Carbon Diet Blog

Version 0.12 released

2010-08-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

After breaking everything and putting it back together, I've released version 0.12 of the Carbon Diet site. This version has a great new vehicle emissions algorithm in it, as well as a huge amount of behind-the-scenes hacking, fixing code rot and getting ready for new features.

The vehicle algorithm has changed, so you will probably notice a difference in your graphs. The old method used to assume that you only fill up your car when empty, so the amount you burnt since you last filled up is the amount you filled up with last time. That's not actually very realistic; it's much better to assume that you fill your car full every time, and that the amount you *just bought* is what you've burnt since your last fillup. Hopefully this will even out some of your graphs and give you better results. Huge thanks to Paul at http://www.co2list.com/ for the suggestion.

You might also notice that many of the URLs have changed. I've learned a lot since the site first started 3 years ago, and have been trying to bring it up to date with current best practise, and get a solid foundation to build more features on in the future.

Hope you like it, anyway!

Change of DNS provider

2010-04-06T01:46:00.000-07:00

I've finally got sick of my existing DNS provider - while they were great 5 years ago, their website has slowly rotted away into uselessness, so I'm moving on. There shouldn't be any disruption to services, but I thought I'd let you know just in case you get anything strange happening over the next few hours.

New support system: Tender

2010-02-04T17:31:00.000-08:00

I've upgraded the Carbon Diet to use a great new integrated support system called Tender. You can create your own discussions, questions, and search the FAQs easily. In time, it will replace the existing (and very out-of-date) forum completely. One advantage is you don't have to log in separately to use it, which is an improvement.

I've had to make a change to the privacy policy to handle this; because we know automatically sign you in to Tender, we do provide some details to them, but this only happens when you actually go and visit the support site.

iPhone interface

2010-01-16T10:28:00.001-08:00

Well, I've recently got around to a little bit of development on the site, and added an iPhone interface for adding data while on the move. It's much like the old mobile interface, but improved for use with the iPhone.

Now, if you visit http://carbondiet.org on your iPhone, you'll get the new site. It still needs a bit of tweaking, but fundamentally it's working.

The Carbon Diet is open source!

2009-05-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got round to it. The Carbon Diet is now open source software, under the Affero GPL v3 license. This means you can download and improve the code, and get it uploaded onto the site! You could even install your own copy on another server, and make any changes you like as long as you release the source code to your changed version.

I was waiting until I'd tidied the code so that it wasn't embarrassing any more, but then decided that was never going to happen, so I've gone ahead just done it. There's lots of work to do - 72 issues on the list - but now that it's open source, if you'd like to help make it better, I'd love to have you on board :)

The developer area is linked from the site in numerous places (the "code" tab at the top, for instance), or you can just follow this link straight to github to get the code.

Earth Day 2009

2009-04-22T13:48:00.001-07:00

Today was Earth Day, which is always fun. However, today was a bit more fun, as the Carbon Diet got covered on CNET. According to the article, "You'll learn a lot from Carbon Diet. It's the best carbon calculator I've seen", which is a pretty good present for Earth Day!

Because of that, there's been a fair amount of new traffic today - Hi to all our new users! I've upgraded the server it's running on the cope with the increase in load, so hopefully it will stay reasonably quick...

The Carbon Diet goes to Ireland

2009-01-20T14:22:00.001-08:00

Well, OK, we're not actually going to Ireland, but we do now have data for Ireland in there, so if you've been waiting for that, then your time has come!

Apologies if it's been a bit quiet on the development front this last year - having a child seems to have wiped out all my time, somehow :)

However, there have been some minor updates happening quietly. If you have a CurrentCost electricity monitor, I've written some software to upload the data into the Carbon Diet, which is pretty cool - it's still in development, but contact me if you want to have a go.

Also, I've started rearranging the site to a more modern code layout. The first area to be affected is flights. You shouldn't notice much of a difference, apart from the added bonus that now you get a nice map of your flights, with line thickness showing carbon impact. This is part of a expansion of the analysis tools that I am trying to do, which will add things like individual analysis graphs for each account type, which should be useful for looking at things in detail.

Press coverage, and a question

2008-02-26T03:35:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. Firstly, I thought I'd let you know that the Carbon Diet got a little writeup in the CAT newsletter, Clean Slate. I did a talk about it at the members conference in August, and it was one of the ones which got written up in the magazine, so that's nice.

Secondly, I have a question for you all. Since I've been tracking my petrol usage on the Carbon Diet, I have realised that in the last 6 months, I have only used 3 tanks of fuel. The car is a 2-seater, basically just for me, no use for the family, and these days I never use it. I spent more on tax, insurance and servicing than fuel in the whole of the last year. It hardly seems worth having it.

So, considering I live out in the countryside where the buses don't run at useful times, commute just once a week to the station 10 miles away, but want to be able to go 20 miles to Guildford and back reasonably quickly from time to time without leaving my wife without a car, what can I replace my car with that is more environmentally friendly? Ideas, anyone?

Newest Carbon Dieter

2008-02-17T04:27:00.000-08:00

If it's been a bit quieter than normal around here recently, there is a pretty good reason. On 4th February, my baby daughter Amelia was born. The whole family is doing well, and adjusting to the new presence around the house. However, it might be a while until I get back to coding in my spare time!

It should be interesting to see the effect on my carbon footprint ;)

Server move completed

2008-01-21T01:05:00.000-08:00

Well, the server move didn't take as long as I expected! I managed to get it all done yesterday, including the forum, so that's great. It should be substantially faster now, for rather technical reasons which I won't go into...

If anyone notices anything at all strange about the site since yesterday, please let me know.

Server Move

2008-01-20T07:23:00.000-08:00

Oops - the server issues we had the other have also affected the forum, and I forgot to fix it. It should have fixed itself, but seems not to have done, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

However, there are bigger things afoot. The Carbon Diet is going to move servers (intentionally this time), to a new virtual server system from Slicehost. This should make the site faster, as well as dealing with a whole load of problems that I've had for a while. The forum system will be fixed during this move, but of course the Carbon Diet itself will have to go offline for a little while as well. The move will be done this week at some point, so I apologise if you get a "check back later" message at some point. I will keep the downtime to a minimum, hopefully no more than a couple of hours.

There are some other reasons for the server move as well, but I'm not making those public just yet... wait and see!

Back online

2008-01-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

OK, the web host has reinstalled the required packages, and we're back online. Hopefully the site should be back to 100%, but if there are any problems, please let me know. Apologies once again for the problems.

Outage update

2008-01-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

It seems that the current site problems have been caused by a server switchover at the web host. Apparently they are looking into it, and will have it up and running soon... fingers crossed!

UPDATE:
Ooh, I'm angry. The new server they have moved me to doesn't have the version of Rails on it that I was using for the website, therefore it doesn't work at all. Breaking existing websites is bad enough, but to do it without informing the owners of those sites in advance? Unforgivable, in my book. Grrrr. I will be sorting this out as soon as I can, but due to other commitments it will probably not be until late tonight. Grrr.

Site is down...

2008-01-15T05:35:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone - unfortunately it looks like the site has gone down for some reason. Not sure why at the moment, something must have changed at my hosting provider, because I haven't changed anything for about 2 weeks. I'm looking into it, and hopefully will have it up and running as soon as possible. Apologies for the inconvenience!

Slow progress...

2008-01-03T04:08:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd say Happy New Year to all you lot out there, and explain a little about why progress has slowed a little on the site. I'm now working for Green Thing, managing their website, so naturally the Carbon Diet has had to take a bit of a back seat. However, it's still going, just at a slower pace.

I've been sorting out a few new features over the last little while, and I'm nearly ready to release what I'm going to call version 1, finally! There is still plenty to do after that though, so I'll be busy for a while! Hopefully, soon I'll be announcing some interesting news regarding the site and how it's going to go forward, so keep your eyes peeled, ears to the ground, etc etc.

Version 0.10 online

2007-11-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to announce the general release of air travel functionality. You can now calculate your climate impact from air travel and see it alongside your domestic emissions. I predict you will be surprised...

It's a real relief to have it out there! I've had air travel working for a while now for the testers, but the graphs have been a real problem, because flight emissions are literally off the charts compared to the rest. However, by changing over to amCharts, the problem is solved. Your charts are also now much more interactive and fun to play with.

This is version 0.10, and it's the last one before the full 1.0 release (at least on my list). The next release will mainly be for tidying up loose ends that have been hanging around, and fixing any major bugs that turn up.

Let me know what you think of it!

Flight figures updated

2007-11-02T05:22:00.000-07:00

Testers take note: I've just made some changes to the figures used for flight calculations, so some of you may find that your carbon footprints have leapt up a bit (mine has)!

I was originally using DEFRA figures for aviation emissions, but they do not take into account the extra effect of releasing greenhouse gases at high altitude, which is estimated to be around 2.7 times higher! I've found some better figures, so hopefully the new numbers will reflect better the actual climate impact of flying. I've also added the ability to select your class of seat. First class seats take up around 3 times the room of an economy seat, so if you choose to fly this way, your emissions will be 3 times as high!

I'm trying out a new graphing engine this afternoon, and if it works, then hopefully I'll be able to release flights across the entire site later on today!

Resurgence Article

2007-10-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

The Carbon Diet has had a nice little writeup in this month's edition of Resurgence magazine, which among other things says that "this could turn out to be the Facebook of climate change", which is rather nice! You can buy Resurgence in a few places around the country, or you can buy a downloadable PDF online and save a tree.

New social features

2007-10-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded a couple of new social features that you can play with. There are two ways to find out if someone has written on your profile; you will now get an email notification if you've given us your address, but you can also subscribe to an atom feed for the comments. These changes should make it easier to keep up with your comments. As well as that, if you invite your friends using the "invite contacts" page, once they join up, the site will automatically send you a friend request. When inviting people, you can also select a group that they will be added to when they sign up. This should make it easier for you to create groups with your friends. As always, if you have any comments, let me know in the forum!

Incidents and accidents

2007-10-08T12:31:00.000-07:00

Oops! It seems that a bug crept in with the flight update a couple of days ago which caused an error for users who hadn't entered any data yet. It should be fixed now - I've tested it out manually, and now I'm going to write a bunch of test code to catch problems like this before they make it to the main site. Also, every time there is an error on the main site from now on, I will get an email, so I'll be able to catch these things as soon as they appear. So, apologies for the problems, but we're good to go once again. Sorry about that!

Air travel in testing

2007-10-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a while coming, I know, but air travel has finally been uploaded onto the site. At the moment, it's only open to testers (if you want to become a tester, let me know). It needs a bit of use before I can confidently release it generally, but rest assured that it won't be long now. Also, in the same update, there are a bunch of changes to the profile page and calculation engine. It now takes into account up to a whole year of data if you have it, and it handles inactive accounts (i.e. old cars) much better, so in general the figures should be more accurate. You can also see a list of your top actions on the profile page, so they are a bit more accessible and obvious. I hope you like the updates, and as always, please send feedback through the forum!

How long?

2007-09-11T01:49:00.000-07:00

Has it been nearly a month since the last post? It's certainly been a busy time, with lots of meetings going on to try and get this thing to stand on it's own feet. We've got quite a few people using the site now (passed 300 the other day), which is great, but unfortunately with all these meetings (and a few other things going on), I've not had a lot of time for coding. The air travel stuff is mostly written, but it's forcing me to make some changes to the display side of things as well, so there's a bit more to do yet. Forum activity is increasing as well, with lots of suggestions and feedback coming my way, which is brilliant - keep it up!

The thing the site really needs is more publicity, so please, if you can, let people know about it! Invite your friends to join, write on blogs, post to news sites, anything you can think of - it all helps!

So, in summary, nothing major to report at the moment really, but I thought I'd keep you all up to date. The project is still going, it's just getting to be a bit of a handful for one person with no funding :)

Long haul

2007-08-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

I've just completed my the Carbon Diet version 0.9. It's been a whole month since 0.8 was completed, so this one has taken quite a while. I've been uploading the changes as I've been making them, so there aren't actually any major new features to announce right now; this is just a way to close off that cycle. It was mostly aimed at social features like the comment system, working avatars, league tables for your friends and groups, and so on. There were also a few major bugfixes; for instance, the email reminder system should now work properly.

Anyway, now that this iteration is complete, it's on to the next one. This one is quite exciting, because it will add the one major thing the site is missing, and which a lot of people have been asking for - air travel! Watch this space, there will be something to play with very soon!

Avatars

2007-08-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

One more announcement for today, before I go to bed. We now have working avatars, so you can put an image of yourself (or something else of course) on your profile. I was using an external site called Gravatar for this before, but it's not been working for a couple of months now, so I've dumped it. Apologies if you went and signed up for a Gravatar account because of the Carbon Diet, but at least it works now. I look forward to seeing all your pictures :)

Canada & Australia

2007-08-13T02:44:00.000-07:00

After repeated requests on our Facebook group (join us, if you're a Facebook user), we've added data for Canada and Australia. It'd be hard to find two countries more different - Canada generates well over half of it's electricity from renewable sources like Hydroelectricity, whereas almost 90% of Australia's comes from coal! Unfortunately, this means that if you're in Australia, your electricity is going to have a much larger carbon footprint! At least now you have the Carbon Diet, you can start to cut that footprint down :)

Bugs & Updates

2007-08-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

Minor update to the group and friend rankings this morning - it should be quicker, and you now get a nice pie chart showing the contribution of each person in the list in a nice graphical way.

I've fixed a bug in the group signup code, which prevented you joining groups without being invited, so that should all work now.

Also, if you've tried to use Gravatar to customise your user picture on the site, you've probably noticed that it's not working. Fortunately (in a way) it's not just the Carbon Diet. Lots of sites using Gravatar seem to be having the same problem. Unfortunately, the people behind it have disappeared, and left their site in a broken state. I've been trying to contact them for ages about this, but to no avail. I'm going to look round for an alternative method of letting you customise your pictures, so I'll keep you informed.

Compare to your friends

2007-08-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

You can now compare yourself directly to your friends on the Carbon Diet! On your friends list, as well as in your groups, you will now see a rankings section, which takes all your friends and puts them in order of their annual carbon footprint. Obviously, we're trying to cut down around here, so the person with the lowest footprint is #1!

Comments

2007-08-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

Another update for you all to play with! You can now add comments to your friends profile pages, as well as to groups you are a member of. They don't show in the news feed yet, but will do soon. Enjoy!

Invite your friends!

2007-07-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

I've just added a page that allows you to invite your friends to use the site. On your main friends list page, there is now a link saying "invite friends". Click the link, enter a few email addresses in the form, and we send your friends a simple email saying that you've invited them, with a link to the site.

We don't keep the addresses, so we don't get anything out of this, it's just a convenient way for you to spread the word! Check it out here.

Facebook Group

2007-07-30T01:53:00.000-07:00

For those of you who also use Facebook, I've just created a group for Carbon Diet users. Please join up, and invite your friends! I'm working on a facebook application as well, so that you can put your carbon footprint in your profile, but it's fighting about 20 other things for my attention, so it might be a little while before it's up and running.

Group Invitations

2007-07-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

I've just uploaded a new feature - group invitations. You can now invite your friends to groups which you are a member of, which should make it easier to network with people. You can also create invitation-only groups, which users can't join unless they are invited by another user. Next up, I'll be adding a more general "invite your friends" option so that you can easily get your friends to use the Carbon Diet!

Funding

2007-07-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

How does a project like this get funded? I can fund a couple of months off work to get it going, but where does it go from there? I'd really like to avoid having to advertise on the site, apart from perhaps the odd affiliate link, but if it has to be that way in the end then so be it. Either way, until the site starts getting a lot of traffic, that isn't going to generate any substantial income anyway. How, then, do I carry on hosting and developing the site when my money runs out? It seems to me like there should be someone out there funding innovative approaches to carbon footprint reduction, but I've not found them yet. I'm spending a lot of time on the phone at the moment trying to find out, but if anyone knows any sources of funding for projects such as this one, please let me know...

Notes

2007-07-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

I've just added a note function to the site. You can make notes which are attached to particular dates, and which show up on the daily graph, so you can see when you did certain things. For example, if you turn your heating down, you might add a note to remind you when you did it, so that you can see on the graph what difference it makes. You can attach notes to any of your accounts, or generally to your profile as a whole.

Notes brings the cycle of work for version 0.8 to a close, which is a relief for me! This iteration took a little longer than planned, but that's mainly because I kept adding things to it! The main features in the next version will be flights (hopefully), user and group comments, and aggregate statistics for friend lists and groups. Should be fun!

Shiny New Graphics

2007-07-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

I've done a few more updates over the last couple of days, mostly on the graphical side of things. The site now looks a little bit slicker, a bit more modern, and should be more accessible to new users with a new login page. Also, the "remember me" button should work now so you won't have to log in every single time.

Signup problem

2007-07-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Felicity, who pointed out that the signup code was broken and that nobody could create new accounts! I think this was a problem that crept in when I upgraded to a new version of Rails on Wednesday, so if you've tried to create an account and failed, please try again because it's fixed now!

Todays updates

2007-07-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

More updates today for your delectation. Nothing huge, but a bunch of little things. Various pages now display a yearly tonnage for your emissions, and now you can enter the number of people in your household to work out the share of that per person. A problem with the action page display in Internet Explorer has been fixed, so everyone using IE should now be able to see what actions they can take. There are a whole load of minor graphical/textual tweaks as well.

Oh, and I added fun transitions to the graphs, simply because they were fun and made it look more interesting :)

Public Profile, Friends, and Groups

2007-07-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

I've just uploaded a whiole bucketload of new features for you to play with. It's taken me a few days (hence the lack of blog updates), but now you can make your profile public, so that others can see it and compare themselves to you. You can add people to your friends list so you can keep track of them, and you can create and join groups, organised around any theme you like.

As an example, and to get you started, here is a link to my profile.

Privacy policy change

2007-07-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

This week I'm finally working on the social aspect of the Carbon Diet site. Testers will see a new "public" option on their settings page, and a "search" link which will let them search for public profiles. However, because I've now got down to the practicalities of implementing and using this system, I need to make a small change to the privacy policy. The old "public profiles" section said:

If you make your profile 'public', your emissions data will be visible to anyone who visits the site, but we will not make any personally-identifiable information (name, email address, etc.) visible to any other user of the site unless you explicitly allow us to (mainly in the case of adding 'friends' on the site who can see your personal data).

The new one now says:

If you make your profile 'public', your 'display name', country, and emissions data will be visible to anyone who visits the site. However, we will not make any contact information (email address, website, etc.) visible to any other user of the site unless you explicitly tell us to (mainly in the case of adding 'friends' on the site who can see your personal data).

I need to make the display name and country public simply because at least a bit of information is needed in order to be able to find someone's profile. However, you set your own display name, so you can use an alias or even leave it blank if you want to, so this shouldn't cause any problems. If anyone does have any comments on this, please leave them below or on the forum.

Major change to usernames

2007-07-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

At the suggestion of a number of people, I've made a pretty major change today to the way that the login system works. Rather than requiring an email address, it now lets you sign up with a username instead. That way, you don't have to give us your email address unless you want to, once your account is created. It should reduce the signup barriers and improve privacy for users, both of which are good things. It also helps with some of the other stuff I will be doing this week.

If you already have a Carbon Diet account, when you next log in (using your email address) you will be prompted to choose a username to identify yourself. Once you've done that, you should use that username to log in from that time onwards.

Take Action!

2007-06-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today, I've made the action system public. This is a new part of the site which makes suggestions, based on your personal data, for how you could reduce those emissions. There are a bunch of suggestions in there, and if you have any ideas of your own, then if you post them in the Forum, we'll add them to the list!

The release of the action system brings version 0.7 to completion, which was my target for this week. Next week I'll be developing the bit I've been really looking forward to - the social side of the site! This will allow you to view each others profiles, share data, and generally compete to be the greenest!

Email reminders

2007-06-27T07:43:00.000-07:00

Even though I work on the Carbon Diet every day, I often forget to add new data every week. Because of this, I've added an "email reminder" option in the user profile. If you enable it, the site will email you each week (or as often as you choose) if you haven't entered data for a while. The default is off, so it won't annoy anyone who hasn't turned it on explicitly, but it should be useful I think!

New Forum

2007-06-26T06:52:00.000-07:00

We now have a forum for users of the Carbon Diet site, where you can go and share your experiences, both about the site and about green issues in general. It's also the place to send in your bug reports and feature requests, so if there's something about the site you don't like, or something you think could be better, then get on over there and tell me!

There is another thing, which I forgot to mention yesterday. I've added a live chat facility to the help area of the main site, so if you have a problem, you can get hold of me straight away!

Action Testing

2007-06-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

Calling all testers: I've uploaded some new functionality which only you can see for now. There is a new section on the site which makes some suggestions for actions you can take to reduce your emissions. We're still adding content, so there might not be many ideas on the list, but all the functionality is there now. It needs a good test, and hopefully I'll be able to make it public by the end of this week.

The Carbon Diet goes public!

2007-06-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I uploaded the first version of the Carbon Diet that is open to the public! You don't need to be a tester any more to use it, so it's open to the world now.

Since the last blog post, there have been a whole bunch of changes. You can now enter your data in different units, with sensible defaults depending on where you live, there is a whole bunch of explanatory text to guide you through the process, and all the graphical bugs should be ironed out. I've also added support for users in the US, so we're now international!

You can also store mileage with your fuel purchases, so although the site doesn't use it to calculate CO2, we should be able to add some fuel efficiency graphs for you in the future.

Redesign

2007-06-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

Today I've been working on a complete graphical overhaul of the site, which I've uploaded early so that I can get feedback on it. I think it's much nicer than the last one, and it shows off the new logo as well!

There are also major changes to the workflow of the site. The site should now be much easier to navigate, and more internally consistent.

There are some changes still to be made before this becomes version 0.6 final, mostly to the tour and to the textual content of the new layout, but that can be tomorrow's job.

Take a look, and let me know what you think!

EDIT: I've just realised, I forgot to re-style the login and other user management pages. I'll fix it tomorrow ;)

More Updates

2007-06-14T01:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I uploaded version 0.5 of the site, hurrah! This version is mainly backend improvements, so it's unlikely you'll notice anything hugely different, except possibly a few improvements in the calculations used and a few cosmetic changes here and there. I've postponed the suggestion functionality a little, because there are a few things I want to get right before I write that part.

However, one interesting new feature which you can use is available - the Carbon Diet now has a mobile interface, which you can use through your phone's web browser! This should make entering data much easier as you won't have to boot up your PC just to put an electricity reading in. It still needs heavy testing, but if you want to take a look, load up http://carbondiet.org/m in your phone's web browser.

In other news, I'm now taking a short break from paid work to develop the site full-time. I'm doing a graphical redesign this week, but then I'll hopefully be removing the tester restrictions and letting anyone sign up and get dieting!

Version 0.4

2007-05-28T02:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's right, I've uploaded the next version of the site today. This one has a fair amount of new stuff in it. As well as improving the workflow and look of the site, I've added the last major domestic emissions source - cars. You can now track your fuel purchases and factor your vehicle usage into your CO2 calculations. That is the most important contributors covered (as far as the site is concerned). Other sources, like heating oil and flying will be added later on after the 1.0 release.

I've also added a tour, so that you can see what the site is all about before you sign up. This is one of the things that really had to be done so that I didn't have to explain everything to every user individually. We're getting to the point now where I can start thinking about opening the site up to a wider audience... maybe after the next version :)

Incidentally, the main thing for the next version is to add CO2 reduction suggestions, so watch this space for more details soon!

Oh, and I must namecheck LibraryThing for the very nice design of their tour, which I'm afraid I've blatantly copied. LT has been a very big influence on the Carbon Diet; I've been trying to keep my design as simple and as usable as theirs. I don't think I'm there yet, but with any luck (and skill) it should be OK in the end!

Version 0.3 and beyond...

2007-05-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

Version 0.3 of the Carbon Diet website has just been uploaded for your delectation. This version builds on the existing functionality, adding the ability to track mains natural gas usage. There are also some layout changes, a bit more explanation text in some places, and a bunch of bugfixes and efficiency improvements.

Now that you can track more than one source, you can compare them side by side and see which is dominant. If, for instance, your emissions from gas are higher than electricity, you might want to look at ways of reducing that one first, such as turning down the thermostat a little, or investing in a more efficient boiler or solar water heating system. The possibilities are endless, and now, the Carbon Diet gives you the information you need to make the right decisions!

Now it's time to start work on the next version, which will add the final major piece of emission tracking functionality - vehicle fuel! There will be more later, such as tanked oil and gas, but they will come after the public release.

The complete plan is this: version 0.4 will include vehicle fuel tracking, as well as functionality which allows you to attach notes to dates. Version 0.5 will then add the social aspects, with public profile information, blog and web page widgets, league tables, and so on. At that point, it'll be mainly tidying up, working on the design, and rewriting text for version 1.0, which will be released to the world properly.

After that, I'll be working on support for flights, other fuel sources such as heating oil, tanked gas, and so on, as well as proper graph customisation options. That's all a little way in the future though, we shall see how it goes I guess...

The Carbon Diet goes live!

2007-05-04T05:35:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, the day has finally come! The first version of the Carbon Diet is live, online now at www.carbondiet.org! This is only the initial version, so it's quite basic, but I really should explain what it does.

Basically, the Carbon Diet is a carbon calculator on steroids. The idea is that you enter easy-to-get data, like electricity meter readings, gas readings, and vehicle fuel purchases, and the website calculates exactly what your carbon footprint is on a day-to-day basis. This gives you a much better idea of how you can cut your carbon emissions, and when you do, you can see it happening straight away!

At the moment, the site only copes with electricity readings, but I've got a feature rollout planned which should have natural gas on there shortly, followed by the rest in due course.

If you would like to become a beta tester for the site, then head on over there, sign up, and once you've gone through the confirmation process, send me an email with your details so I can activate your account!

Redevelopment

2007-04-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I was ready to upload the first version of the Carbon Diet site a few days ago, but unfortunately once I tried to get it online, I ran into a few problems, the main one being that the hosting company doesn't support one of the Rails extensions I wanted to use. Should have checked that first! So, I have to do a bit of a rewrite now. I was going to do this anyway, but I was hoping to have an initial version up quickly without having to write an entire graphing engine. Still, needs must. Will report back soon on developments!

Hosting

2007-03-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I've got some hosting sorted for this project. As it's running on Rails, it was a bit more awkward, but I did manage to find an ISP who both supports Rails, and is carbon neutral. So, as you can see if you click the link at the side, I now have some space at Green WebHost. Hopefully soon there will be an application in it!

What's this all about then?

2007-03-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

Good question! This blog is going to accompany a new project I'll be launching very soon, called the Carbon Diet. The plan is to have a very early release and to get a few friends to partake in a closed beta program until the thing is ready for proper release. I don't want to do one of those web 2.0 open beta things, because it's just so cliched, for one thing. Besides, I'm taking an agile approach to the development, so there is very little functionality at the moment. A closed beta is going to be better, as I can explain what functionality is there to my beta group without having to explain to the world as a whole why something doesn't work.

Anyway, this blog is going to be for announcing changes, talking about the development of the site, and so on. Should be interesting!