Tomás:

Excellent ideas! I am not inclined to pursue the tax preparation program since I fear we may not be able to complete a truly useful program in time for it to do any good (maybe next year!).

The animation stack has possibilities. I am including two existing stacks as part of this issue's gifts. Maybe that will generate more ideas and/or interest.

But the idea which really intrigues me is the diabetes stack. If we could create a stack that was at all useful, it would be a triumph for Archipelago.

As a first step, we would need to define more clearly exactly what we wanted the stack to do. It seems to me that before any kind of prediction is possible, you would need to gather lots of data. Perhaps that is what our initial stack should help you do!

Could you tell us more about the problem? For example, do you have some kind of gadget that measures blood sugar levels and if so, how does it work, what information does it provide, how reliable is it, etc? Are there other significant variables like emotional stress, sickness, etc.? Could you establish some sort of a scale to measure activity (say a scale from 1 to 5)? Somehow we will need to quantify all the variables.

One possibility is that we could design cards that simply record all the variables and the resulting blood sugar levels. Such a stack would be useful not only to store the growing amounts of data, but could also help you make your decisions. In any given situation, you could look at past situations for guidance. The stack could automatically search for the nearest match.

How often do you take blood samples? Is it hard to estimate caloric intake? (Perhaps the stack could help with that.)

I trust that the other Archipelagans will be quick to offer insights, questions, and enthusiastic noises...