Show HN: I made a website where you can create your own "Life in Weeks" timeline | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I made a website where you can create your own "Life in Weeks" timeline

lifeweeks.app

247 pointsczue68 comments

After I saw Gina Trapani's "Life in Weeks" last week I got the idea that letting anyone make one would be a cool product. I've been working on this off and on for the last week, and have gotten it good enough where I'm ready to get feedback. You can add "Periods" (colors) as well as "Events" to your timeline. You can also record longer details that show up on hover, automatically add world events, and export/import the entire thing to a file.

Happy to answer any questions about the app or build any feature requests in near-real time!

Great website! I signed up. I found a bug: I cannot input new emojis in headlines or description.

What do you mean by new emojis?

Call them “eras” instead of “periods” if you want that GenX adoption.

In the page there’s a Typo, Gina’s last name is Trapani not Tripani.

Eep, thanks! Fixed it.

This is very, very, cool. But I am a little worried it's also a social engineer's wet dream.

It'd be great to put everyone's birthday as January 1 of the year they were born by default, and scrub things such as:

* City names other than (maybe) the city they currently live in

* Proper names e.g. first partners, spouses, pets (I have no idea how you'd do this though, other than warning users if one of the top 1000 names are detected in their explanatory text or something)

* Names of vehicles

Honestly with how varied security questions can be these days I hesitate to suggest there's even a "safe" list of personal facts which can be publicly displayed. Obviously whatever you might put on LinkedIn or a resume is fair game, but anything beyond that may really open you up to attacks.

Not saying you should share your personal info on these charts, but you should never give real answers to security questions anyways. They are going to be easy to guess by definition, on top of revealing personal information to the vendor and any attackers.

If you use a password generator (and thus you never reuse or forget passwords), the easiest thing to do is to just set it to the password (though they may be stored in plaintext), or a different password you keep on the notes in your password manager.

Still plenty of places have "shadow security questions" based on knowing the answers to some of these things already.

Definitely don’t set security questions to the password itself.

Use the password generator to come up with some random words, different for each question.

While there is a concern about the plaintext answer leaking, I wouldn't think too much of it, since if the credentials db got compromised, I would assume the attackers also got everything else of value. Leaking the password at that point is no different than any other random string.

If they store the salted hash of your password but store the answers to security questions as plain text, then your advice is very bad. The db doesn't have to get pwned even, employees of the company will see it

There’s certain identify verifications checks online that require you give the real answer. Things like pulling your own credit report. They already know places you’ve lived in or models of vehicles you’ve insured and ask you this to confirm your identity. So not just security questions where you can define the correct answer.

It shows how careless the industry is that these security questions persist. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! account was handed by someone guessing easily accessible security questions. That was 17 years ago.

When backward systems force you to answer these questions, I agree it’s better to generate a random string just for this question and provider. Plus it’s a fun time on the odd occasion these extra questions are required in a phone call.

“To complete security, what was your first pet’s name?”

“I’ll never forget dear PMM&7Qhdcim6WdJ:2XaviMw”

Are you Elon Musk? :)

But suriosly good advice.

To get an account back, once I got something like:

> Which is your favotite food?

> Please select your old answer:

> 1) banana

> 2) apple

> 3) t5$2eoW

> 4) pear

DO NOT use your password for the answer to security questions! Yes, your answers should be stored securely, but there's a good chance they aren't. Use a different generated password, or bogus answers if you need to

Do not set it to the password. They might not be held as securely as the password. Use the additional fields/notes of your password generator and make them other generated random passwords.

While I agree with you, in my experience it's important for the security answers to be pronunceable. Otherwise some CS will just wave them away as being gibberish.

So I generate random answers but them modify it so that it's somewhat pronunceable.

Also obviously don't use the actual password since they are stored in plaintext

I'm also a fan of pronounceable passwords - I even have a script to generate them,[0] yes it decreases entropy a little. I don't store passwords on my phone, so I sometimes find myself retyping passwords, and I find these much easier to retype.

[0]: https://github.com/tasuki/dotrc/blob/master/.bin/pronounceab...

Pronounceable passwords is what pwgen does. You might be surprised by how much entropy you lose, which is apparently around half: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/72781/security-...

It's almost as though we would benefit from running software on our own computers... I hope that one day we can finally achieve this ambitious dream.

I'm sure it's on your list, but I think it would be helpful if I could click into the timeline in order to add an event/period of my life. I think there could be a really cool interface expanding years and drilling into certain time periods.

Also, as I get older I remember events, but I'm not sure when they happened. I remember being in a certain city on St. Patty's Day, but can't remember what year that might have been.

I got a little obsessed with this idea of journaling my life during the pandemic. I would record videos for my kids to watch in 20+ years. I figure they'll get a kick out of seeing their dad young and talking about current events. I built a site and made my parents record stories about their life - viography.co (try it free functionality is currently being rebuilt and not working. If you want a code dm me).

For the life in weeks, I think the more information that can be saved makes it more valuable. Personally I'm playing around with the idea of turning my site into a weekly video journal. It seems like everyone is putting a ton of content online, it's mostly ephemeral and clickbait-y and as we all get older we'll wish we made more substantial recordings of ourselves and our situations.

Yes, definitely planning to add this! Just didn't make the cut for the MVP

Feature request: Overlapping time periods. I was a high school student from 1993-1998, but I was a university student from 1994-2000. (And then a student at a different university from 2001-2005.) Many people won't have high school and university overlapping, but overlapping education and career often do.

Maybe interesting to add relationships (at very least marriage?) as visible time periods too.

I like this idea, though I'm unclear on the implementation. Do you have a sense how it'd work visually? Like divide the boxes into multiple color slices if there are overlaps?

Yeah, I was thinking multiple slices. But I'm not a graphical designer so I deliberately didn't offer suggestions. :-)

Awesome work. I’ve been browsing for a tool like this after seeing it a few weeks ago on HN.

I love the visual interface of your version.

There’s also a few things I love about an adjacent app (https://www.lifecalendar.io/) and I have a few feature requests for the back burner:

1. I love the idea of seeing my entire life in one structured grid. We lose the playfulness of your version. But it is a harrowing reminder of how much time is left. Would it be possible to implement such a view?

2. Filter/views for events types (vacations, career, etc) to change the perspective on specific topics.

3. Empty headlines permitted. This would allow me to use this as a low resolution weekly journal, that shows the entries only on hover. If we want to warn users of actual empty headline mistakes, then we can substitute with a special character or the like.

These are great suggestions, thanks! I'll take a crack at them soon and report back.

Just updated it to allow empty headlines. Still working on the other two but making progress on #2...

Nice Job! Editing "World Events" would be nice - perhaps just click on it to give option to delete. "SpaceX Landing" has nothing to do with my life.

But humanity maaan. What about humanity?

The comment about world events not being what matter in our lives is accurate (world events don't generally happen to us personally-fortunately) but it got me thinking, it might be nice to see some of these done for historical figures, who were integral in those events happening. I mean showing what people were part of in that week of their life, as opposed to things that happened in that week of _your_ life.

For example, Anne Boleyn - born 1501 _or_ 1507 (the earlier date is more accepted), died 1536; Henry VIII first married in 1509 when Anne was just a small child; her first promise of marriage post 1515 was to avert a civil war in Ireland, and Henry meeting her in 1526 led to the creation of the Church of England, her marriage, and then of course, her own execution. She had a full diary. Or on a lighter note, Mozart, who possibly died at the same age, had a life full of compositions and courts.

Those (and many others) would be interesting in their own right, or as timeline comparisons for people who use the site.

I agree with this. Some world events aren't relevant with our lives, and some are quite regional but have vast effects. For example, 1997 Asian Economic Crisis impacted my family quite a bit and I have a fond memory of my parents being worried around that time. I wish I could add/edit/remove some of the "World Events"

Just added the ability to copy the world events to your timeline (click "customize"). Then you can then modify/delete them like any other event. As for adding events, you can always create those like you would any other event. Hope that helps!

On my list to make this more customizable! Will update soon

You can now edit world events! Click "customize" and then confirm and they will be copied directly to your timeline. Then you can delete or add additional commentary to any of them.

Loved it! Is the code publicly available? When I built mine[1], I did the mistake of keeping each row as 26 weeks and 2 rows roughly as one year of life. This causes some rounding errors! Loved this design as its responsive.

Question: The wider cells, do they represent one week and its simply wide just to fit in the text?

[1] https://rishikeshs.com/timeline/

Unfortunately, I built it with the help of a priority codebase so can't open source it at the moment, but might be able to eventually if I can pare it down.

Wider cells are just to fit the text. Every cell should be a week, unless there are two events in the same week, which then get split out.

Not sure why seeing a life like this makes me depressed

I do. But that's also the point of the app. Life is finite!

These are sometimes called memento mori calendars. Memento mori being a Latin phrase that translates to "remember you must die". It's a pretty popular phrase/reminder with the modern day Stoic community.

Remidners of death are often depressing.

It gets me down a little too just because I know I am so weird that I can't understand why anyone would want this.

I actually would have interesting things to put on the timeline. Why anyone would do this though just doesn't make sense to me on any level and I know I am in the minority on that.

I'd love to see more optionality in the events that shaped me.

I loved that you made it easy to incorporate world events etc. And the general school calendar.

It would be really nice to incorporate the world events in a list of select which ones made an impact in your life.

> It would be really nice to incorporate the world events in a list of select which ones made an impact in your life.

You can do this! Just click "customize" on the world events and then you can modify freely

This is awesome. Can I embed this on my website?

Yes! Well, I think you could throw it in an iframe, but I'll play around with it and create an embeddable view that looks better.

I was thinking iframe. Either way, if you're OK with embedding it, I think I will. Thanks!

I just added an embedding option. It's not documented yet, but you can view the source of my own site to see how it works. In terms of styling, it currently only supports specifying the background color (color or hex code) via url param.

https://www.coryzue.com/life/

This is the relevant source code. The only somewhat complicated bit is dynamically setting the height via messages:

<section class="section"> <div class="container"> <iframe id="life-timeline" src="https://lifeweeks.app/embed/life/czue/?bg=white" frameborder="0" width="100%" scrolling="no" ></iframe> </div> </section> <script> window.addEventListener('message', function(e) { if (e.data.type === 'resize') { document.getElementById('life-timeline').style.height = e.data.height + 'px'; } }); </script>

This is great, thank you! I'm going to drop it in later and see how it works.

I really love that you can play around without creating an account. Kudos!

Thanks! That was a last minute change suggested by my wife

It was probably the difference between me trying it at all and sending to a few friends. Thank her.

Showed her this thread and she was pleased.

I've built something in a similar direction but more around the places where I've been based on the EXIF data of my photo library.

https://github.com/dewey/my-life-in-weeks

Any thoughts on making this open source / open contribution? I know myself and apparently others here are very into this, but have some things we'd like to tweak! Like the ability to edit world events, for example.

Unfortunately, I built it with the help of a priority codebase so can't open source it at the moment, but might be able to eventually if I can pare it down.

In the meantime, I'll try to be super responsive to feedback. Editing/adding collections is high on my list!

As a follow up you can now edit/delete world events by copying them to your timeline.

This is so cool! Always good to see projects like this on Hacker News.

Reminded me of DateByDays, similar but the base unit is days instead of weeks

https://datebydays.com/

It would be nice to have a choice of icons to select when adding an event. (Currently you have to insert an emoji, which is not so simple on desktop.)

CMD / Win + . And that should work, right?

Huh, TIL.

Thanks for doing this. I bought the calendar over 10y ago and used it but threw it out in a move.

this is awesome. I had the same idea when i saw that post.

I would love to add links to media like pics, videos, notes ect.

starts rocking back and forth nervous at how few white blocks are left

Thanks but chatgpt can do this oneshot.

Do it, put it online, and Show HN what you were able to do with chatgpt "oneshot."

Otherwise you're just making a stupid, rude comment.

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