Removing Social Features

I started the Carbon Diet project just over six years ago, in 2007. I do still want to do things with it as an Open Source project, but it's overcomplicated and unfocused, that complexity makes changing things harder.

So, with this in mind, I've been looking over how people are using the site.

First, not many people are; that's not a surprise at all. What is a little surprising to me is that the core features of energy purchasing and meter readings are still being used on a regular basis. Somewhere out there, some of you are finding those features useful, which is great!

The other aspect of the site is the social side. The social features built in were useful in 2007, but today they are outdated and completely unused. These days, new projects hook into existing social networks, not force people to build their own again. Not a single comment, friendship, or group has been created in the last 2 years. To me, that says we can safely remove those features.

Another feature that's not being used are the energy-saving actions. This was always a bit badly implemented, and as there is a lot of energy saving advice around these days elsewhere, we can safely remove that too.

That will clear out a lot of the more complex code within the application, and let me focus down onto the bits people are using, and which I want to explore further.

I intend to remove the social features and actions, and refocus the app on allowing users to track their direct emissions. I also want to reconsider the reduction side, adding targets (possibly via some sort of quota system).

I hope that this will make the app more useful and more usable for those of you who are using it, and maybe take it in a more interesting direction for the future.

Server move and some updates

Today, you may have noticed that the site went down for a little while. During this time, we moved servers to Appfog, using AWS in Ireland. This was partly for convenience of maintenance, and partly to keep emissions lower. We will move again when a lower-carbon datacentre becomes available that we can use with Cloudfoundry.

We've also updated to the latest version of Rails, fixing some critical security issues and paving the way for a major cleanup of the code, and hopefully some visible site changes. I intend to do a redesign, and may also clean up some of the less-popular features to focus on the main app.

You may notice your avatars have changed; if you'd previously uploaded a file to us directly, you won't have it any more. You can set an avatar now using gravatar.com.

We apologise in advance if there are any errors with the updated site; we'll be keeping a weather eye, and will fix any as soon as they turn up.

Version 0.12 released

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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...

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

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

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

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.