Friday, June 19, 2026

Why I might be leaving MyNetDiary after being a customer for 11 years

 I have been using MyNetDiary since Fitbit removed custom trackers in 2015. I mainly chose MyNetDiary over the others because your custom trackers most closely matched the ones Fitbit removed. A while back, you replaced dailyTracking.do URL with the abomination that is health.do on the menu, but at least dailyTracking.do was still reachable directly. I told you at the time that the new page's awkward interface made it very time-consuming to use. As of this morning the dailyTracking.do URL redirects you to the health.do page.

As a web developer with over 30 years of experience, I do not use the term "abomination" lightly. In this case, I refer to:

The rather random order of the trackers on the page makes it harder to find the one you want to add an entry to. A later update inflicted this loss of order on dailyTracking.do as well, though you do seem to be able to order trackers within groups now. This still requires you to switch between groups for some values, such as your "custom" values and grouped values like blood pressure, so it's still not as convenient as the original interface. Even hiding trackers from view is more complicated now. Instead of clicking an item icon in the list, you are taken to a page that requires you to switch an option and click save, making the process of hiding unneeded trackers included by default tedious, adding two unnecessary clicks to every item changed.

But the larger issues are with the entry interface. 

The dailyTracking.do entry interface appeared on the page so you kept your place on the tracker list. health.do opens a new page. Not a usability issue as such but a step backward in web page evolution.

Unlike the old entry form, the new entry page opens with focus on the tab linked to health.do instead of the value field requiring multiple tabs or mousing to the field.

Unlike the old entry form, the new entry page requires clicking a save link to save the entry. In the old form, you could just hit enter in the value or time fields to save the entry.


Unlike the old entry form, the time entry on the new entry page is very awkward. In the old interface, you would just enter the time, and it would validate on save. The new interface tries to format the value as you type digits, which requires a leading 0 for most. Getting a digit off and getting it back on track is a chore.


Optionally, you can pop up a wheel interface by clicking on the "calendar" icon.


Then there are the labels. They have never had any sort of order. You would think they would at least default to alphabetical.


Unlike the old entry form, the label search is now case sensitive. Why?


So it's back to looking at alternatives or setting aside a lot more time to log trackers and medications. Or maybe I can create an agent to log them for me. 

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 review

 Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann


by
8060858
's review
 ·  

it was amazing
bookshelves: history

A great look at the Americas before and after Columbus, including the probable origins of the tribes that have lived there. Also, how those tribes shaped the land and how large a role European diseases played in the shaping of the tribes, and even the United States, 300+ years later. As the book points out, today we are still discovering just how much these tribes modified the land and how widespread they really were. Most were wiped out ahead of the waves of pioneers and Spanish conquistadors. In fact, many of the Spanish conquistadors and pioneers owe their very survival to mass die-offs in tribes. Despite being a relatively short read, it is packed with information probably not mentioned in your school history books.

Saturday, June 6, 2026

Out Law (The Dresden Files #18.75) review

 Out Law by Jim  Butcher


by
8060858
's review
 · 
it was amazing
bookshelves: supernatural

While rather short for a Dresden book, it still tells a good story, though a non-Dresden fan might find it lacking some background. There is a lot of background in a series this long, and who starts at book 18.75 in a series? This is still more or less a standalone book, a rather short side case with little interaction with the usual "bad guys," but a bit of insight into past adventures. There are still many "loose ends" from previous books that need to be wrapped up, and I'm sure they will be addressed in upcoming ones.

Note that if, by chance, you did not start with book one, I heartily suggest you read the whole series. Jim Butcher lays out the foundations of this magical world in such a way that it is so logical that it comes out as related truth instead of fantasy. Slowly adding layers, much like the The Rowan series, makes mental powers feel real.

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

The UFO Experience: Evidence Behind Close Encounters, Project Blue Book, and the Search for Answers review

 

The UFO Experience by J. Allen Hynek

by
8060858
's review 5 stars
 · 

5 starsit was amazing
bookshelves: history, uap 

Originally published in 1972 so you mainly only want to read for historical significance yet he paints an all too familiar portrait of what we have seen coming out since Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs, where, despite some telling us there are real investigations going on the government tries to be making best efforts by dismissing almost everything out of hand and generally acting like a reboot of the Three stooges. You can definitely see why Hynek got so frustrated with the lack of scientific rigor one would expect when faced with unknowns in that same airspace as our Air Force. Especially from the Air Force. It reads as familiar enough to today that it lowers expectations that anything has really changed in 50+ years.