Re: Beeminder/Kibotzer

From: Thomas Renkert <thomas.renkert@gmx.de>
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Beeminder/Kibotzer
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:37:57 +0000 (UTC)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <loom.20101118T221930-636@post.gmane.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 877hgeec48.fsf@berkeley.edu

Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence <at> berkeley.edu> writes:

> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I just came across this site, which looks really interesting:
> 
> http://beeminder.com/about
> 
> They provide a service for tracking progress toward (quanitifiable)
> goals, and they show you a graph that includes:
> 
>  - your actual data
>  - a trend line/zone for your actual data
>  - an ideal trend line for progress toward your goal
>  - an ideal trend zone (the "Yellow brick road")
> 
> Seems like a pretty neat tool for dealing with procrastination.
> 
> Does anyone use Org to do anything like this?  Between Org tables and
> calling out to R or Gnuplot (both features I haven't used) it seems like
> it shouldn't be too hard to do something similar.  I'm curious if others
> think this would be a valuable add-on to have around.
> 
> Best,
> Richard
> 
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> 
Hi Richard,

thank you for this idea - I have been thinking about doing something similar in 
Orgmode for some time. (I made a simple word count table that I fed into gnuplot 
to get a nice graph).

But Beeminder indeed seems to be more than just a neat visualization. 
Apparently, it can make some guesses about your progress based on very few data 
entries. The idea of the "yellow brick road" is great: a simple visual feedback 
that tells you whether you are doing fine or should be worried.

The Beeminder/Kibotzer folks have a short demo video online: 
http://quantifiedself.com/2010/10/bethany-soule-and-daniel-reeve.php

In this video they talk about an Android app called Timepie 
(http://www.androlib.com/android.application.bsoule-timepie-pqxm.aspx) which 
they used to collect statistical data at random moments. This should be very 
easy to reproduce in Org. I am thinking of a specific capture template which 
pops up at a few times per day and stores your input in a separate table. 
Timepie would be even easier to use with MobileOrg. Imagemagick and Gnuplot 
could plot some graphs based on the table. However, the stochastic algorithm 
that Beeminder uses seems to do more than that. 

Since I am not a programmer, I cannot really help but simply express my support 
for the idea and would like to see more productivity features like that in Org 
(which has tremendously increased my productivity already).

- Thomas