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I really like the idea of tracking myself (e.g. books read, weight, steps taken etc.), but as a hacker I'd never let anyone else hold this data. I mean, Faceboo

by iM8t 13y ago

I really like the idea of tracking myself (e.g. books read, weight, steps taken etc.), but as a hacker I'd never let anyone else hold this data. I mean, Facebook is one thing, but highly personal details about my personality is another thing. That said - it would be cool to see something like this open sources. Currently I'm using excel to track most of the stuff I'm interested in, but I know that there must be a better alternative.

skram 13y ago
@iM8t - list of open source quantified self tools at http://quantifiedself.com/guide/search.php?keywords=open+source http://quantifiedself.com/guide/search.php?keywords=open+sou... You might also ask the people I @-mentioned in https://twitter.com/skram/status/363367826326695936 https://twitter.com/skram/status/363367826326695936
feniv 13y ago
I totally understand. I'm the kind of person who keeps a diary inside an encrypted true-crypt folder, so security and privacy have been my primary concern from day one. The main reason I'm deploying this as a web-service rather than a downloadable app is so that you can track things from anywhere (without having to be technical enough to manage your own servers). It's much harder to do that with excel or true-crypt, even if you use it with things like google-docs or dropbox.
- goldfeld 13y ago
  Still, and I don't mean to bash your work, I think this is a disservice to the internet because it perpetuates cloud tools and keeps the state-of-the-art even for something as personal as journaling in the cloud. That's a very, very sorry situation. Paraphrasing the old adage, if you haven't something to contribute that's in the best interests of people, better not to contribute at all. I keep my private stuff local as well, and you yourself admit to doing the same. Why not focus on making it easier for people to do the same, instead of riding the popularity contest of the quick-start cloud?
  - feniv 13y ago
    Because I believe that privacy and the cloud can co-exist in a mutually beneficial fashion. Just because the app is online doesn't mean that it has to be "social" (there is intentionally no social-sharing options for the log or journal entries). But by being online, the application itself can improve over time by analyzing aggregate data to detect anomalies (like Mint.com), give predictions, refine the natural language parsing etc. If this was just a journal, I would agree with you and make it self-contained. But it's not. In the next 5-10 years we're going to be seeing a massive number of wearable sensors embedded in our clothes, appliances and tools. A managed, online API will be better able to be always available, consuming this tsunami of data and turning it into useful insights for you.
Iterated 13y ago
How do you track things you're interested in Excel? For instance, if you're into python, would you make a python worksheet and fill it with goals and things to read?
- skram 13y ago
  I think what he means is that he tracks metrics that he wants to track (such as steps walked, miles run, water consumed, calories consumed, blood pressure, lines of code, dollars spent, etc.) in Excel. You could track things related to your programming such as lines of code, optimizations made, errors encountered, bugs fixed, refactoring done. Primer on quantified self: http://quantifiedself.com/about/ http://quantifiedself.com/about/

by iM8t 13y ago

skram 13y ago

@iM8t - list of open source quantified self tools at http://quantifiedself.com/guide/search.php?keywords=open+source http://quantifiedself.com/guide/search.php?keywords=open+sou... You might also ask the people I @-mentioned in https://twitter.com/skram/status/363367826326695936 https://twitter.com/skram/status/363367826326695936

feniv 13y ago

I totally understand. I'm the kind of person who keeps a diary inside an encrypted true-crypt folder, so security and privacy have been my primary concern from day one. The main reason I'm deploying this as a web-service rather than a downloadable app is so that you can track things from anywhere (without having to be technical enough to manage your own servers). It's much harder to do that with excel or true-crypt, even if you use it with things like google-docs or dropbox.

goldfeld 13y ago
Still, and I don't mean to bash your work, I think this is a disservice to the internet because it perpetuates cloud tools and keeps the state-of-the-art even for something as personal as journaling in the cloud. That's a very, very sorry situation. Paraphrasing the old adage, if you haven't something to contribute that's in the best interests of people, better not to contribute at all. I keep my private stuff local as well, and you yourself admit to doing the same. Why not focus on making it easier for people to do the same, instead of riding the popularity contest of the quick-start cloud?
- feniv 13y ago
  Because I believe that privacy and the cloud can co-exist in a mutually beneficial fashion. Just because the app is online doesn't mean that it has to be "social" (there is intentionally no social-sharing options for the log or journal entries). But by being online, the application itself can improve over time by analyzing aggregate data to detect anomalies (like Mint.com), give predictions, refine the natural language parsing etc. If this was just a journal, I would agree with you and make it self-contained. But it's not. In the next 5-10 years we're going to be seeing a massive number of wearable sensors embedded in our clothes, appliances and tools. A managed, online API will be better able to be always available, consuming this tsunami of data and turning it into useful insights for you.

Iterated 13y ago

How do you track things you're interested in Excel? For instance, if you're into python, would you make a python worksheet and fill it with goals and things to read?

skram 13y ago
I think what he means is that he tracks metrics that he wants to track (such as steps walked, miles run, water consumed, calories consumed, blood pressure, lines of code, dollars spent, etc.) in Excel. You could track things related to your programming such as lines of code, optimizations made, errors encountered, bugs fixed, refactoring done. Primer on quantified self: http://quantifiedself.com/about/ http://quantifiedself.com/about/