Nick Winter has done some dedicated testing of the effect of different interventions on his cognitive function. He discovered that butter had an unexpected impact on his mental performance, while things like cutting out gluten had no effect. In the video below, Nick gives an entertaining and informative talk about his experimental design and what he…
Alastair Tse recently moved to New York, and wanted to walk all of the streets of Manhattan! He tried a few different approaches to tracking this that didn’t work, so he decided to make his own app that doesn’t use GPS or drain his phone battery. In the video below, Alastair talks about his adventures in…
Dan Catt describes how he used Quantified Self ideas to get a handle on his depression.
Evan Savage has panic attacks, especially triggered by caffeine while driving. In late 2011, he was having multiple panic attacks a week. He didn’t want to take drugs, so he made his own recovery plan – logging his food, exercise, and panic attacks. He eliminated caffeine, and thought he had recovered, then relapsed. In the…
Gustavo Glusman is a member of Leroy Hood’s group at the Institute for Systems Biology. At a recent Hood group retreat, the main topic of conversation was Quantified Self! In the video below, Gustavo gives a fascinating recap of the retreat, including how the researchers talked about QS, what experiments they did on themselves, and…
Jana Beck was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 19 years old and has been interested in tracking her health ever since. Last year when she received a continuous blood glucose monitor she decided to take a more active role in understand what was effecting her blood glucose levels and insulin dosing. Spurred by reading…
Welcome to the July QS Newsletter! Inside you’ll find photos, upcoming events, and other QS goodness including an interview with our awesome Seattle QS meetup organizer, David Reeves. We hope this helps you better understand what’s going on in the QS universe! {Alex & Ernesto} July QS Meetups July 4 – Munich QS Show&Tell meetup at Combinat 56 July 7…
Some people may be wondering how I find all the amazing people conducting neat self-tracking experiments and creating jaw-dropping personal data visualizations. Well, for the most part I just listen. I’m constantly paying attention to what’s being said on twitter about #QuantifiedSelf. When that doesn’t work I just use the power of Google to find…
Many people think the Quantified Self mostly involves physical metrics: heart rate, sleep, diet, etc. but what about what goes on in our brains? Can we quantify that? There have been several inspiring Quantified Self talks about tracking learning and memory. This post will collect all of them into one place, along with good resources…
The third Quantified Self Conference is only 87 days away!! So we thought we’d release the program of awesome talks and sessions that will be given by QS community members. Check out the full list below, and please remember to register soon if you’d like to come – there are only 100 out of 600…
Stefean Heeke wondered why only large companies were using “big data” and analytics, and then he decided to do something similar. In this talk Stefan describes a few different self-tracking and personal analytics projects that gave him unique insights into his own life. Not satisfied with only understanding and improving himself, he also applied his…
Lisa Betts-LaCroix has been tracking her weight off and on since 2000. In this Show & Tell talk at the recent Silicon Valley QS meetup Lisa details the trials and tribulations that go along with attempting to track her weight and other associated behavioral variables. From simple excel spreadsheets to using Google forms to finally…
There has been an exponential rise in the number of people talking and writing about Quantified Self. Some call it a movement, some call it “the next big thing.” In most, if not all cases, there is a an overwhelming emphasis on the role of technology. Be it new sensor systems, applications, or analytical tools,…
Mike Winter does a lot of crazy research projects, including building an autonomous motorcycle. But when his daughter was in a bicycle accident a couple of years ago, he started thinking about bike safety. Specifically, he built a device with an Arduino CPU and a few sensors that attaches to your bike and connects with your…
After a year of research and writing, I’m finally finished with what could be called the “first master’s thesis on Quantified Self.” If some of you didn’t catch my first post, you can find it here. I spent about a year conducting research on Quantified Self for an MA in Applied Anthropology at San Jose…
Jeremy Howard has been studying Chinese for the last two years. The method he uses is called spaced repetitive learning, found in SuperMemo and Anki, in which you prompt yourself to remember something just before you’re about to forget it. Jeremy wrote his own software to track his learning, including variables such as time of day, what…
Sky Christopherson is a velodrome cyclist who has been on the U.S. Olympic team. After retiring, he lived in the world of startups, and when his health started to decline as a result of that stress, he turned back to the kind of quantification he had been doing as an athlete to restore his health. In…
Last December, Stan James started to wonder how much of every day he spent staring at glowing rectangles, and how he was spending that time. He set up his webcam to take a picture of himself every hour, as well as a screenshot of what he’s working on. In the video below, Stan talks about…
If you have diabetes, or know someone who does, you’ve probably encountered a blood glucose monitor. Like many medical devices, design and data visualization are usually an afterthought. While there are many new exciting products coming to market like the iBGStar designed by Agamatrix, there are individuals who want to learn more than just their…
