Dot Dot Dot

Inspiration

Google Calander works really well, except for the part where you have to fiddle with a text box for several minutes to make sure that you record your information properly. This project seeks to ameliorate a number of issues that keep me from using other organizational software to its full potential, including prioritization, recurring tasks of various frequencies and time constraints, and ease of input

What it does

It generates a unique phonetically pronounceable word, together with a diagram, for any hierarchically nested structure of things. In particular, this is useful for keeping similar diagrams for related tasks. The diagram is hugely faster than text input on a mobile device, and the word is still a lot faster than typing out an entire description, and feels like a cipher --- perhaps a good thing when discussing one's schedule and keeping track of procrastination time.

How I built it

with the help of my fingers, free food, and good old fashioned amphetamine salts

Challenges I ran into

It turns out that, while Android SDK makes life very nice for those of us who like widgets and text fields, those of us who are addicted to low-level vector renderings sometimes have a hard time, particularly when trying to play nice with scrolling mechanisms.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The algorithm for generating the diagrams was not very straightforward, and required both a model of particle diffusion, and static background noise to deterministically break symmetry. The result, though, is that the placements of the nodes are such that each one is a corner (removing the ambiguity of "did I stop here?"), and the nodes are all placed compactly in a non-overlapping manner.

What I learned

Android things! I like XML slightly less than I used to now. After all these years in python, I have learned how incredibly annoying Java can be, and why people used to yell at me for defending it so rigorously. Also, one person is not enough to be excited and happy at a hackathon while also winning, learning, and taking advantage of demos. But this is a good excuse to learn a skill you've wanted to pick up for ages :)

What's next for Dot Dot Dot

This is definitely a kernel of a good idea, and despite my sleepless demeanor, I will most certainly continue this project, because already I can see how much more easily it will be to keeptrack of my life with this input system. The grand plan is to do more machine (and human brute-force) learning, so that I can get it to match my own scheduling preferences.

Built With

• android