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.

Version 0.3 and beyond...

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!

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!

What's this all about then?

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!