I’m currently reading a book on diabetes, mostly because last year I had a bad situation with my blood sugar and this year I wanted to make sure nothing like that happens again. Winter and spring went okay, so I’m going to look at what happens this summer, as that’s always been the critical time for me. To do so, I started actually reading a book on the topic (on the Reader, obviously), partly as inspiration, partly to make sure that the indications I have gotten up to now are correct.
This all in all reminded me of something I knew already: that to actually be able to keep the blood sugar under check, I have to keep exercising. I have the Wii Fit for that (and thanks to Pavel I also have the Plus software), and I try my best to always make time for it, but indeed I have been finding excuses not to do it definitely too many times for that to be considered a proper routine. So I’m now trying to find a way to force myself keeping a decent routine.
Now I know, forcing your own body to a routine it’s not ready for is a bad idea, so I’m not trying to get myself some strict times for doing stuff. I tried that before and the result has been simply bad. But at least having an idea of what I have to do during the course of a single day and make sure I do all the points in there is something that I have to learn, especially if I intend to flee away from where I stand today.
I tried before using Remember The Milk for this stuff, but it really doesn’t work well for routines, because the way it handles repeating tasks (if you don’t complete one, it’s set as “overdue”, and when you complete it , it creates the next one right away), and because it does not support sequences, or dependencies between tasks (I cannot take my fasting blood sugar if I’ve not woken up, and I cannot have breakfast until I’ve taken my level). So I’m now looking for something new altogether. I don’t need something with a web service, with synchronisation or anything, although of course if these are available I’m not going to get angry. But it has to have a few features at least…
- it has to support sequences; as I said above each task has dependencies, since it’s a routine: wake up, check blood sugar, have breakfast, wash teeth, have lunch, check blood sugar, exercise, ….
- each entry in the sequence should hide those coming afterward until it’s done or skipped;
- each task needs to have either relative or absolute deadlines; for instance while I might wake up at different hours depending on the day, and what I did the night before, I want to wake up if possible not after 10 (but allow myself to wake up later if I was up till late, in case of exceptions) and after that I wish for my breakfast to be done before half an hour; so an absolute deadline has to be defined when actually creating the task, while the relative one is intended as “tot minutes after the previous task in the sequence completed”;
- it has to record statistics, like most videogames do nowadays; the number of days I’ve been using it, a ration between the tasks completed and those skipped and one for those completed on time or after the deadline expired, weekly, monthly and total… this will help keep me in check, as any other gamer and developer I love statistics;
- it has to be accessible as a widget so that I don’t have to open the software to know what I have to do next; even better it has to allow me to confirm the tasks’ completion or the fact that I skipped it from there as well; it also has to flash the led to warn me that some deadline expired, and possible chime in with the notification sound a few minutes before it is due, so that I can take care of the task before without it late.
Now, if you know already an application with these specifics, or something very near (better if it’s Free Software in that case), I’d like to know that… if not, but you’re good enough with Android to develop one, and then release it as Free Software, I might at least partly-fund it. I don’t have the time to develop anything like this right now and I might not even have it anytime soon, thus why I’m fine with both paying (little) for a proprietary application already present, or funding (more) the development of a Free application to do this.