A couple days ago, version 2.1 of Locavore was approved in the iTunes Store.  The biggest new change is the way recipes work.  I’ve removed integration with Epicurious and replaced it with the wonderful work of Foodista. Recipes are an untapped (in my opinion) aspect of the local food movement.  Now, not only are the recipes listed within the app, but I’m able to find recipes sorted by those that have the most in-season ingredients.  It’s awesome!

I will tell a little story about how this happened, because to me it illustrates some reasons why I think big companies are unable to see good ideas, much less act on them.  And why, eventually, they shoot themselves in the foot.

When Locavore first launched, I linked to an Epicurious search results page from the food detail page.  Somehow, Epicurious caught wind of this and notified Apple that I hadn’t gotten their permission to do this.  That’s the first weird thing… big companies have enough sway to require permission to load their web page within an app.

Apple threatened to yank the app unless I got their permission.  I wrote to five different email addresses at Epicurious and none of them ever replied.  Eventually, I get a phone call from someone at Epicurious.  They offer to buy Locavore, I give them a crazy price that they decline, and then they say they will give me permission to link to their search results page from within the app.  It takes them a month plus to draw up the papers, at which point I’ve already updated the app to close Locavore and open Safari with Epicurious’s search results page because Apple needed this to be resolved more quickly.  Finally, they say the papers are drawn up, ask for my address, I give it to them 1 minute later, and to this day I have not seen these papers.

Enter Foodista

Foodista.com is a great small new company in Seattle that is indexing all of the recipes on the web.  They are ambitious, extremely friendly (I visited the team here in Seattle a few months ago), and really excited about not only recipes, but all of the amazing new ways food, recipes, local food, and the love of it all can come together in this amazing new futuristic world called the present.  They love food, they love the Internet, they blog and participate with their readers, they put on food conferences, they team with local chefs and bartenders for special events, and they constantly find new ways to work together with others.  I love them.

After talking with them for half an hour, they agreed to open up their recipe api to me, link to me from their food detail pages, and allow me to include their recipes in Locavore.  We brainstormed a dozen ideas on ways we could work together, and were also quick to do custom work that same day to make sure we could start working together immediately.

The result

Locavore is all about knowing what’s in season.  But how do you know what to do with what’s in season?  Now, with Foodista’s help, you can get a custom list of recipes from all over the Internet, sorted by those that have the most in-season ingredients.  That doesn’t exist anywhere right now.  My guess is that in 5 years, it will be everywhere.  And that’s a good thing.  The difference between big, slow, companies and small fast ones like us are that WE WANT the future to get here.  We want information to spread as quickly as possible and we want everyone to benefit from technology.

Also included in the new version of Locavore 2.1

• Farmers’ markets are now listed on a map so you can see exactly where you are in the local food ecosystem of your neighborhood.
• New data for the UK.
• New art!

Enjoy!

I quit the Robot Co-op in June, and have been working on this tiny new company since then.  I think I’ve finally reached some definition on what exactly this company will be about.

Here’s what I’m working on:

Locavore has continued to sell at a steady pace.  Nowhere near enough to be a living, but definitely a nice supplement to additional streams of income.  I have realized that in order to sell 200/day regularly, I’d have to be mentioned in the NYT or be featured in iTunes pretty regularly, and unfortunately my app doesn’t really have “news-worthy” things to report often enough.  That said, I have been working on a new release that integrates with the wonderful work of Foodista (so long, Epicurious!) to show related recipes.  I’m very excited about this and can’t wait to show you what we’ve built.

Mirror, Mirror is my little photobooth side project that I’m working on with a good friend.  I am building one for Vain (to be installed any day now!) and another to be rented out to local weddings and events.  It’s a fun project, but also not a business idea so much as a cool gadget to play around with.

The other thing I’m working on is actually a full-blown company with a good friend and a local business.  I’ve commited to working 40 hours a week for the next 9 months on it, so it’s gonna be a big chunk of my weekly work.  I’m super excited about it because it’s something that’s practical, has a good business plan, and caters to both my interests and my skill set.  I always scoff at people who withhold details about their projects for fear of being copied… I am withholding details because there’s a bit of an issue of protecting the company we’re working with.  Otherwise, I’d tell you all about it.

A thousand little projects also keep me pretty occupied.  I am helping the guys at Track Your Happiness to build better reporting and such for their data (I also just recently launched Twitter integration for getting your random notifications through the day… try it out!).  I’m helping a friend in California build a website for her new business.  I’m thinking constantly about moods, standards for meaningful work, and event planning, to mention a few of the bigger ones.

Keeping busy, and loving it.

To celebrate the kickoff of a couple new features in Locavore, I promised to draw pictures for people who added something to the new “I Ate Local” tab in Locavore.

Here are a few more people who’ve added something:

Here’s the full set of pictures…

To celebrate the kickoff of a couple new features in Locavore, I promised to draw pictures for people who added something to the new “I Ate Local” tab in Locavore.

Here are a few of the first 14 people who’ve added something:

See the full set…

From here, I’ll be drawing a few each day. I’ll focus on people eating things I haven’t drawn yet in places that I haven’t seen people add stuff. Help me by adding something that you’ve eaten locally via the app!

One of my favorite new features of the recent update on Locavore is the addition of the Facebook integration that lets people say what they’re actually finding in their markets.  At the end of this post I’m offering a weird challenge/reward for people who test the feature and post about something they’ve eaten locally recently.

The new "I Ate Local" tab

The thing about this whole local food movement is that it in many ways is about making food social again. In Michael Pollan’s Eater’s Manifesto, two of his points are about the social value of food.

#3 – Do all of your eating at a table.

#5 – Try not to eat alone.

The rest of the points in the Eater’s Manifesto are really good too.

In addition, many of the suggestions for eating local food involve things like getting to know your local farmers’ markets and growing food in a community garden.  Cooking is always more enjoyable when you can share your efforts with friends and family.

I want to add to the social aspects of food enjoyment.  Which is why I’ve added the “I Ate Local” tab which lets you talk about what kinds of food you’re actually finding in your markets.  What’s available changes from year to year, and even from farm to farm, and so knowing what’s available requires that information be shared about what’s actually in markets, and when.

It’s exciting to know when the first strawberries of the season come in.  I’ve really enjoyed @cooklocal’s Twitter stream and farmers’ market reports like this one that tell me what’s just come in from which farms.  Even if I don’t go out and eat the first strawberries of the season, it’s so nice to feel like you are in touch with the produce of the area.  That rich connection with the growing cycles and produce from farms is something that as a lifetime suburbs/city dweller I have never really experienced until now.

My special limited time “I Ate Local” challenge

Right now, to help kick off this new feature, I’d love it if you could try out the feature and post about one thing that you’ve eaten recently that you know was grown locally.

For the next week or so, if you post a local food you’ve recently eaten (even better if you also post it to your Facebook Wall) I’ll draw a picture of what you ate, and post it on this blog. I reserve the right to stop drawing if my arm falls off.

Thanks for helping!

My iPhone app, Locavore, has been updated to make eating local foods a whole lot more social!

Locavore 1.0, when it first launched less than 100 days ago, was an iPhone app that told you what’s in season, what’s coming into season soon, and where nearby farmers markets are located. It has been the #1 Lifestyle app in the iTunes store a couple times, reaching as high as #64 in the Paid Apps list, and has already sold more than 10,000 copies.

Locavore 2.0, released today, does all of that and now also lets you be social about it. Connect to people near you with a new feature called “I Ate Local.” Let people within 150 miles of you know what you’re actually finding at the market. Powered by Facebook Connect, you can also post your local food finds onto Facebook.

New Locavore 2.0 features include:

1. Connect to Facebook and post your local food finds to your wall.
2. A new tab! “I Ate Local” shows you what people are eating within 150 or 500 miles. You can also browse the whole world’s local diet.
3. Top feature request! Manually enter zip codes. If you don’t have GPS, it’s being wonky for you, or you want to have a sneak peek into another part of the world, you can now enter your zip code manually.
4. Bigger pictures for all 234 kinds of food!
5. Now, on every food detail page, it will not only tell you what other states it’s in season in, but also highlight how long until it’s in season near you.
6. Local farms are included within the farmers’ markets listings, and you can paginate through multiple pages of all the farms and farmers’ markets within 100 miles of you.
7. Improved data for a couple states.
8. More responsive pages, more consistent look and feel, more stable and fewer crashes!

There’s also a Facebook App! There’s a new Facebook App for the iPhone-less and people who want to check out availability data from their computer. Check it out.

More information for those who want it:

• Video screencast tour of the new features
• Screenshots and more info about the app
• iTunes store link
• Browse or submit feedback, ideas, and bugs here

Let me know if there’s anything else I can answer for you about this. I’m 100% open with all data, usage, etc.

To follow continued progress on this app, I have a Twitter account (@enjoy_locavore) and a Facebook Page.

I’m REALLY excited about this update, and hope you all like it too.  I’ll be posting more info about individual features throughout the week.

One of my more ambitious goals with Locavore is to create a repository of seasonal availability information that spans the whole world, all kinds of food, and is maintained by farmers, chefs, and others who know their stuff.  This information could be made available in easy-to-understand ways to anyone interested in learning more about seasonal local food.

I would love for a growing database of this information to be maintained and made available for anyone that wanted to use it.  It’s a small step in getting all of us to seriously consider the bigger impacts of eating locally and from sustainable sources.

If you are someone interested in helping with this dream, and have contacts in other countries that maintain this data and are generous enough to want to collaborate on a large scale with me, please leave a comment or email me at locavore@[this domain].

Part of my ramp-up to a more frugal and healthy life this month will be in a change in eating habits. Up until today, a typical week involved eating out at a restaurant for lunch at least 4 times a week, and eating out at a restaurant for dinner probably closer to 5 or 6 times a week. I rarely eat breakfast.

Kellianne and I are going to try something different this month.

One, have breakfast every morning. This means we need to wake up about an hour earlier, but the opportunity to have local eggs with some asparagus or spinach the last week or so has been pretty amazing. For motivational purposes, coffee beans from a local roaster (Caffe Vita) counts as local.

Two, I plan on getting my lunches at the market’s produce counter every day. Focusing on in-season fruits and vegetables that I can eat with almost no preparation. It’ll be cheaper, healthier, and supportive of local farms.

Three, for dinner grill some local fish or sausage and steam some spinach, kale, or whatever else is in season. Simple, quick, tasty, cheap, and healthy. The fact that BBQs on the roof are pretty much an utopic setting helps encourage this as well.

Doing this at the height of spring is pretty much the easiest time of year to take the plunge. It’ll be more of a challenge to keep it up at the end of summer, I think. But that’s the future’s problem.

We aren’t going to go for 100% local, or 100% frugal, it’s more that we’re going to make a conscious effort to change base habits and see if we can make something new adhere to our habitual minds.

This is the plan. Now I just need to find a way to keep it. If anyone has any tips, precautions, or motivating tales, let me know.

It’s been a little over a month since Locavore launched and I wanted to share some of the progress so far. I like this tradition of iPhone app developers opening up their numbers to the public, and I hope / believe that it’s more about transparency and the curiosity of a new market than it is bragging.

Locavore What it is: An app that tells you what’s in season near you right now, what’s coming into season soon, and nearby farmers’ markets Launched: March 17th, 2009 Price: $2.99 Number sold: 5,681 Gross sales: $16,986.19 Net sales: $11,890.33 Top ranking: #65 in Top 100 Paid Apps list (iTunes link) More info: at the App Store

All in all, the app has done a lot better than I had expected it to do in the first month. We have gotten some good press both on big food blogs and on technology blogs. The height of our popularity has come from being featured in the iTunes App Store for about 3 days, which led to rising in the ranks to number 65 on the Top 100 Paid Apps list at one point. Needless to say I felt pretty lucky to have made it that high when there are over 30,000 apps in the store.

New users per day

To give a bit of context to the chart, the biggest day sold almost 1,000 apps. The last few days on the chart hover between 50-70 new apps a day. All together, I’ve sold a bit over 5,000 apps, and made about $12,000 after Apple takes out their 30% cut.

As you can see, even the best press wasn’t as effective as being blessed by the Apple Marketing team. Not sure what that means in terms of how to best market apps… basically, it leaves all of us at the unbeatable first law of marketing and promotion: build something interesting.

Another interesting metric is to see how many people total use the app each day. In other words, do people continue to use the app even after they’ve bought it?

Total unique users per day

So, while not everyone uses the app every day, there does seem to be a general trend going up. Hopefully as the spring and summer seasons continue, people will continue to find the app useful when going to the market. I think this is the true test of a useful app, because if others are anything like me, I’ve got a very low purchase-to-continued-usage ratio for iPhone apps. Some apps even get deleted within 5 minutes of being purchased.

Next month

I’m still hard at work on the next major version of the app, which will include integration with Facebook Connect, and an ability to share what local foods you’re eating in your neighborhood… this will make it possible to see what your particular markets are selling at this exact moment, in a more precise manner than is currently possible. And it will also let you see other peoples’ faces, which I think is one of the most valuable features that social technology gives to us. In the end, this is all about connecting with other people, right?

Other people sharing their sales data

Let me know (via comments or by @enjoy_locavore‘ing me on Twitter) if there’s any other data you’d like to see.

A few other good reports of early iPhone app sales:

• Tap Tap Tap (follow-up) (thanks for inspiring the format of this post!)
• Sudoku Grab

Here’s a list of the bug fixes and feature improvements for our first update since launching the app a couple weeks ago:

1. Fixed Washington DC so it no longer crashes when you’re there.  Sorry for the oversight, DC!
2. Improved seasonal availability information in Louisiana thanks to @unapologetic‘s help.  If anyone has updated information for their state, just link me to the sources via Get Satisfaction, or Twitter.
3. Added “Bordering states” information to any state page that doesn’t have anything in season or coming into season soon.
4. Fixed some time-calculation bugs so now the time left in season is a little more consistent across the app.
5. Updated to the latest version of the Get Satisfaction remote component so that you can now sign up to the service from within my app and submit bugs, ideas, questions, and feedback.  It’s really awesome that this is possible, I think.  More apps should use this component.

What’s next?  Making local food social

I’ve begun design and development on the next set of major features for the app.  At the top of the list is the ability to share information about food in your area with other users near you, via Facebook Connect integration.  This will mean that, if you go to the market and see that something’s in season that’s not represented in the app, you can share this information with other people near you.  This will then help the app learn over time about true seasonality schedules and fluctuations season by season, and year by year.

I will be implementing this in the simplest way possible at first, and see if it’s useful.  If it is, I think this could really help us make the data more accurate over time. I think it’s realistic to think that this stuff should take about a month to develop.

Tell me what you want to see

I’m highly interested in hearing from people about ways that they think we can improve the app.  Does anyone want to use this information for their own?  Does anyone want to see this as a Facebook app?  Should there be an eat local game component?  What else that I haven’t thought of?

I plan on being as transparent as possible about the development and growth of Locavore, as I think we’re all sort of interested in knowing the behind-the-scenes stuff. And I’ve got nothing to hide, so I might as well share.

I installed a component developed by Pinch Media that allows me to get pseudo real-time stats on usage of the app. I don’t get any information that’s sensitive, but it’s more like having web stats in the app and being able to get general data about how many people are using the app each day.

Here’s what it is telling me about New Users per day (the last line is yesterday, or Monday March 23rd):

So, it looks like I’ve already sold more than 1,000 apps, which is a lot more than I was expecting to sell the first week.

The growth is attributable to the fact that the app got covered in a couple big tech and food blogs near the end of last week. The most significant ones, in order of their publication, are:

1. Cook Local: Locavore for the iPhone – Mar 16th (First review!)
2. The Stranger Slog: Local Food App for Your Phone – Mar 19th
3. Serious Eats: Find Local, in Season, Food on Your iPhone – Mar 19th
4. MobileCrunch: Review: Locavore for the iPhone – Mar 20th
5. Gizmodo: The Week in iPhone Apps – Mar 20th
6. The Food Section: Local Food Shopping for the iPhone – Mar 20th
7. Lifehacker: Locavore Lists the In-Season Food Near You – Mar 23rd
8. TreeHugger: In-Season Food App for Locavores’ iPhones – Mar 24th

So that has been very exciting to watch.  People seem excited.  I’m excited.  Everyone wins.

I’m not sure if this amount of momentum will continue though, so I will continue to seek ways to get the word out about the app, which will include developing more features that make the app more useful.

The surprise: Twitter!

I did not anticipate just how much Twitter would play in to the promotion of this application.  The ability to track any mention of “locavore” on Twitter using their real-time search has made it possible for me to follow mentions of the app (along with everything the Obamas are doing with their Whitehouse garden) and in several cases has led to conversations about the app, about features, about new ideas.  Twitter is pretty much designed to spread information as quickly as possible, and I’m only now beginning to realize the full scope of what that means.  I don’t want to take advantage of it or anything, but I was simply surprised to find that it was as effective of a tool as it has turned out to be.

Week 1 was pretty eventful.  I suspect week 2 might not be as eventful, but if it is, I’ll post about it.  In the meantime, I’ve got to get back to work.

How to get it

If you want to learn more about Locavore, click here. To visit the detail page in iTunes, click here.

I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to statistics, and monitoring progress, so I think I’ll mention every once in a while (for better or for worse) what’s going on in the land of trying to make Locavore successful.

The first reviews

The first review award goes to Cook Local. She also got the first review in the iTunes Store. If any of you have an extra minute to review this in the iTunes store, it could potentially get me a little extra traction there. Missy from Groovy Vegetarian also wrote up a few nice words yesterday. I’m a horrible self-promoter, so I appreciate anything anyone writes about this, good, neutral, or critical.

For bug reports, ideas, and other feedback, I’m also going to be looming like a hawk over at my Locavore Get Satisfaction page. If you have the app, you’ll notice that on the About tab, there’s a link directly to Get Satisfaction from within the app as well, so you can submit feedback, ideas, and bugs from there while you’re thinking of them. I think I’m the first app to be using this integrated feedback component, so I hope people find it useful.

How many people bought the app?

Based on my very limited knowledge (since Apple only gives you weekly reports), I think somewhere around 40-50 people downloaded the app. I gave out around 30 promo codes as well, so don’t know what percentage of those were used. I’m hoping that those 40-50 people like the app, and that word of mouth sort of helps it grow. So, room to grow!

How can you help?

I’m glad you asked. A lot of ways! I want ideas for how to make this app more useful and interesting. I want tips on sources of data for fruit and vegetable availability in other countries. I want to find out planting schedules, by state and time of year, so that we can show not only what is available but what should be planted when. I want information on availability information on poultry and fish. I would love to team up with the awesome Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch to make information about sustainable fishing more available.

Think big. Think about ways to create a collaborative community of people who update and maintain information on availability around the world, changing with the seasons and the years.

I sent this out to a few friends with high places this morning… follow @enjoy_locavore for some promo codes and news in the future.

I know it’s a big iPhone news day (I’m very excited myself), but in addition to all the 3.0 news, I’m happy today to launch Locavore, a powerful yet simple application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows users to find the freshest, most sustainable fruits and vegetables no matter where they are in the United States.

Utilizing built-in GPS and location awareness, Locavore finds a fresh food enthusiast’s location and then shows them what foods are currently in season locally, and what is coming in season soon. Getting this information quickly (especially while at the market and trying to decide what to buy) means that one can get the freshest, tastiest, and most healthy foods available any time of the year.

Locavore finds information about nearby farmers’ markets and food availability data from a collaboration of partners such as LocalHarvest.org, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others to give users a real-time look at what’s available to them and where to get it. This data will continue to improve and be updated over time.

The application also connects users to recipes from Epicurious and links to Wikipedia through a simple to use and intuitive interface. It features 234 well-known and more obscure fruits and vegetables with beautiful full-color images of each, in case a user momentarily forgets what an aprium or a rambutan looks like.

Locavore is available now at the iTunes App store for $2.99 for the first thousand customers. Coming up in the next update: integration with Facebook Connect to turn the appreciation and knowledge of local food into more of a social, collaborative, effort.

Sincerely,
Buster McLeod

Questions, etc, you can email me at locavore@enjoymentland.com

About us:

Buster McLeod is a co-founder of the Robot Co-op, maker of 43things.com, 43places.com and others. He was also the co-founder of Seattle-based art gallery and bar, McLeod Residence. Now he is interested in building small, useful apps for the iPhone that make life a little healthier and more interesting.

Matt Hickey knows tech. He also knows that in the current age of iPhones, Facebook, and everything connected in real time that it’s important that it’s accessible to everyone. His design sense aims to that: Simple is better. You’ll find that theme throughout the Locavore application.

Just submitted my Locavore app to the iPhone App Store.  It will most likely be available in the next week or two.  To be notified of when exactly, follow @enjoy_locavore on Twitter.

So, as you most likely know, it’s an app that determines where you are, and then shows you what fruits and vegetables are in season where you are. And around that idea are a couple other interesting ideas:

• Sorts fruits and vegetables by how much longer they’re in season, so you can appreciate the carrots, or whatever, now, before you spend the rest of the year without access to super fresh carrots.
• Shows you farmers markets near you, thanks to the lovely cooperation of LocalHarvest.  They were kind enough to let me access their data, and I look forward to finding more things to do with it.
• See a map of all the states a given food is currently in season in, thanks to Google’s awesome Chart API.
• Browse by food (I have 237 different kinds in the database).
• Browse by state to see what’s in season in other parts of the country (right now, we’re limited to US-only data).
• Find out more information about any food with a direct link to the mobile Wikipedia page.
• Find out what recipes are popular for a given item with a direct link to epicurious.com’s search results page (I do wish there was a more iPhone-friendly source for this).

All expertly designed by the very talented Matt Hickey.

Here are a few screenshots:

The interesting thing in my development of this app was that sometime last week I realized that the way I was building the interfaces wasn’t going to scale.  I was using Interface Builder to designe the table cells for various screens, and it turns out that this method of design doesn’t scale to tables that have a lot of rows.  And so my app became sluggish as a slug.

But after some internet research, I found an entry by the creator of Tweetie that explained in nice detail about how to speed up table scrolling.   A couple other entries that were useful were this one from stackoverflow and this one from rudis.net.  Most likely, if you aren’t an iPhone developer, you’ll have no idea what they’re talking about so there’s no need to click.  But in my slowly developing studies, I find articulate developers like these people invaluable.

Patterns of iPhone apps that I enjoy

I love collaboration. And this app in particular has been a great act of collaboration.  From Tattfoo who gave me permission to use the collection of colors that he collected from different fruits and vegetables.  To LocalHarvest (a wonderful site that’s 10+ years old and has the most comprehensive database of farmers’ markets in the US, and so much more) who opened up their data to be used in the spirit of increasing awareness of how to find locally grown foods.  To Google’s generous creation of map-making APIs and reverse geo-coding web services.  To the various sites and sources that gleaned data about what’s in season when and where.  To the stock photography websites that allow, in many cases, free use of beautiful images.  To Wikipedia for creating a beautiful mobile version of their site.  To the creators of iphoneonrails.com.  The only true contribution I brought to the table was glue.

I love simplicity. iPhone apps lend themselves to simplicity.  Do something simple, do it well, and do it in an aesthetically-pleasing way.  From the iPhone app itself, to the Objective-C programming language, to integration of Xcode, the iPhone Simulator, and Interface Builder, to the simple constraints of screen size, computing power, and human interest, everything about iPhone app development rewards the beauty of simplicity.

I love small projects. I love that one or two people can create an app.  It doesn’t take a team, or a company, to take on an interesting idea and make it happen.  $99 is all you need to get all the tools to build an app.  You don’t have to host the code, or find a way to charge for it, or find a way to sell it, or anything, really.  You build it, you upload it, you choose a price (or free), you wait for the reviews and feedback to come in and you continue to improve upon it.  It’s really truly amazing.

I created a new twitter account (@enjoy_locavore) to talk about news, updates, and whatever else Locavore related.  Add it if you want.  The twitter account is also built into the app so that users of it can always see what the latest developments are.

It’s such a tiny little world all to itself, and I hope that my little contribution to the idea of learning to enjoy food that is local is at least a little bit useful.

There’s this little pie graph I want in my app that looks sorta like this:

Basically, it’s gonna be a stopwatch-like graph that tells you how much time is left for a particular food in a particular location.  In this case, the pie would represent 1 month left.  It’s convenient because there are 12 months in a year, 12 hours on a clock, etc.  I can color the pie slice differently when it’s nearing its “out of season” time (as is the case here, so the slice should be a red-ish color in the final deal).

Easy enough, right?  I told Matt, the guy who’s generously helping me design this, that I could make the pie charts with Google’s chart API.

The chart API takes data, like (1,11) to represent the amount that’s colored one color versus colored another.  But, unfortunately, the chart’s default orientation is at 3 o’clock.  To rotate the chart, you supply it with a number in radians.  So, after some research in radians, I determine that to rotate the slice 90 degrees clockwise, I give everything a radians of 4.712388975.

Unfortunately, that aligns the wrong side of the pie slice.  Making it look like this:

So, now I need to figure out how to rotate it to the a little bit less than the default offset.  Since I’m making one of these for each half-increment of a month, I’ll need 24 slices. So, each half month has its own correction of

1 radian * 15 (degrees) = 0.2617993875 radians

Each with a different radian correction to the offset.  Or, rather, for each increment,

(default offset) – ((half month correction from above) * (number of half months))

So now I figure this all out in a Google Docs spreadsheet.

And for some reason, I find the whole process highly enjoyable.

Why?

Also, now that I’ve got this spreadsheet open, I’m interested in using this information to help determine the colors used for each slice.  I have some colors that have been sampled from actual foods in nature and wonder how I might use math to simulate the changing colors of the season.

But I’m going to leave that for tomorrow because I want a drink right now.  I feel like I’m in that weird nerd limbo… nerdy enough to come up with a really convoluted way to get something really simple, and yet still not nerdy enough to come up with the really easy way to get something really simple.