Working on Dream Diary software... any input would be great

I’ve been using a private LiveJournal with custom tags to keep track of dreams. I usually tag the entries “dream” and occasionally a sub-tag and it’s been working PRETTY well, although I would like a few more database-type ways of searching through.

I’ll definetly give this program a try. I like the idea of setting up a SourceForge project. I’d pitch in a bit of time here and there to help with graphics and css.

That’d be excellent. I’ll definitely keep that in mind. As far as as the SourceForge part, I’m just waiting for my registration to go through. Then I’ll start putting it together, and I’ll release what I’ve got of the source code first chance I get.

I got quite a bit more done yesterday. I got a really neat tagging system done. You’ll be able to tag individual dreams, and then browse other dreams by tag, which others have similar tags, and tag clouds (like: del.icio.us/tag/). I also got commenting ready, which is really self-explantory. No registration required, which is always nice.

Anyways, I’m going to try and get more done tonight, then I’ll post another video.

I LOVE del.icio.us! My other favorite web-app!

Aha, excellent!

Well, my ultimate goal would be to take all of the best features from these “Web 2.0” sites and use them for jDream.

I’d like to see a basic art program built in so you can draw illustrations on the spot and insert them into the post without notepad. I like to illustrate objects from dreams on occasion. Being able to just scribble diagrams on a canvas in a post would be a good thing.

Interesting, ok, I never thought of that. I should definitely be able to accept uploads from the computer and insert them into posts. So, if you want to draw something in Paint and upload it, that’d be easy. As for integrating some sort of drawing-program right into the browser… hm… a bit more difficult probably, but I’ll certainly look into it.

It might not make the first release, but I’ll certainly add image uploading ability into it in the mean time.

Thanks again for the input, it’s very much appreciated. That’s something I NEVER would’ve thought of. If there’s anything else, don’t hesitate to suggest it! :happy:

without having watched the video, I have a few suggestions…

an option for recording your identity in the dream with Myself as the default and also a Someone Else section you can fill out, much as you can Moods in LiveJournal. (in this case, though you’d have just either the one option of Yourself or else just write in your identity yourself.)

likewise, a space for describing degrees of dissassociation, for example, watching dream as a movie, just a floating viewpoint, as a person.

if possible, I wonder if you could also sub-divide each day/night into separate units, i.e. dreams, so that each dream might have its own set of differeng

make it possible to sub-divide each date into smaller units. within each day, one or more dreams, the options of which you can fill out separately.

I don’t know the capabilities of the language, but for writing the post you could use a Java applet to draw an image, then when you “save” it, it exports it and inserts the image where your cursor is in the post. It doesn’t have to be in the new post text window, but rather to the side so you can draw then click a button like “insert this drawing into the post”. This is to intentionally avoid photoshop or ms paint.

That’s actually pretty close to what I was thinking as soon as you suggested the idea: let the user draw a picture, submit it. Then, when posting a dream, they can insert the (earlier) submitted picture anywhere into their dream using BB-like code (something like [DRAWING=1] would insert the first drawing they made for that dream.

Just a thought. That stuff is easy. I’ll probably have to look for a Java applet for the actual drawing part of it. That’s definitely not something I want to bother writing myself.

Edit: for what it’s worth, I immediately added it to my TODO list for the project. :smile:

OK, interesting ideas. I’ll cover them one by one, to see if you or anyone else has any follow-up suggestions:

  1. That’s pretty generic. It’s not something typical from dream-to-dream, at least not as far as I experience at night. Generally that’s just something you could describe as part of the dream.

  2. Again, not really sure. I have a way to rate dream “clarity”, this may or may not be similar. If there’s a way I can exemplify that with one word that’s a bit more generic, then it most certainly could be something one could rate on a scale. Maybe a drop-down that says something like “Perspective” with options like “First Person”, “Third Person”, “Other Person”, etc.

3/4. As per the video, you can add an entryfor a single 24 hour day (based on date), and add individual dreams for that span to that entry.

Again, the suggestions are very much appreciated! Keep it coming!

ok… so, I’m just updating on the status of this thing… I got commenting and tagging up, and it seems pretty stable. So, I did a new video. It’s only about two and a half minutes long, and it shows me making an entry, populating it with tagged dreams, then it shows how dreams can be organized by tags. As well, I comment and show how easy it is to manage them.

Anyways, I posted it to YouTube again (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN7zze4oQ0M), but if you want a decent quality one, you can download it from my blog: https://blog.andrewfreiday.com/2006/05/04/jdream-preview-2/.

Thanks again guys, looking forward to hearing some more!

thank you for responding to my suggestions. I have another: checkable buttons to designate a dream lucid, non-lucid, important, whatever. quicker than tagging. of course, if you chose, you could check multiple buttons for the same dreams.

I think the idea of checking something as “important” is interesting. I might call it something else, like “interesting” or “special” or something along those lines. It could have a special display on the front page and encourage others to read it more.

As far as lucidity, there is already a drop-down box for a rating of Lucidity from 0 to 10 – 0 being non-lucid, 10 being entirely lucid.

Thanks again!

Andrew

This sounds really cool! I don’t have time right now to watch any of the videos. Also, I don’t typically keep my dream journal on the computer(again lack of time). I mostly write keywords in a notepad by my bed, and sometimes pictures. As far as for this program you could:

  1. Color code parts of your dream, like on this forum in the dream journal area. [nd]normal dream[nd] [com]commentary[com] etc.

Hmm, without watching the video I don’t know what else it has, but I would like to encourage the drawing part of it and the whole project, again neat idea.

Before this post it never really occured to me that someone might just write down keywords (or “tags”) instead of a full dream description… I’ll have to update it to be able to do that.

As far as colour coding, ya, that could definitely work. I’ll be adding support for HTML, as well as easy code like how this forum has B, I, U, URL, QUOTE, IMG tags, etc. This is easy. I can also get this to support colour coding, for something like [COLOUR=blue]some blue text[/COLOUR]

This whole thing still makes me rather drawn-back… I still REALLY want to do a public, free-for-all community version, but dreamjournal.net already looks pretty popular, with more than 5,000 users. :confused: Damn.

Hey you know, dreamjournal.net had to start somewhere. Do you think their first version was as good as it is today? Do you think it began with 5000 users? If you want to try a community style journal - Go for it!

I had another idea. when I used to have a Word-based dream journal, I would cut and paste in a star (✩) at the front of any dream entry where I went lucid.

perhaps you could have a drop-down menu of similar symbols, like an exclamation point, star, question mark or whatever to mark certain dreams off as… whatever.

1 to 10 seems lil bit too finely scaled, IMHO. I would go with a rating of four to five stars, myself. personally I find it hard to imagine how at 4 lucid dream would differ from a 6 or even how just a 6, say, would come across.

That’s true. I really appreciate the words of wisdom. Every little bit gives me inspiration to go for it.

Their site is pretty poor, to be frank. It doesn’t look very professional, and it doesn’t look like it’s going very far in terms of a new design. I do web design and web programming as my profession, and I know I could blow it out of the water as far as functionality goes. I just really don’t want to do it for nothing, you know? It’s a lot of time.

But really, all it takes is a few people to say “ya, I’d sign up for that” and I’d probably drop this jDream thing right now and start it, get something up as basic and soon as possible, and then add to it from there.

So many different thoughts… haha :confused: If any of you guys have ANY comments about the idea, do not be afraid to let me know.

And thank you so much, Fwump38. You have no idea how much it’s appreciated!

I agree with you, DreamJournal looks sort of shoddy when compared to, say, this site or to LiveJournal.

That’s definitely a good idea. Based on the rating system (which I commented on below), if the dream is a very lucid one (say a rating of 4 or 5 out of 5) then it stars it. Good thinking!

This is interesting. However, this might be more of a “private” feature, in that it should only be available to the poster, and not public. The reason I say that is because most people will want a reason for the different symbols. If there are reasons, it makes it easy to sort. If all they see is a bunch of undefined symbols, it might just be confusing. Good idea nonetheless.

Definitely. I agree. I’ll change it to out of 5, and I’ll also make it based on stars, so the drop-down might look like

Lucidity:
0 stars

  • 1 star
    ** 2 stars

    ***** 5 stars

If I can find some easy way to do it with images, I will. Until then it will probably be just a drop-down menu. Good thought though.

Again, thank you very much! It’s so graciously appreciated!