Month: January 2013

The Diabetic Jornal for iPhone and iPod Touch

Nial Giocamelli and I have something in common. He has Type 1 diabetes. Like me, his brain now needs to do the work that his pancreas and endocrine system used to do. He has to calculate the amount of carbohydrates in each meal, compute the correct amount of insulin he needs, test his blood glucose, and inject that insulin.

This is part of diabetes management. All this data on what we eat and when we eat and what dosage of insulin we took and what the blood glucose is at any given time is useful when we visit my doctor. It can be used to adjust treatment or just to make sure things are under control. It's a lot of data.

A single entry for breakfast involves knowing the amount of carbohydrate, the BG reading, the insulin injected and the time of day. There are a few apps in the iOS App Store for entering this data but it's a manual process. Very few of them have any graphing or charting and there is no easy way to share the data with the doctor. They are difficult to use, ugly and expensive -- anywhere from $2.99 to $.799. They don't learn user habits or provide any real analysis. in my opinion the apps in the App Store are no better than a digital version of pen and paper.

Nial wants to change all that. Imagine if an app could use my diabetes facts to suggest a reduction in dosing because it knew that my blood glucose drops just before lunch based? Imagine if that app understood that since I ate pizza that I might be in for a roller coaster BG effect in a few hours? Imagine if that app was FREE?

Most of the existing diabetic applications on the App Store make it tedious and difficult to keep your journal up to date. After all, my disease takes up so much of my life already that I didn't want to spend any more time than necessary recording data. So I built my own diabetic journal application, and I made it fast. More importantly, I made it intelligent.Nial Giacomelli

Features include:

  • The ability to track and report on daily athletic activities, meals (and carb intake), as well as medication and blood glucose readings.
  • A system which monitors your medication schedule and intelligently pre-populates fields to save you from monotonous typing!
  • A blazingly fast autocomplete system.
  • Fully internationalised, with automatic BG unit conversion between mg/dL and mmoI/L. The journal works everywhere.
  • Medication reminders (including a geofence that'll remind you to take your medication when you leave the house)
  • View entries across a rolling six month period or break it down by entries entered within the past 7 or 14 days
  • A fast and beautiful gesture-based interface

Nial hopes to accomplish something great with his app, the Diabetic Journal. He wants to make it so that everyone has access to top notch diabetes management software. I want to help him.

Nial has the support of noted web gurus Cameron Moll, Jeffrey Zeldman and others.

Unfortunately he is running into issues raising the initial capital to get the project funded. He has started a Kickstarter project to raise money but time is running out. Please visit the Diabetes Journal Kickstarter page and help fund this project.

Spread the word.

Nassau Hall

My 52-week photography is going well. I've shot my images on weekends and posting them on the blog on Sunday evenings. I spend time during the week thinking and planning the what and where of the images I want to capture. It has worked well.

I was on 500.px and Google+ this week looking at some of the incredible HDR images captured by +Trey Ratcliff and others. This weekend I wanted to do more HDR imagery and thought that perhaps the Princeton University Chapel might be a great place to try. The chapel has very beautiful stained glass windows that reflect light all around the inside of this beautiful building.

Planning out your photo shoot is important. You want to consider what equipment you might need -- lens, tripod, etc -- and think about the lighting conditions for the time of day. You also want to make sure that you know whether the location might be crowded. You don't want to set up a tripod in a hallway that might be crowded or where people might be might get in the way of your shot.

After deciding to shoot the chapel I researched the operating hours and timing of any services. I wanted to be sure the chapel would be empty so I planned on being there around 9 AM. I wanted to create HDR images so that meant using my gPhoto Raspberry Pi kit or Sofortbild with a tripod and my AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G. Things didn't work out the way I had planned.

When I got inside the Chapel was empty except for two people sitting near the back. I had noted the sign outside the chapel indicating that services started at 11 AM today. I looked around to find the spot down the middle of the pews to set up my tripod. Before I could even get the tripod open one of the two people yelled at me that I could not set up my tripod because of services. I played stupid, asking her what time services started. "10 AM", she insisted. I persisted, "This will only take me 10 minutes". "No", she insisted worshippers would be arriving any minute. I put my tripod down and looked around. Perhaps I could come back another day. The Chapel is open from 7 AM to 7 PM daily during the school year. After about 20 minutes -- no one came in or out during this time -- I picked up my camera bag and left feeling a bit dejected.

I tried not to let the encounter bother me. I chalked it up to meet the wrong person on a wrong day.

I walked around -- it was very cold outside -- trying to find another subject. The campus doesn't have much colour this time of the year; mostly shades of grey. My hands were starting to feel numb so I set up my tripod and captured a few exposures of the back of Nassau Hall before walking over to Panera for a hot coffee. Brr.

The image is an 8 exposure HDR (+/-1 EV steps) taken with my gPhoto-Raspberry Pi rig and combined and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro with minor adjustments in Adobe Lightroom.

  • Camera : NIKON D40
  • Lens : AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G
  • Shutter speed ( 0EV ) : 1⁄160
  • Aperture : f/11
  • Focal length : 18mm

Time to Breathe

If you feel overwhelmed, breathe. It will calm you and release the tensions.

If you are worried about something coming up, or caught up in something that already happened, breathe. It will bring you back to the present.

If you are moving too fast, breathe. It will remind you to slow down, and enjoy life more.

Breathe, and enjoy each moment of this life. They’re too fleeting and few to waste.

Zen Habits

Yes, I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. Time to reflect on those four simple sentences.