Blog

Access Matters

September 4, 2014

Someday, you will have a question about yourself that impels you to take a look at some of your own data. It may be data about your activity, your spending at the grocery store, what medicines you’ve taken, where you’ve driven your car. And when you go to access your data, to analyze it or…

QS | Public Health Symposium: Jason Bobe on Participant Centered Research

September 4, 2014

As part of the Quantified Self Public Health Symposium, we invited a variety of individuals from the research and academic community. These included visionaries and new investigators in public health, human-computer interaction, and medicine. One of these was Jason Bobe, the Executive Director of the Personal Genome Project. When we think of the intersection of…

QS | Public Health Symposium: Doug Kanter's Healthiest Year

September 3, 2014

We’ve featured the work of our friend and QS community member, Doug Kanter, many times here on the Quantified Self website and we were excited to have him participate in our Quantified Self Public Health Symposium. Doug is both a toolmaker and self-tracker, focusing primarily on using his experience with tracking his diabetes-related data to…

QS | Public Health Symposium: Margaret McKenna

September 2, 2014

This week we’re taking a look back at our 2014 Quantified Self Public Health Symposium and highlighting some of the wonderful talks and presentations.  We convened this meeting in order to bring together the research and toolmaker communities. Both of these groups have questions about data, research, and how to translate the vast amount of…

Meetups This Week

August 31, 2014

There are a stellar collection of meetups going on this week. To see when the next meetup in your area is, check the full list of the over 100 QS meetup groups in the right sidebar. Don’t see one near you? Why not start your own! Tuesday (September 2) Geneva, Switzerland The Geneva group will feature…

Jan Szelagiewicz: Losing 40 kg with Self-Tracking

August 27, 2014

On July 4th, 2009 Jan Szelagiewicz decided to make a change in his life. After taking stock of his personal health and his family history with heart disease he began a weight-loss journey that included a variety of self-tracking tools. Over the course of a few years Jan tracked his diet, activities such as cycling,…

Lee Rogers: Why Annual Reporting

August 26, 2014

Lee Rogers has been collecting data about himself for over three years. The daily checkins, movements, and other activities of his life are capture by automatic and passive systems and tools. What makes Lee a bit different than most is that he’s set up a personal automation system to collect and make sense of all…

Meetups This Week

August 24, 2014

We have a great set of meet ups this week. If you are in the area for any of them, be sure not to miss it! To go see when the next meetup in your area is, check the full list of the over 100 QS meetup groups in the right sidebar. Don’t see one…

Mark Leavitt: Whipping up My Willpower

August 22, 2014

When we decide to track one thing, we sometimes find that we are indirectly tracking something else.  That is the theme of today’s talk. When Mark Leavitt was 57, he found out that he had heart disease, a condition that runs in his family. Mark set about making some life changes. He tracked his weight…

Mark Drangsholt: Deciphering My Brain Fog

August 21, 2014

One of the benefits of long-term self-tracking is that one builds up a toolbox of investigatory methods that can be drawn upon when medical adversity hits. One year ago, when Mark Drangsholt experienced brain fog during a research retreat while on Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest, he had to draw upon the self-tracking tools…

Kevin Krejci: An Update on Tracking Parkinson's Disease

August 20, 2014

At our recent Bay Area QS meetup, Kevin Krejci presented a short update about the ongoing self-tracking and treatment projects he’s undergoing as part of living with Parkinson’s Disease. Back in January, Kevin first presented his tracking journey and how he’s using different tools to understand and improve his life. Watch his short talk below…

Eric Boyd: Tracking My Daily Rhythm With a Nike FuelBand

August 19, 2014

In 2013 Eric Boyd started using a Nike FuelBand to track his activity. Not satisfied with the built in reporting the mobile and web applications were delivering he decided to dive into the data by accessing the Nike developer API. By being able to access the minute-level daily data Eric was able to make sense…

Cors Brinkman: Lifelog as Self-Portrait

August 18, 2014

Cors Brinkman is a media artist and student. In June of 2013, he started a project to keep track of himself. He decided to start with LifeSlice, a tool to have your computer keep track of your behavior by taking a picture, screenshot, and location data every hour. After experimenting with that system Cors added…

Meetups this Week

August 17, 2014

All over the world, people like you are getting together and talking about what they are learning from their personal data. This upcoming week, there are three such events. To go see when the next meetup in your area is, check the full list of the over 100 QS meetup groups in the right sidebar….

Philip Thomas on Building a Personal Dashboard

August 15, 2014

Philip Thomas is a software engineer at OpenDNS. He’s been collecting a lot of personal data since college, first starting with his custom built beer tracking system. He then moved on to slightly more sophisticated personal data. As the data started to pile up in services and systems he started to explore what it would…