo

Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:05 pm
by reinhard
Deb,

I'm am very psyched the habitcal has your approval! I hope it winds up being useful for you. It's easy to stick in yoga and all that other stuff, too.


Reinhard

Trying out the habit calendar

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:50 pm
by NoelFigart
I think this could be quite a useful tool. It's very simple and direct and I like that.

One thing that has me kinda contemplating, though...

One of my desires is to establish the habit of swimming Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Yes, you will see on my calendar that I have a red light on Monday.

Today is an "S day" for swimming, if you will. I've decided that for my own tracking purposes, you cannot "make up" for not doing what you set out to do, so even though I did indeed swim today, I'm counting it as an S day. I didn't HAVE to swim, so whether I did or not does not count to tracking.

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:05 pm
by Atom
Hey, Seinfeld likes HabitCal! (or something like it)

http://lifehacker.com/software/motivati ... 281626.php

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:11 am
by Jammin' Jan
Yup, it's HabitCal alright!

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:04 pm
by reinhard
Very cool! I posted a comment describing habitcal, but it has yet to be approved.

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 4:48 pm
by Hunter Gatherer
The one change I would like in HabitCal is for the previous-month's days that are on the current month's calendar to show color instead of being gray.

When you are towards the end of a good week going from an encouraging string of green down to one lonely green box is kind of depressing.

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:29 am
by Sixty
I'd be very grateful if some brave souls would be willing to try it out. If there's a spark of interest and it seems to be useful, I'll invest more work in it and push it on the main everydaysystems pages.
I found HabitCal extremely easy to set up and use - only time will tell if it's actually helpful.

Is there any way to back up or export all the data we enter? I would like to be able export the data every now and then - it would be a shame to lose months or years worth of tracking data in a major system crash.

Sixty

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:45 pm
by tapper47
I love HabitCal. I can add anything I want to track and see my progress. It's a real motivator.

Thanks, Reinhard. :D

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:46 pm
by reinhard
Thanks for this last batch of suggestions and feedback!

I'm very happy that the habitcal seems to be catching on.

I'll think about the suggestion of showing the previous/next months data as colored instead of grey... there are some not immediately obvious issues to consider like what if you are showing multiple months and change data that is shown in two months in one month (I guess it should just update both).

Reinhard

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 9:58 pm
by kccc
More suggestions...

1) I'd like to be able to rename calendars.

I'd set up "exercise" and "stretches" when I was taking exercise classes and trying to do a little movement on non-class days. But now I have no classes for a month (gnashing of teeth - I love my classes!) and am doing a different system entirely... so, I'm doing daily exercise for a certain time, but varying what it is, and would like to track that without making new calendars.

Plus, I'd like to use a naming system that makes the related calendars line up next to each other.

2) Or... I'd like the ability to put a note on a calendar day, like a comment in Excel. That would be SO useful.

Thanks so much for making it available, though. It does help.

help!!

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:47 pm
by suzella
I can't seem to set up a calendar no matter how hard I try. The "save" button is disabled....what am I doing wrong here??

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 2:03 pm
by reinhard
Hi Suzella,

The save button only lights up after you've ticked off some days to save.

Did you do this and it still didn't light up? Please let me know if you're still stuck -- and if so, what web browser you are using.

Sorry if this is confusing. The most important thing I'm going to think about for the next release is how to make it more user and cross-browser friendly.

Reinhard

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 2:08 pm
by reinhard
Hi Suzella,

Here are some more explicit directions, in case it's just a matter of confusion and not an actual technical issue.

I see you've created two tags, 'nosdiet' and 'diet' (I assume this was intentional, that there are two slightly different diet habits you want to track? If not, highlight the one you don't want and click 'remove.').

To see a calendar, highlight the tag or tags you are interested in and click 'show'.

Choose the mark you want to make from the radio buttons (red, green, yellow, etc.). Then click the days to indicate your performance. The save button should become enabled and show how many changes remain to be saved. Click it to save your changes.

Reinhard

Had to mark exempt

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:27 pm
by tapper47
Well, I exercise most every day but since I put my back out yesterday, today is definitely out.

I can only sit in my computer chair because it is ergonomic and I have it leaning way back. I'm still in a lot of pain. Have tried back exercises which help for a nanosecond.

I marked today as exempt, not a failure.

I may take it as an S day as well. But probably not.

Richard, this system is awesome.

Thank you.

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 1:28 pm
by Hunter Gatherer
Sick days are S-days. Injury counts as sickness. (If you are injured enough.)

sick days

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 2:51 pm
by tapper47
Yeah, Hunter, it was an S day and again today.

But I'm still following the NoS WOE but I am not doing the exercise except for back relief.

I am taking Motrin for the inflammation and pain. Going to the doctor is the last thing I want to do. This generally gets better after three days or so. :?

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:57 pm
by reinhard
tapper47,

Sorry about the back... but glad the habitcal is helping. HG gives good advice: take as many sick S-days as you need.

Reinhard

back pain

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:26 pm
by tapper47
I am taking S days still. The back issue this time is a bad one because I still work at my computer and it's the sitting that is aggravating the back. (It doesn't seem to matter how ergonomic my chair is) Moving ever so slowly, makes me feel like an old lady and I hate that.

The NoS diet has become almost automatic. I started this months ago when I was registered under a different name. But I got lost somewhere in the bowels of computer hell.

I re-registered because I have a different email address and because I wanted to be able to post. And once I saw HabitCal, there was no choice.

So the S days I am taking are the exercise and daily 15. I am doing back exercises which help until I get back to the computer.

Sometimes I think I'm nuts.

Suggestion

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 5:11 pm
by Brandon
I realize you're offline for a while Reinhard, but I thought of a suggestion for the habit calendar. I'd like to see an easier way to share habitcals. I don't know how possible or complicated it would be, but I'd love to see a link to folks habicals at the bottom of a post, where the profile, PM, email, web links show up. I suppose we could put them in our web link, but I thought a dedicated one would be neat.

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:46 pm
by reinhard
Brandon,

That's a great idea. The habitcal isn't quite 'social' enough as things stand. I should also make the urls work by username instead of id so you don't have to rely on these weird ids if you're typing it in. I'll have to be a little careful not to trash the bulletin board software in the process, but I think I can manage it.

Another social thing I was thinking of doing was adding little 'badges' to the tag summary pages. On the main tag page it, it could do a tricolor bar chart for each tag to show how many total greens, reds, and yellows all users doing that tag got for each of the past 30 or 60 days. (1 px height per 'event,' 1 px width per day, I'll rethink when there are enough users for a tag to make the height prohibitively large). That way people can feel like they're part of a 'tag team.' On each individual tag page, where all the users for each tag are currently listed, it could give a personal badge for each user with a fixed height and 1px per day width for 30 or 60 days. This would be motivationally useful in a friendly-competitive way, and it would give others a clue on who to click on to receive/give inspiration. There are a lot of blank habitcals right now. Both these would be optional, of course.

That probably made no sense.... I'll do mock-up or test version when I get back.

Reinhard

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 5:27 am
by katie1980
reinhard wrote:Another social thing I was thinking of doing was adding little 'badges' to the tag summary pages. On the main tag page it, it could do a tricolor bar chart for each tag to show how many total greens, reds, and yellows all users doing that tag got for each of the past 30 or 60 days. (1 px height per 'event,' 1 px width per day, I'll rethink when there are enough users for a tag to make the height prohibitively large). That way people can feel like they're part of a 'tag team.' On each individual tag page, where all the users for each tag are currently listed, it could give a personal badge for each user with a fixed height and 1px per day width for 30 or 60 days. This would be motivationally useful in a friendly-competitive way, and it would give others a clue on who to click on to receive/give inspiration. There are a lot of blank habitcals right now. Both these would be optional, of course.

That probably made no sense.... I'll do mock-up or test version when I get back.

Reinhard
It made perfect sense to me. And I have to say, I like it :) I'll look forward to that when you get a chance to implement it, as it sounds really good. especially for (relative) newbies like me who'd like to know who to ask for help or advice if necessary. Sometimes on boards like this, the noisiest ones aren't always the most successful (not saying that anyone "noisy" here is unsuccessful, but hopefully you get what I mean!).

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 1:30 pm
by reinhard
Great! I'm glad you like/understand the idea. I don't think I'm going to be able to get to it this week (drowning in vacation backlog at work/dealing with copyedited nosdiet manuscript), but I'll dive in as soon as I'm able. I keep refining it in the back of my mind and I think it should be pretty neat when I finally get a chance to code it up.

Reinhard

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:05 am
by katie1980
reinhard wrote:I keep refining it in the back of my mind and I think it should be pretty neat when I finally get a chance to code it up.
It might be even better due to the delay - because your brain is working on it all the time without you knowing about it, and it might come up with a better code, or idea, or whatever, because you've had the extra time to "work" on it :)

The manuscript sounds great. I will try to get hold of a copy, assuming I can get somewhere to ship it to Malaysia :) Good luck with that!

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 6:05 am
by NineMinuteNap
I set up 3 habits, but only one ("ShovelGlove" - the first habit created) seems to be working.

For the other 2 habits, I can view the calendars and edit days, but the changes are not saved. I click the save button, and the 'your changes were saved' alert box pops up, but the calendars remain blank.

EDIT: I took the underscores out of my habit names and after not saving the first couple changes I made, they all seem to be working now. Weird.

If it helps, I'm using Firefox v. 2.0.0.6 under Linux.

As far as features, I'd like to be able to add a description for each habit, possibly an end result (such as 'lose 20 pounds' for a No S Diet habit), and requirements for each habit to be checked a success or failure for a day. It kind of goes against the simplicity of HabitCal, but I'm predicting that if I don't have specific guidelines defined, I'll end up justifying bad behaviors in my mind & call a day a success when it should actually be a failure.

As far as the interface is concerned, would it be possible to show calendars for all defined habits by default, or add a 'show all' button?

Also, can web pages handle right & middle mouse clicks? If so, a left-click could set a day to 'success' (or whatever status is selected by the radio buttons). Right-click on a day could set its status to 'exempt', and a middle-click could set a day to 'failure'. All 3 buttons could also toggle a day from a colored state back to blank with an extra click. Maybe use alt-click and ctrl-click with the left mouse button instead of (or in addition to) using 3 buttons? It might be more trouble than it's worth to set up all the AJAX/JavaScript, but (at least in my head) seems like it would make editing calendars faster & easier.

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 3:08 pm
by reinhard
NineMinuteNap,

Thanks for these suggestions and bug/reports!

1. I fixed the underscore tags not saving problem (I think other problems people have reported can be traced back to this).

2. I made all tags selected by default when you used the "Edit" link from the main habitcal page. If you want to link directly from another site, the url parameter t=* will select all tags. At some point, I'll add an explicit "select all" button and update the selections more intelligently after an add/remove tags event, but I'm thinking I want to replace the multiple select list with checkboxes (less visually appealing but more user friendly), so I'm going to wait till I've sorted that out till I invest more energy in diddling with tag selection.

The other issues you raise are a little trickier... I know from experience on other projects that left/right/center mouseclick detection is a real pain to get working cross browser. But I'll think about it... another option, which is technically easier to get working reliably but perhaps not quite as intuitive is detecting modifier key click combinations (shift click, control click, etc).

Adding tag description is a good idea too.... others have asked for it too. Not something I can squeeze in this morning, but hopefully soon.

Reinhard

Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 11:33 am
by Spook
Hi, I've been using the HabitCal successfully now for a few weeks, and I love it - but I have a few suggestions for improvements...

1. I find it slightly counter-intuitive that successive months appear in reverse order. The dates within the months increase as you go down the page, so it would be good if the months themselves also did this; that way the end of one month would flow seamlessly into the next.

2. I don't seem to be able to 'blank' a date back to white if I've erroneously filled it in.

3. I'd also second some others' suggestions of being able to add descriptions for tags, and some form of easier integration with the forum check-in posts, (or a way of being able to add additional clarification to failures/exemptions).

4. As an alternative to the left-click/right-click/shift-click alternatives, why not just have the colours cycle through green/red/yellow/white with each click? Then it's just one click for success, two for fail, etc. It would probably be less clicks overall (assuming most people manage more greens than reds...) and would be very easy to understand.

Overall, it's great and really doesn't need much improvement, but these are just a few of my ideas.

Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 2:13 pm
by reinhard
Thanks for these suggestions, Spook. I'm very happy you find it useful as is. I hope to get version 2 out before new years 2008 -- and if I do, some of these will certainly be in there.

Brief responses to your points:

1. you're right... at the very least I could make this a user preference. Then maybe I'd make it the default if it's what most people prefer. The within months dates not flowing smoothly is jarring, with the current sort. The reason I did it this way is because I assumed more recent is more interesting, but maybe this cost outweighs that consideration.

2. you should be able to do this by selecting the "blank" radio button and then clicking the date. What browser/os are you using?

3. tag descriptions and text notes are at the top of my list for version 2 todos.

4. That's a good suggestion, but I want to think very carefully about changing the way the clicking works... The current interface has the advantage of being self-documenting and scalable: each radio button says what it does right next to it. I think this will be clearer for most people. Plus if I add additional options (like add note) click counting becomes very awkward (4 clicks for that? 5 actually, if you count blank). But I will think hard about adding some kind of more efficient power user mode... maybe a keyboard toggle that would switch the radio buttons?)

Reinhard

Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:09 pm
by Last Martian
One feature that would help me a lot would be the ability to just write something in each field. Four letters just below the date, for instance. That would make it possible to keep track of more complex resolutions.

For example you have an exercise program of Jogging, break, Cycling, break, swimming, break, walking- you could just note down: Jogg, break, cycl, break, swim, break, walk. With this example, breaks are not exempt days, but also resolutions, so you can't just use yellow.

Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 11:52 am
by Last Martian
On reflection I actually think that would be overkill. The simplicity of the current system seems to be helpful in keeping me focused. You just can't keep track of too complex stuff this way. Any system you can't just remember is probably too complicated anyhow. Some extra functions would be nice, but I'm now in favor of keeping it really, really simple. Anything that gives me the opportunity to overcomplicate things I'll use to the furthest extent possible I'm afraid.

One thing though: I have been reordering my tags by priority, which I just did by recreating everything in the order I wanted it and then deleting the old stuff. I'm not quite certain, but I think when I added "Nosdiet" it automatically overwrote the old lower-case "nosdiet" tag. Probably not something that'll come up a lot as an issue, but I thought I'd mention it.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 2:35 pm
by reinhard
Last Martian,

Yes, keeping it simple will remain a top priority.

That's one of the reasons I've been taking my time implementing any changes (the other is laziness :-)): I want to think long and hard about the extra complexity they had, and whether that cost is worth it. Some ideas that seem good in themselves, are no longer so good when there are a hundred more just like them.

I'll look into the reordering... that would be a nice (and simple) feature. As for the case sensitivity, it seems to be a quirk of the way the database indexes things. You can use mixed case, but the index is case insensitive. I think what I'll do is just enforce lower case for everything. Better be a little limited and predictable than unlimited and suprising.

Reinhard

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 9:39 pm
by Spook
reinhard wrote:2. you should be able to do this by selecting the "blank" radio button and then clicking the date. What browser/os are you using?
It works exactly as you described. Weird. I must have been doing something wrong! (Firefox 2 & Ubuntu Linux, for the record)
reinhard wrote:4. That's a good suggestion, but I want to think very carefully about changing the way the clicking works... The current interface has the advantage of being self-documenting and scalable: each radio button says what it does right next to it. I think this will be clearer for most people. Plus if I add additional options (like add note) click counting becomes very awkward (4 clicks for that? 5 actually, if you count blank). But I will think hard about adding some kind of more efficient power user mode... maybe a keyboard toggle that would switch the radio buttons?)
Point taken. I like the idea of the keyboard toggle actually. This could be implemented very simply by assigning access keys to the radio buttons. However it might not be that useful unless the whole process (of selecting dates) could also be keyboard driven, which would be *much* more complicated.

Spook

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 9:20 pm
by reinhard
Minor change:

I just changed the month sort from descending to ascending.

Thanks, Spook for suggesting this.

For a moment I considered making this user configurable, but I think 99% of the time users are going to prefer it this way, and don't want to confuse and clutter the interface. If you do want to be able to configure the sort or preferred it the old way, let me know and I'll reconsider.

I'd been hoping to have a major new release of the habitcal out before jan 1, but there are less than 2 weeks left and it ain't gonna happen. I don't want to rush out lots of changes that mess up the program completely at the heaviest traffic period of the year. It's been relatively nice and stable for a while and I don't want to mess with that. Instead, I'll see if I can squeeze in a few of the littler things that have been suggested here and taking my time to do version 2 right (and bug free).

Among other things, I've been thinking of reimplementing it in flash. I've been doing a lot of flash for my day job recently, and have been very impressed with how mature the technology has gotten (see google finance, yahoo maps, and youtube, among others). I think it would be less quirky across browsers, much easier to code and maintain, and open up lots of new visualization possibilities.

Reinhard

Help with HabitCal

Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 11:29 pm
by laguna
When I go into HabitCal and click on Edit there are no habits listed in the box next to the date. If I click the Add button I just get a "clunk" sound. No calendar is displayed so I cannot pick a date. Please help.

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 2:10 pm
by reinhard
Hi Laguna,

What web browser are you using?

Reinhard

Ability to rename?

Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 6:22 pm
by JackHacket
Hi Reinhard!

Thanks for putting all this great stuff here for free!

I've started some HabitCal projects but would really like the ability to rename trackers. E.g. I created one Dinner1830, meaning I want to have dinner before half past six every day, but now I'd like to change it to seven, which is more realistic, and there's currently no way to do that, is there?

Cheers

Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:13 pm
by gratefuldeb67
Jack, just delete your original tag and create a new one.
Good luck.

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:43 am
by reinhard
Well, deleting and creating a new tag means you lose your data (you don't actually lose it, it's still sitting there stubbornly under the old tag). For now I could go into the database and change this manually for you (just let me know exactly what you'd like me to call it). I'd be happy to do this, but obviously it's not a very "scalable" solution to something I'm surprised no one has asked for before. I'll certainly build in direct support for this when/if I ever get around to pushing out version 2.

Reinhard

Gee!

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 5:09 pm
by JackHacket
Reinhard,

Many thanks for your kind offer of manual editing!

Since all my tags are still just a couple of days old - and since I know I wouldn't want to have to edit stuff on demand if I was in your shoes - I'll simply delete the ones I have, give them more general names (e.g. "EarlyDinner" instead of "Dinner1830") and specify the exact details in a memo to myself somewhere. Then I can easily change that without having to bother you - my newfound hero. :D

Cheers

Phil

extra habitcals

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:08 pm
by la_loser
Phil,

Check out my post on the topic of Extra Habitcals; I posted it in the midst of these entries on April 21. Still working for me pretty well--although like you said, I had to make me a little legend that reminds me exactly what they mean!

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... ght=#46631

Good luck.

Fallback Habitcals

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 6:19 am
by JackHacket
LA_Loser: Hey, maybe now that your Habitcals are greening so nicely, it's time to change your alias here...? :)

Thanks for that pointer, it was helpful and I feel I may use something like that in the near future.

Losing still-pounds that is!

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:49 pm
by la_loser
Thanks for the good thought. I need to "weight" a lot longer before I can declare I no longer need to "lose". . . but I'm determined to get there. Then I'll become LA Winner!

I do feel like I'm winning already simply because I have formed such positive habits with Everyday Systems. But from the beginning, I set out to be the LA Loser until I'd made a significant dent in the loss I need to make. So till then. . .

Start week on...

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 10:15 pm
by wrigleyj
Reinhard,

I know this is a pretty trifling request, but could it be possible to add an option to start the week on a Monday when viewing/editing the calendar?

It's probably just me, but I would really like to be able to see all my green squares lined up with the amber ones neatly on the right-hand side.

I honestly don't have OCD ;-)

Joe

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:40 am
by gratefuldeb67
Hahahah!!! That's funny!!! :mrgreen:

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:11 pm
by reinhard
Joe,

I'll look into it!

I think it would be easy technically, and I see the rationale, I just want to be careful about adding seldom use options. The Sunday start is the conventional calendar paradigm, and I'm not sure how many people would want to break from that (anyone else out there, let me know if you would! more votes would definitely help me make up my mind).

Reinhard

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:08 pm
by Spudd
reinhard wrote:Joe,

I'll look into it!

I think it would be easy technically, and I see the rationale, I just want to be careful about adding seldom use options. The Sunday start is the conventional calendar paradigm, and I'm not sure how many people would want to break from that (anyone else out there, let me know if you would! more votes would definitely help me make up my mind).

Reinhard
I can't say I'd vote for it, but my husband is Swedish and in Sweden, all calendars start the week with Monday and end with Sunday. He is constantly telling me our calendars are "wrong", LOL.

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:35 pm
by reinhard
I'll call it "Swedish Mode," then :-)

Seriously, that's helpful to know.

I did some poking around on the web and it does seem like there is some support/precedent for calendars starting the week on Monday. It does certainly make a lot of SENSE. It looks like outlook's calendar lets you choose the start day for your week.

What I think I'll do is create a habitcal preferences page that will let you choose the start day for the week and other stuff like what your default view should be (mine would be table view instead of the current calendar view, for example).

Reinhard

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:54 pm
by gratefuldeb67
No offense to anyone from Sweden, lol, but I am fond of the good ole HabitCal the way it is now.. I guess it's because I'm used to the same calendar now for 41 years..
Old habits die hard :wink:

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 1:21 pm
by wrigleyj
Reinhard, that would be a very sensible way of doing it IMHO

Joe

Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 8:41 pm
by bluebunny27
Thanks for this great tool, HabitCal. I like it a lot and I'll use it every day now.

I may use the colors a bit differently though. For me the green color represents a good day, the yellow, a day where i misbehaved slightly, but was still on track most of the times .. and red, when i was misbehaving more.
I prefer that color code personally. ;-)

HabitCal, I would like it if it started in the table view mode by default instead of the calendar mode though, that's the only improvement I can think of at the moment.

Maybe that could be a user preference, a box you could check if you prefer it that way, etc. Nothing major of course. Wouldn't most people prefer the table view by default ? I was just thinking about that.

I find this tool very useful and it helps track your behavior well, I wish I would have found out about this months ago in fact.

Thanks for the hard work, Sir.

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 7:05 pm
by reinhard
Marc,

I think most people (and I could easily query the database to check that this is actually true) use the habitcal for a very small number of habits -- possibly just one. For that, Calendar view is fine, and the most familiar paradigm.

But I'll make it a preference -- I too am mostly in table mode.

Reinhard

Problem Adding and Saving May 2009 calendar in Calendar View

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 5:28 pm
by Ms
Hello,

I am trying to add the May 2009 calendar. I click the Load button after adding 2 months and May 2009, the change does not stay. The next time I log in, only the April 2009 calendar shows up. Is there a way for me to fix this?

Thanks.

no "show" button

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 6:41 pm
by kaboose621
I added the tag "nosdiet" but no matter how I click on it, highlight it, or anything else, I can't get to see the calendar and don't have a "show" button anywhere. I even had my husband to look at it too!

Help please!

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 6:43 pm
by kaboose621
well, after all that, I went back, added another tag called "diet" and then clicked "load" when "nosdiet" was highlighted and it worked. I then deleted the "diet" tag.

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:48 am
by getoka
Hi,
Can anyone help? I'm trying to set up my habitcal but I cannot get it to show tags.

I'm getting the grey box in which to type the tag. I type in 'nosdiet' and then click 'OK' but after that nothing happens - no tag listed,no calendar shown- nothing.

What am I doing wrong?

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 9:37 am
by reinhard
Hi getoka,

It doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong.

It may be that the web browser you're using and the habitcal aren't getting along on some technical level.

If you let me know exactly what browser and operating system your using, I will try to reproduce this. If I can get it to happen myself, I'm sure I can fix it.

Reinhard

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:25 pm
by getoka
Hi Reinhard,

I'm using AOL 9.0 VR. I've just tried using Windows Internet Explorer and I was able to get the tag to show up but still no calendar.

Thanks for taking the trouble to help.

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:15 pm
by reinhard
I'll get my hands on the aol browser.

But I think in the meantime, if you click on the tag to highlight it, and then click "load" it should work.

(I'm thinking of using checkboxes instead of a multi selection list to make this more obvious)

Hope that works, at least.

Reinhard

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:13 pm
by getoka
reinhard wrote: But I think in the meantime, if you click on the tag to highlight it, and then click "load" it should work.


Great! got it working on Internet Explorer -hoping to record a green day later :D Thanks so much Reinhard.

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 6:22 pm
by enmilto
Reinhard,

I'm sorry. I have tried to call up a habitcal for myself, but I must be computer challenged. I don't see a "show" button and the "load" button is not lit.


Thanks and thanks again for the Nos Diet. I am only on my first 12 days of it, but I love it.

enmilto

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 6:58 pm
by reinhard
Hi Emilto.

Glad to hear you're enjoying no-s!

The "show" button is now called "load" -- sorry about that confusion.

Before you can load a view, you'll have to create a habit "tag" to track.

There's a little "add" hypertext on the top right that will prompt you to enter one more more tags.

Then click a tag (or shift/control click multiple tags) to select it and hit the load button.

Let me know if you're still having trouble.

Best,

Reinhard

2010 update. . .

Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 5:00 am
by Cantab
Thanks for the habit cal. It's extremely motivating, especially for exercise. I just like seeing the green squares lining up. Can you please add 2010 to the menu, so we can start using it for January 2010?

Thanks

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 2:36 pm
by reinhard
Hi Cantab,

Sorry I didn't see this post till now -- but I did see a slew of email on the subject and had it working again on the 2nd.

I'll make sure not to wait to the last minute for 2011.

Reinhard

Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:07 pm
by Sara R
Did the preferences option ever get added?

Also, is there a way to edit tabs? Since I started habitcal, I've come up with slightly more clever names for the habits. If I delete and rename, will I lose the history?

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 2:31 pm
by reinhard
Hi Sara,

I'm afraid I haven't gotten around to adding preferences or editing yet (it's been a VERY busy few months).

I do still hope to get around to adding these features, but in the meantime, I'd be happy to go into the database directly and rename any tags you send me.

Reinhard

Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 4:40 pm
by Jethro
I've noted on HabitCal that when I add yellow days (exempt) during weekdays, my score percentage on stats goes down and I miss medals.

Am I supposed to be punished for selecting yellow (exempt) days from Monday to Friday?

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 3:30 pm
by reinhard
Hi Jethro,

Saw your email before your post here, but I'll quote from my reply for the benefit of others who might be interested and/or want to weigh in on the scoring issue:
Hi Jethro,

Sorry I missed your PM!

Yes, you are correct that the habitcal currently treats weekend S-days differently from Non-weekend S-days.

And yes, this is a little rigid and inflexible and I should allow users to tweak how the scoring works.

Here is the formula, in case you want to understand precisely what it is doing now:

With a special exception for "weekendluddite," your percent score is adjusted downward by the percent of non-weekend s days greater than 7%.

(this works out to about 2 non-weekend S-days a month)

So:

(green / ( green + red )) - ( non-weekend S-day percent exceeding 7%)

In addition to allowing other scoring options, I should probably change this default scoring system to not privilege weekend S-days like this.

Maybe something like:

(green / (green + red )) - ( yellow exceeding 30%)

Reinhard
Reinhard

HabitCal Olympin medal score

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 4:59 pm
by Jethro
Thanks again for your reply. I'm publishing my response to your email because it may help others:

Now I see what my problem was.

Evidently the 2 non-weekend S-days a month program was throwing me off when applied to the shovelglove calendar that I use to record compliance with my personal routine that is only three days a week, described at:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=8703

The HabitCal calendar was penalizing me for resting Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'll solve the problem by giving myself a green on these days. I hope you approve. :wink:

HabitCal source code

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 10:58 am
by icewater
Hi -

Is it possible to get the HabitCal source code to install on my own server?

Related question: any thought to open-sourcing the code in general?

Thanks!

Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 4:31 pm
by reinhard
Hi Icewater,

Only limiting factor is clean up time that I don't have...

Current source is rather unattractive.

Reinhard

Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2014 12:50 am
by dgrant
It seems to be broken currently. It says AJAX FAILURE after loading the page.

habitcal sometimes won't appear

Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 10:16 am
by earl7z
This was working yesterday :-)

I typically ask for 2 months. I've been asking for tableview of august and september. That stopped working. I just see the first line ( Everyday systems link through logout link)

As best as I can work out, if my request doesn't end with september, it works. For example calendar view of aug,sep,oct works. Table view of same works.

Curious.

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 8:07 pm
by japorito
HabitCal seems broken today. It looks like the problem has to do with requesting javascript over HTTP when the page was brought in as HTTPS. If it had been open source, I would have just put in a pull request for a fix. Heh. Instead, I'll give you the errors from the Chrome console (also not working in firefox):

Code: Select all

Mixed Content: The page at 'https://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/edit/?o=9649&v=c&sc=1&m=10&y=2015&t=nosdiet' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure script 'http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js'. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.
everydaysystems.com/:37 Uncaught ReferenceError: urchinTracker is not defined(anonymous function) @ everydaysystems.com/:37
everydaysystems.com/:1 Mixed Content: The page at 'https://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/edit/?o=9649&v=c&sc=1&m=10&y=2015&t=nosdiet' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure script 'http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.2.2/build/yahoo/yahoo-min.js'. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.
everydaysystems.com/:1 Mixed Content: The page at 'https://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/edit/?o=9649&v=c&sc=1&m=10&y=2015&t=nosdiet' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure script 'http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.2.2/build/event/event-min.js'. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.
everydaysystems.com/:1 Mixed Content: The page at 'https://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/edit/?o=9649&v=c&sc=1&m=10&y=2015&t=nosdiet' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure script 'http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.2.2/build/connection/connection-min.js'. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.

Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 6:16 am
by crossthebreeze
The save changes button isn't working - though it was fine two days ago - sorry to report technical issues again!

Thanks

Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 12:19 pm
by GregMcD
Just a quick note to thank you, Reinhart, for HabitCal, which I have used off and on for some time and has been a great help to me and a great introduction to habit tracking. These days, it's easier for me to do my tracking on my phone and now there are lots of well made apps for free or cheap that help with that. I'm using HabitBull and love it, but I do sometimes feel nostalgic for HabitCal. Thanks again and have a great day!

Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 6:24 pm
by reinhard
Thank you, Greg, for the kind words!

I'll check out HabitBull.

Sorry about the mixed content messages -- japorito and crossthebreeze, I didn't notice them because chrome just silently suppresses those messages. Should be a quick fix...

Reinhard

Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 6:37 pm
by reinhard
OK, I think I got rid of the mixed content messages in habitcal, but there are a bunch lurking around in other corners of the everydaysystems site. I'll keep hunting them down but always feel free to let me know when you bump into this or anything else that looks peculiar.

Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 3:59 pm
by japorito
Thanks for fixing it! :D