Personal Blog

Life Beyond Zeo

Reading Time: 3 minutes We knew the inevitable was coming, but as of last week it appears Zeo has finally shut down.  When I posted the FreeMyZeo site the other week I was hoping their API servers would stay up long enough to allow others to salvage their sleep data.  Although Zeo’s main website is down, there’s still hope…
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Quantified Strength

Reading Time: 6 minutes Background For the past 6 months I’ve been obsessed with the idea of strength.  Actually, obsessed is probably  a strong word but let’s just say *very* focused on being functionally strong and balanced. This is a far cry from where I was 3-4 years ago after chronic lower back issues originating during lifting (squatting specifically).…
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Breathing Life Into Blogging Again

Reading Time: < 1 minute Let me start off by saying – yes, I am still very active and the blog is alive!   Consider this post a resurrection of sorts. 🙂  With that said, I’ll keep this short and sweet.  Stay tuned for some upcoming posts.  As usual the exact category of this blog is, well, uncategorizable.   Over the years…
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Quantified Self Show & Tell – My Data Discovery

Reading Time: < 1 minute It’s been ages since I’ve written a blog post so I figured now is a good time to break the dry spell.  I recently hosted the Los Angeles Quantified Self meetup and gave a talk on my “QS Data Discovery”.  In a nutshell, I’ve been aggregating and storing data for 2+ years.  This presentation shows…
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Jawbone UP API Discovery

Reading Time: 2 minutes On Saturday I stopped by the Apple store and picked up an UP device by Jawbone. The UP is a wristband and iPhone app that will track your fitness and sleep activity and help encourage you to live a more active life style. As with most of my Quantified Self gadets (Fitbit, Zeo, Withings, Neurosky, etc.) my first reaction was to “free my data”. Similar to my initial journey with the Fitbit, I was inspired to find an “unofficial” way to get access to the data.

Life Logging and Location Tracking

Reading Time: < 1 minute It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been busy working on my Quantified Self-related interests: working on my personal tracking projects and organizing the QS Los Angeles meetups. Yesterday I gave a show & tell presentation on my experiences with life logging and location tracking. Many of you who read the blog are probably…
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How To Turn Your IPad Into A Virtual Monitor

Reading Time: 3 minutes This is a quick blog post, but a very nifty trick. At various times, I’ve used multiple monitors at work to increase productivity. I’ve usually done this using my 21″ monitor as the main screen, and my laptop display as the secondary. I’ve also used a handful of virtual desktop applications that let you create…
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MindStream – NeuroSky EEG Data Streamer

Reading Time: 2 minutes Since I last posted on the NeuroSky Brainwave Visualizer, I decided to write a simple app to “stream” brainwave/EEG data from NeuroSky devices (the MindWave & MindSet).  I couldn’t find any apps to save the EEG data so I decided to write a system tray app that will save data to a file and broadcast…
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Neurosky Brainwave Visualizer

Reading Time: 3 minutes I recently purchased a Neurosky Windwave EEG device ($100 model).  The Mindwave measures your brain’s electrical activity, and can detect your level of focus (attention vs. mediation) and measure typical brainwave patterns (beta, alpha, theta, and delta).  There are a number games included, and a wide range of ones to download from their appstore.  I…
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Automatically sync & import Garmin TCX data

Reading Time: 3 minutes Over the last few weeks, I’ve been gradually increasing the supported devices for TRAQS.me.  As of today, I’ve successfully integrated FitBit, Withings, GPS data (GPX files), MyZeo, and now Garmin Heartrate monitors (TCX files). Devices like FitBit make syncing and importing data relatively fast.  As soon as the device syncs with the ANT-based station, data…
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