Tag: qstop

BLOG

Yuri van Geest on Making the Invisible Visible

February 1, 2011

From the Amsterdam QS Show&Tell meetup group – Yuri van Geest of Singularity University talks about making the invisible visible. He takes us on a journey 20,000 years into the past and then fast-forwards into the future. He argues that we are on the verge of moving from building things in the external world to…

BLOG

Results of The Buttermind Experiment

January 30, 2011

In August, at a Quantified Self meeting in San Jose, I told how butter apparently improved my brain function. When I started eating a half-stick of butter every day, I suddenly got faster at arithmetic. During the question period, Greg Biggers of genomera.com proposed a study to see if what I’d found was true for other people….

BLOG

How to experiment: Guidelines from Stewart Friedman's "Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life"

January 28, 2011

Curiosity: An emotion related to natural inquisitive behavior such as exploration, investigation, and learning. Exploration: To travel for the purpose of discovery. Discovery: A productive insight. I’ve been thinking of this triumvirate as essential characteristics of scientific inquiry – get curious about something, try out some different things to dig into it, see what you…

BLOG

NodeXL maps of tweets about Quantified Self

January 26, 2011

This is a guest post from Marc Smith, an expert on analyzing social media networks. Thanks Marc! — I am very interested in the Quantified Self conference to be held in Mountain View, California, May 28 and 29.  While I have attended just a few of the in-person meet-ups, which were engaging and intriguing events, I…

BLOG

Share Your Experience Tracking Your Resolutions

January 24, 2011

Misha Chellam had a great suggestion to create a form so people can share their experiences tracking their goals and resolutions. Here’s a form where you can share your experiences. Note that the data is publicly shared here. To help you start, Misha’s example was: My name is Misha, my goal is to be more…

BLOG

Another Mysterious Mental Improvement

January 24, 2011

A month ago I posted this graph, which shows how long I needed to type the answer to simple arithmetic problems (7-5, 4*1, 9+0). I tested myself with about 40 problems once or twice per day. Because I’d been doing this for a long time, I no longer improved due to practice. Then, at the…

BLOG

Quantified Self San Diego #2 Meeting Recap

January 22, 2011

On Tuesday Evening, January 18th, another inquisitive, intelligent and enthusiastic group of individuals came together to share and learn at the 2nd Quantified Self San Diego. The event was hosted by Paula Nenn and Summer Rogers of Optimal Health and Prevention Research Foundation.  Paula attended our 1st QSSD, and was so in tune with what…

BLOG

Designing good experiments: Some mistakes and lessons

January 21, 2011

Like you I’m an avid self-experimenter, and I’m always on the lookout for things to change that will either a) improve me, or b) help me understand myself better so I can do a). I was comparing notes recently with Seth Roberts (his QS posts are here) about what experiments we’ve done, what processes we’ve…

BLOG

Ian Ayres on Carrots and Sticks

January 19, 2011

From the Boston QS Show&Tell meetup group: Ian Ayres, founder of Stickk.com, talks about his book, Carrots and Sticks, and how to “unlock the power of incentives to get things done.” His video is in three parts below, with over an hour of behavior change insights and goal-sticking goodness. Enjoy! (and big thanks to PK…

BLOG

Bay Area QS Show&Tell #17 – Recap

January 17, 2011

With so many exciting developments in the QS world, the air at Adaptive Path was full of energy for the 17th Bay Area QS Show&Tell last week. The theme this time was health and medicine. I watched on the livestream (big thanks to Robin Barooah and Justine Lam for setting this up!), so I missed all the…

BLOG

Announcing: The First Quantified Self Conference, May 28-29

January 13, 2011

Another day, another exciting announcement! Today we are announcing the first Quantified Self Conference, to be held May 28-29, 2011, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. This is a hands-on, collaborative conference for users and tool makers interested in self-tracking. It will be a “working meeting” for the QS community, where we…

BLOG

Announcing: The Complete QS Guide to Self Tracking

January 12, 2011

One of the most common questions I get from people is, “do you have a list of all Quantified Self tools, or resources in a particular area, like heart rate variability or cognitive function?” We’ve been cobbling together a preliminary list of self-tracking resources over the past few months, but we are now very excited to…

BLOG

WSJ on Ordering Your Own Lab Tests

January 11, 2011

This story from the Wall Street Journal describes the growing market for lab tests available directly to everybody, without a doctor visit. (The companies involved have a doctor on board, as a regulatory formality, but the doctor doesn’t do anything.) I’m interested in hearing from people who are regularly running their own lab tests! I’m…

BLOG

First Livestream of a QS Show&Tell – Tomorrow!

January 10, 2011

Here’s some good news for those of you who live outside the San Francisco Bay Area or who weren’t able to RSVP in time for tomorrow’s QS Show&Tell meetup. This will be the first time that we will be livestreaming the event. The theme for this meetup is health and medicine, and details to catch…

BLOG

Does Shower Temperature Affect Brain Speed?

January 8, 2011

In November I learned about benefits of cold showers. So I tried them. I took cold showers that lasted about 5 minutes. I liked the most obvious effect (less sensitivity to cold). Maybe a bigger “dose” would produce a bigger effect. Maybe the mood improvement cold showers were said to cause would be clearer. So I…

BLOG

Your life in data: Is it all about events and properties?

January 7, 2011

I’m designing the data layer for my site, and it’s got me thinking about the essentials of what it is exactly that we track when self-experimenting. Putting on my ontologist‘s hat I’ve come up with two kinds of things that I think cover anything a human would want to track (I might as well be…

BLOG

QS Interview: Epilepsy's Big Fat Miracle

January 5, 2011

Sam, age 9, is the son of my Wired colleague Fred Vogelstein and his wife Evelyn Nussenbaum. Last year, Fred published a remarkable story in the New York Times magazine, Epilepsy’s Big Fat Miracle, about how he and Evelyn treat Sam’s epilepsy with a high fat and nearly zero carbohydrate diet. In an average week,…

BLOG

4 New QS Show&Tell Meetup Groups

January 4, 2011

Here’s a quick post for today to announce 4 new QS Show&Tell meetup groups that were recently born: 1. Brussels, organized by Candide Kemmler – Candide has jumped right in, already joining London QS organizer Denis Harscoat in a French radio interview about Quantified Self. 2. Washington DC, organized by Daniel Gartenberg – their upcoming meetup…

BLOG

Chris Woebken on Digital Money

January 2, 2011

From the New York QS Show&Tell meetup group: Chris Woebken talks about his experiments in designing interactions to enhance our relationship with digital money. He asks the question, how can money be measured – in minutes, in sound, or in touch through electromagnetic gloves? Watch the video below to see Chris’ ideas for new form factors,…

BLOG

QS on Brazilian TV

December 30, 2010

Here’s a video clip on health tracking from RedeTV!, one of Brazil’s biggest TV stations. Steven Dean, organizer of the New York QS Show&Tell meetup group, gives a great overview of some tools he uses to track his health, and a Brazilian doctor weighs in with his perspective on the benefit to patients. It’s in…