Feelings Jam in the Horn Pile

[azurelunatic]

I suspect that the ultimate answer to this problem is going to be "lol, code it yourself, Lunatic", but hear me out.

I am looking for a multifacted mood measurement service. I was, up until sometime in the last hour, a member of Moodscope. More about that in a bit. I'm looking for a replacement.

I want to track my mood on a daily basis. I want to be able to look at trends over time. I want to be able to track my mood based on its components, because there is rarely just one thing going on in isolation; this is why DW/LJ mood does not really work to actually get a picture of what's going on with my mood. (Shout-out to dwell, who could make "horny" say so much.) Numerically rating a select panel of emotions was working reasonably well for me. I need to be able to alter the preset emotions if it is not asking me about the specific thread that has come to my attention. I need to be able to set thresholds for alarm on any given emotion, if it is a numerical scale -- for example, on a scale of 0-10 for alertness, anything under say a 2 is alarming, and a 10 is also alarming, especially in conjunction with a high anger, irritability, excitement, and ambition. Being able to leave a note about why this was going on ("Work was awesome!" "Manager & Overlady are awesome; new email app, much less awesome" "Broke again :(" "FUCKING SHOES.") is also a good plan. Data portability, also excellent.

Now, the squishy bits:

Site should not enforce the gender binary. At a minimum, it should have a "decline to state/other" option, as this lets me judge for myself whether I should pick that, or whether I'm feeling mostly cisgendered today. (Moodscope fails on this axis, and my record low mood of Moodscope 27% is associated directly with this fuckup of theirs.)

Site should not lecture me on what I should do with myself if it thinks my mood needs fixing. I need to be the one to determine that. If I am determined that my mood does not, in fact, need fixing, well-meant advice on how to accomplish that actually piss me the fuck off, elevating my mood in the wrong direction. (Again, Moodscope and I don't get along; my mood was at a nice calm 51% -- all negative factors but one zeroed out, but very few of the positive factors lit up -- braindrained and chilling after work -- it dropped to 37% after reading the condescending advice about how to lift my motherfucking mood and that I would need to gather my friends by me in this time of crisis. Taking the evaluation the second time and seeing how actually much the site pissed me off resulted in my annoyed email to their support becoming a flounce email.)

Site should not use colors in a way that feels wrong to me. I can see using red for happiness. I cannot get behind using blue for anger. (Moodscope had blue swirled cards for the "bad" emotions, which I found pleasant and restful in appearance, and red swirled cards for the "good" emotions, which I found disturbing and unrestful.) Site should not have an obnoxious user interface (tiny checkboxes and radio buttons are irritating; fucking interactive animations replacing a checkbox thing, MORE IRRITATING).

Site needs very much not to congratulate me on dangerously high factors, such as attentiveness (can we spell 'hypervigilance', folks?) or any other thing that I define as a possible danger point. Furthermore, anyone who congratulates an anorexic on their weight loss can please go fuck off and die. (Moodscope did not do that one. Fortunately. Or I'd be even more stabby. But it's in the same family of "all right, does someone have a stiletto I can borrow" rage.)

So. Recommendations?

Mood Panda does not suit -- it is a numeric one-factor thing.
http://www.findingoptimism.com/ looks promising, and has a free 14 day trial.
https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/ didn't look entirely like what I was looking for.
http://belikeben.com/ is the right general idea, but in the wrong direction.
http://moodjam.com/ is not even loading for me right now (which may be not its fault, given my computer and Comcast are conspiring to fuck shit up).

Comments

[flyingthesky]

this is going to sound really weird, but 750words.
it says it's a journaling site, but it has this feature called "metadata." basically it works like this:

you write a word in all caps followed by a colon. so you could put MOOD: and then something like tired, only got two hours of sleep. it then keeps all that and gives you a link on the metadata page for every thing you typed in all caps with a colon after that you can click and see all laid out.

here is what a typical page might look like. (as a note, the metadata doesn't actually display in all caps. it's just that placeholder text for Pete Wentz vs the World was written in all-caps.)

it will not tell you anything about your mood unless maybe you go to the stats page, but that's more of a "you use a lot of angry words, this is neither good or bad that's just what you do" than anything. also it'll let you export EVERYTHING as a text file if you want so.

the only thing it doesn't really do is set alarms for dangerously low levels?

[azurelunatic]

The typical page link doesn't seem to ... link? (there's a hash where the actual link should go.)

[flyingthesky]

I know how to link things.

seriously.

[azurelunatic]

Ah, so they've implemented their metadata vaguely like DW/LJ tags.

[flyingthesky]

kind of! I think you get a graph after a while if you use numbers, but I mostly use it to track what and when I eat so I don't have any to show you.

there's also a stats page which does text analysis and will tell you your overall moods and concerns and things like that. like so.

[wibbble]

I was writing something like this, as an iOS-style client-side javascript app, but it never went anywhere and I gave away the domain name to a friend.

If you do end up writing your own, your welcome to my code as a starting point.

(I think I was doing very simple 'happy + note' or 'sad + note', and graphing the results, but it'd at least give you a start, and should work acceptably on Web OS devices - you've still got the Palm Pre, yeah?)

[synecdochic]

I use http://www.medhelp.org/ for the sleep tracker; I think they have mood trackers too, although I have not investigated them and don't know if they fit any of your criteria!

[krait]

I'm completely useless, I'm afraid; I just wanted to say that your post title made me giggle. :D New Fandom Reference, yay! Thanks for improving my day, at least, and I hope you can find a site that is useful and within your parameters! (That colour thing would drive me crazy, too; I HATE RED and anyone trying to sell it to me as soothing would find themselves deleted quickly. And the advice idea is just ludicrous, seriously who thinks that is a good idea!?)

[azurelunatic]

Apparently some of their members do, and have come to rely upon it.

They do not seem to be interested in changing the things that are showstoppers for me, so I think the decision to bail was correct. Deleting was perhaps not the best choice as all my data is blown away now, but eh.