Author: Ernesto Ramirez

BLOG

Vanessa Sabino on Tracking a Year of Sleep

August 8, 2014

Vanessa Sabino was curious about how well she was sleeping. By using the Sleep as Android app, she was able to track a year of sleep data. Before she was able to dig into the data she ran into a problem with the data export format and had to write her own custom data parser…

BLOG

Paul LaFontaine: We Never Fight on Wednesday

August 7, 2014

Paul LaFontaine was interested in understanding his anxiety and negative emotional states. What was causing them? When were they happening? What could he do to combat them? Using TapLog, a simple Android-based tracking app (with easy data export), Paul tracked these mental events for six months as well as the triggers associated with each one….

BLOG

Jenny Tillotson: Science, Smell, and Fasion

August 6, 2014

Jenny Tillotson is a researcher and fashion designer who is currently exploring how scent plays a role in emotion and psychological states. As someone living with bipolar disorder, she’s been acutely aware of what affects her own emotions states and has been exploring different methods to track them. In this talk, presented at the 2014…

BLOG

QSEU14 Breakout: Passive Sensing with Smartphones

August 5, 2014

Today’s post comes to use from Freek Van Polen. Freek works at Sense Observations Systems, where they develop passive sensing applications and tools for smartphones. At the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference Freek led a breakout session where attendees discussed the opportunities, pitfalls, and ethical challenges associated with the increasing amount of passive data collection…

BLOG

Natty Hoffman: The Enlightened Consumer

August 4, 2014

Natty Hoffman was interested in learning more about how she spent her money. Not satisfied with just categorizing expenses, she dove deeper into two years of transaction data to understand where here money was going and how well her spending habits reflected her ideals. In this talk, presented at the Boston QS Meetup group, Natty…

BLOG

Stefan Hoevenaar: My Father, A Quantified Diabetic

August 1, 2014

Stefan Hoevenaar’s father had Type 1 Diabetes. As a chemist, he was already quite meticulous about using data and those habits informed how he tracked and made sense of his blood sugar and insulin data. In this talk, presented at the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, Stefan describes how his father kept notes and hand-drawn…

BLOG

QSEU14 Breakout: An Imaging Mind

July 31, 2014

Today’s post comes to us from Floris van Eck. At the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference Floris led a breakout session on a project he’s been working on, The Imaging Mind. As imaging data become more prevalent it is becoming increasingly important to discuss the social and ethical considerations that arise when your image it…

BLOG

Steven Jonas: Memorizing My Daybook

July 29, 2014

Memory, cognition, and learning are of high interest here at QS Labs. Ever since Gary Wolf published his seminal piece on SuperMemo, and it’s founder Piotr Wozniak, in 2008, we’ve been delighted to see how people are using space repetition software. Our friend and colleague, Steven Jonas, has been using SuperMemo since he read Gary’s…

BLOG

Tidings: QS St. Louis Show&Tell

July 28, 2014

The St. Louis QS meetup group just checked in with a recap of their fifth show&tell meetup. They’ve been growing fast, with now over 100 members in their community and are exploring fun new ways to encourage and inspire their group. Last week, about 20 members got together to watch and discuss some of their…

BLOG

This Week's QS Meetups

July 27, 2014

This week there are nine QS meet ups planned all over the world. Follow the links below to learn more. You can also find the full list of the over 100 QS meet ups in the right sidebar. Don’t see one near you? Why not start your own!  Monday (July 28th) Bay Area, California The original…

BLOG

Tidings: QS Washington DC Show&Tell

July 25, 2014

Today’s Tidings dispatch is from Daniel Gartenberg, co-organizer of the Washington DC meetup group. Read below to hear about their recent meetup. It sounds like a great time and we can’t wait to share the videos from these interesting talks. We had our biggest meetup yet at 1776 – a start-up hub located in the…

BLOG

QSEU14 Breakout: Emotive Wearables

July 25, 2014

Today’s post comes to us from Rain Ashford. Rain is a PhD student, researcher, and hardware tinkerer who is interested in how personal data can be conveyed in new and meaningful ways. She’s been exploring ideas around wearable data and the hardware that can support it. At the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, Rain led a…

BLOG

Laurie Frick: Experiments in Self-tracking

July 24, 2014

As much as we talk about self-tracking being about health or fitness. . . I think it’s about identity. I think it’s about us. It’s about seeing something meaningful in who we are. Laurie Frick is a self-tracker and visual artist. It this unique combination that has led her down a path of learning about herself…

BLOG

QSEU14 Breakout: Families and Self-tracking

July 23, 2014

Today’s post comes to use from our friend and co-organizer of the Bay Area QS meetup group, Rajiv Mehta. Rajiv and Dawn Nafus worked together to lead a breakout session that focused on self-tracking in the family setting at the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference. They focused on the role families have in the caregiving…

BLOG

Tidings: QS Auckland Show&Tell

July 22, 2014

We’ve just heard from Camille Nicodemus about the sixth Auckland, New Zealand QS Show&Tell held on July 15, 2014 . Since Auckland is still getting off the ground they’re currently hosting about 6-8 people at the meetup, where they discuss their personal tracking projects in a open round-table format. They have been getting some recognition in their area as…

BLOG

Anne Wright: Breaking Free of the Tyranny of the Norm

July 22, 2014

We’ve heard from our friend, and Pittsburgh QS meetup co-organizer, Anne Wright, many times before. She’s a wonderful proponent of the power of self-tracking and using data, research, and continuous exploration to discover and learn about what is meaningful in your life. All of that passion stems from a personal experience with overcoming various health…

BLOG

Steven Dean: A Quantified Sense of Self

July 21, 2014

At our 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, as with all our events, we sourced all of our content from the attendees. During the lead up were delighted to have some amazing interactions with attendees Alberto Frigo and Danielle Roberts, both of whom have been engaged with long-term tracking projects. This theme of “Tracking Over Time”…