Category Archives: LogVine

Make your 2016 a Gardening Success by using Micro-Logs

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve forgotten about when I did something last in my gardening exploits.  Using the LogVine free Micro-Log service, you can avoid forgetting when you applied fertilizer, water, or nutrients.   I used to write little notes on my iPhone using the notes application for when I did things last.  This worked reasonably well, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with the flow of things.

What is a micro-log?  It is a short-handed approach to storing something of importance.  Micro-logs are significant because they can save you a lot of time in recalling when you performed an action last.  My rose garden nearly died 1 month ago due to black rot and rust.  I was faced with having to do something about the problem.  I applied a late evening foliar spray of neem oil.  I needed to apply the spray every 7-10 days.  In order to remember the timing I wrote a quick  micro-log stating “home” “roses” “neem oil”.  Think of this like a quick tweet that  helps me remembers something.  Here it is on the phone:

"Home" "roses" "neem oil"

This particular entry is super simple to fill out and will keep a record in the cloud and locally on my iPhone device that acts as a nice memory trail.

Moving ahead, I also can drill into some of my other logs at a high-level here.

High level view of a few "home" "roses" logs.

 

Well that is wrap for this brief gardening entry.

Gardening Time is Almost Upon Us! New Dimension Added to the Micro-Log

Whether you’re planning on planting a garden this year, maintaining a pond, or just simply tracking something you find interesting. Our latest iOS version 1.1 update is a huge update to the application. We’ve integrated the ability to upload an image with each micro-log that you create. This effectively creates a new dimension on your micro-log. Colorful images tell such a richer story and have been a much needed addition we’ve been planning. The images aren’t just stored on the device, they are also uploaded and managed in the cloud. So if you ever lose or change devices, your logs and images will still be safely stored in the LogVine cloud!

Beer7 aka. "Crazy Squirrel" has been bottled!

Beer7 aka. “Crazy Squirrel” has been bottled! (Web View)

You can now upload images along with your micro-log using your iOS Apple devices. The web will render your image results as well! I just bottled my latest batch of home brew batch of “Crazy Squirrel” beer.

The very same picture renders in a nice image view on your iOS device.

(iOS View)

Logging beer is great and I clearly like to log my brews, but the time of year is beginning to start soil preparation for your home gardens. I’ve begun getting our compost pit churned and ready to integrate into our garden soil for the future seeds! The seed company Burpee has a nice reference to this material here. Using LogVine for this tracking enables you to set the precedent or historical context for how things work when you begin your regular gardening cycles.

Another much needed enhancement is the ability to enter subjects and categories now with spaces in them.

E.g. Backyard Pond
Compost Churned

There are countless more bug fixes we coded to create a more stable application for you. If you find anything wrong at all with the product please don’t hesitate to contact us on Twitter or on our contact page.

How To Use the Web Site

How do I use the web site to store what you a call a “micro-log”? Watch this video!

LogVine.com Web Tutorial

Happy Logging Folks!
-Chris

Introducing LogVine the “Micro-Log” Service

Welcome all!  My name is Chris Me_Circle and over a year ago I was unable to find adequate software for tracking my fruit trees and garden.  I was primarily interested in something that would do the following:

  1. Allow me to enter data quickly and easily through a simple interface.
  2. Backup the data into the cloud space.
  3. Work from my iPhone and synchronize with my iPad and even an Android device.  Also a web view would be nice.
  4. Automatically graph the data.

Since I couldn’t find anything, I decided to begin the process of writing a full back-end service tier and an iOS application to boot.  Over the course of this journey I coined the term the “micro-log”.  A “micro-log” is a simple way to quickly and easily enter a few words or some data in a short and compressed format.  Originally, I designed a twitter-like interface using the following nomenclature.

* – Subject or Parent Category
– Predicate or Sub-Category
And what follows afterwards is the optional object or data.  
The date of the entry would automatically be applied for the current date time.  It could also be manually entered to specify an exact time stamp.
It ended up looking something like:
Screen Shot 2014-12-12 at 4.44.37 PM
Screen Shot 2014-12-12 at 4.44.50 PM 

The format and nomenclature worked, but as I used it more and more on my iOS platform I found it to be cumbersome.  I focused on removing extra button clicks and came up with a simple iOS widget based interface that you’ll find available now in the iOS App Store. Oh and lest I forget it, LogVine the iOS application is free!

The Goal @ LogVine

To enable users to easily track their data and gain insight into their historical behavior.

I’ve built the platform and I plan on continuing to improve and enhance the features.  Please go out and get it! LogVine

-Chris