Several years ago I toyed with the idea of having a separate blog just to keep track of my diet and exercise habits. This was just after I’d switched to Movable Type and I was flush with exuberance and energy. A similar thing happened when I switched to WordPress – I started a moblog (which I rarely update) and a podcast (which I’ve never tried). But I never started a fitlog, though now I just might.
Matt Mullenweg (PhotoMatt), the lead programmer behind WordPress, pointed out Matt Haughey’s Fitlog today. Matt (Haughey) is better known as the blogger behind A Whole Lotta Nothing. The regular blog is great, with some really interesting Flickr photos using Google Maps new satellite views, and great commentary on the blogging world as a whole. Cool stuff – check it out.
But the reason I went to his site was the Fitlog which is taking advantage of WordPress’ custom fields. By using these custom fields to record his daily weight and activities he was able to build a nifty chart showing his weight loss progress. All in all a great extension of the tools available to all of us. I’m thinking about doing the same thing, both literally and figuratively.
1) I’d like to perhaps start/maintain my own fitlog, given my recent penchant for freaking out about my health/appearance.
2) I’d like an easier way to incorporate Technorati tags to my blog posts. Something database-driven and associated with my existing content. Anything other than TechnoTag, really.
Stay tuned to this space for updates on both projects. No promises that either will get off the ground (kinda like my diet), but it’d be nice to have someone reading this blog.
UPDATE: Turn’s out Bunny’s Technorati Tags uses a custom field to generate technorati tags. Much more integrated and intuitive than my previous approaches. Nifty plug-in, actually. Now I just need to make a few tweaks to the output, so I can keep the tags in my Metadata block.
UPDATE II: Fixed! Fear my mediocre PHP skills!
In case you’re looking to do the fitlog thing, or any graphing for that matter, I’d recommend looking into JPGraph:
http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/index.php
I haven’t used the other guy’s solution (PHP/SWF) but JPGraph was easy to set up (assuming your host has a particular graphics library turned on in PHP) and the documentation is outstanding. I’ve used it to do usage graphs for a message board I’m on and it couldn’t be easier to hit the database and turn it into a graph.
Thanks for the tip, Dave. I may not go the fitlog route, but it would be neat to build some dynamic charts based on metadata of my posts. I’ll take a look at JPGraph.
Fitlog Redux…
So here’s my yearly post about my weight and fitness and the news is pretty good. Sobering, but good.
You see, despite my connections at the CDC, they say I’m overweight. They’re definitely right, but I’m feeling much better n…