see jayne blog.

When I was younger I use to draw bar graphs and line graphs for fun. Even though I had no idea what they represented, I just liked the way they looked. I still love infographics, especially when they relate to personal information. I don’t know what it is, but having lots of boring auto generated data about myself is endlessly fascinating to me. Probably because I’m just a big nerd I think it has to do with trying to be more self-aware and really understand what’s going on in life and figure out how to fix it. Thus I present ( a super boring blog post):

My favorite ways to track/visualize/manage my life with minimal effort

Finances - Quicken Online or Mint

When I was forced to leave Mint earlier this year after joining my credit union I was pretty pissed. There was really nothing out out there quite like it. I begrudgingly moved over to Quicken Online and was a hater for a while. But since then they’ve improved their design A LOT and I’ve grown to like it quite a bit. Everything is cleaner and simpler. The updated trends section is pretty much the most useful page, esp the bar graph and the bottom bit. Looking at Mint these days it actually feels a little over complicated, though it’s still nice. I’m curious what’s going to happen next year since Intuit just announced they’re going to buy Mint. Hopefully the best of both worlds.

Fitness/Diet - Daily Burn (formerly Gyminee)

I was using Gyminee to track diet/exercise for a while but haven’t really used it for that in a long time, although it was great when I did. It’s just too much of a pain to update it everyday. I wish I just had a robot that followed me around and took note of everything I ate for me. I do still use the weight tracker though cause it’s the easiest place to do it. It’s interesting to see over a year of data.

Freelance Gigs - On The Job

While this isn’t really a visualization it does a good job of logging time and generating invoices (the above image is just an example scree nshot from their site, not my client data). I love it. It makes managing all my random side projects much easier. I’ve looked for a similar web-app but haven’t found anything I like as much as this. Angelo likes Inovice Machine but I don’t think it’s nearly as good. Plus it has a cute chubby bee as the dock icon.

Productivity - Slife

I just discovered Slife today but I’m pretty fascinated by it already (not my screen shot). It sort of borders obsessive or creepy but it keeps track of how much time you spend on various applications and websites and gives you all sorts of bar graphs and things. Looks like they’re doing a paid web app version now, but the older desktop app version is open source and available for free. I’m kind of excited to see how much time I actually spend on things at work as I continue to collect data from it. But I also hope companies don’t start requirng it.

Monthly Special - My period tracker

My sister gave me a Slingshot Organizer a few years ago which had a little page up front for tracking your period, laid out as 28 day cycles, like the one above. It makes so much more sense than looking at it on a regular calendar. Once the year was over I was sad I didn’t have that special calendar any more and couldn’t find any good ones, so I made my own. The dark grey 1 indicates the first of the month. The boxes below are for putting in a little red dot on those special days. It makes it a lot easier to predict the next one. And to make sure everything is in order. You can click the pic for the full size and print your own. It’s almost the end of the year but you can easily make your own next year.

So that’s pretty much what I use to run my life. I have no idea why I was so compelled to write this long rambling thing. Maybe just because I’m putting off working on other, more important things. I love graphs (part 2-other people’s graphs) will have to be later this week. I’m sure you just can’t wait!

…new blog just for my doodle diaries. After years of just doing them randomly and uploading them all over the place I’ve decided to start putting them in one place, and call it Pinwheels and Papercuts. I’m not sure why I picked the name, it makes for a ridiculously long url, but I just liked the sound of it. I was inspired after going down to the Olympia Comic Fest, I’d like to try tabling next year just for the hell of it so I thought I’d start drawing again. We’ll see how long I can keep it up. I’d like to get through the summer at least.

I haven’t been uploading on a set schedule or anything. I generally just do big batches of them at a time. The Comic Press wordpress theme makes it super easy to manage comics, though I haven’t tried to customize the look of it at all yet. Anyways, you can check it out if you’re into those kind of mundane comic adventures.

Also, I’ve updated my portfolio with a new look and some new work. And some fancy pants j-query navigation.

Yay? My birthday was on Thursday but I was feeling out of it for most of the day. It’s complicated. But the family & I went out to Poppy in Cap hill for dinner which was pretty good though. My parents loved it and kept telling the waiter how good it was. So that part was nice.

Where is my mind?

That Pixies song keeps playing over and over in my head. I’m really not sure where I’m at lately, but it doesn’t feel like it’s here. The other day I went to use a gift certificate I got almost a year ago for a massage and once I got to my appt. I realized I had left it at home, so I run back and get it. Another day I wasn’t paying attention and thinking that I was logging into facebook but actually fell for a facebook phishing scam which ripple effected myspace and twitter. I drove to work earlier this week (I’m usually on the bus) and forgot that I drove in and bussed home. I didn’t realize until the next morning that I had left my car. And the other day I accidentally got on an express bus, which dropped me off about 12 blocks away from my house. And my cycle has been wonky and I’ve lost about 10 lbs in the past few weeks (I mostly attribute that to walking Jack several times a day but also being too stressed to eat much). And I feel like I’m losing interest in a lot of things. And there’s all the other stuff that has been going down.

I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I’m not getting enough sleep. Maybe I breathed in too many paint fumes while painting the garage. Maybe watching too much Heroes during my time off turned my brain into mush. I just hope it clears up soon.

Experience

I was watching this lecture the other day. It was posted almost 2 years old, but I didn’t get around to it till recently. It’s Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture about lessons learned and achieving your goals. It’s a pretty amazing talk and totally made me cry at the end. It even made me want to go to CMU a little bit. The whole thing is good, but there was one quote he pulled up that stuck:

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

I keep thinking about that line lately. Although maybe it’s not just about not getting what you want but getting what you never could have imagined. I’m just trying to learn from everything.

Blarg

I don’t know why anyone else even reads this rambling. Sometimes I go back and forth on whether I should keep the blog more superficial and less personal. There is something both unnerving and comforting about sharing personal things with a few friends and complete strangers (which, according to site stats, is apparently a larger audience than I had imagined–who are you??). I’m just much less comfortable sharing personal things in person. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been writing for so long it’s what feels natural. I don’t know. Hopefully the next post can be less emo.