On this site we leveraged the mootools javascript library. The vast majority of components on the site are original development. I am especially happy with the calendar applet seen throughout the site. I used it as the base to develop a couple classes WA007 will be providing free to other developers when we launch our 2009 company site.
The Flickr image feed was also an enjoyable piece of work. I turned off the autoplay feature by default to reduce memory use by the website. Hopefully this one will be used again in the future so I can turn that back on. The lightbox style popup from this is a slightly modified class called Milkbox written by Luca Reghellin.
All the flash is our own custom development including all the video players. The video players calculate buffering to avoid video pausing in mid-play to buffer again. The lightbox video players were a nice final touch to the overall site.
Kendra and I decided to go for a hike while we still had some nice fall colors. Since we are past the peak at our home we headed south to the Laurel Highands area. I posted up some of the photos we took on our Flickr account.
It was very cool out, but once we got moving we got used to it. The hike portion was less than 5 miles, but the terrain was fairly rough and it felt like a good workout. Sky's were perfectly clear and the view was spectacular. Will have to travel further to to get vista views like these once we are living in Ohio again.
It has been some time since my last blog post, and the reason for that is my new website. I've spent my free time over the last several weeks developing a site to track workouts. I launched MyCardioLog over last weekend and my regular blogging will continue now.
I began walking in 2007 for health reasons. At first I was so out of shape that I would not have wanted to track how poorly I was doing. In 2008 I am in much better condition, and look forward to my walks. I began looking for a web site that would allow me to keep a log. I wanted it to be simple to add an entry, track the weather, and allow me to put in a note if I desired. After several hours of searching I had found a half dozen different sites that all fell short of what I wanted.
My father is also a walker and when I visit I enjoy walking with him. I know he keeps a paper log of his own, but hoped that if I made my online log available for him he would like that better. Since I wanted this to be available for my father, it made sense to just open it up to the public at large. The one hurdle to this was my lack of artistic talent. I contacted Brian Law of Prime Design Solutions and he agreed to create a design for me. I am very happy with the results and am already enjoying the site.
I made the site capable of logging a person in automatically so the first page a returning user sees is "Add Entry". Based on a users zip code it gets the weather and fills in that information automatically. The standard list of workout types can be added to on the individual level so someone who wants to track "splitting wood" can do so. It remembers your last workout type and defaults that into the form when your adding a new entry. I did everything I could think of to make entry easy.
Over the next few months I will make additions to the site. I plan to add a lot more functionality in the "My Log" area where workouts are displayed. This includes reports with charting capabilities.
