Personal Blog

Firefox Scrapbook Hacks – Viewing and Saving Webpages from Anywhere!

Reading Time: 4 minutes This weekend I decided to wrap up a couple cool knowledge management “hacks” and share some code on GitHub.  I primarily use the Firefox Scrapbook plugin to save all web pages of interest and use it as a general “digital snippet” repository. Since I started using Scrapbook in 2006 there have been a number of…
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Fitness Tracking Platform: Update on Progress

Reading Time: 4 minutes Last August, I enthusiastically blogged about an idea I had for creating a Fitness Tracking Platform; personal informatics for fitness.  Since that time I’ve been gradually making progress and am getting closer to fulfilling that original vision.  I figured I would do a quick writeup and share some of the progress I’ve made, and layout…
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Kicking iTunes to the Curb

Reading Time: 3 minutes I’ve had a love/hate relationship with iTunes over the years and I’m happy to say that I’m finally moving on.  The major pain point I’m experiencing right now is with sync times.  I came to the realization that I’ve actually stopped listening to most of my music due to the simple fact that it takes…
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Zeo Personal Sleep Coach – Hacking Your Way To A Better Night’s Sleep

Reading Time: 5 minutes What’s a better way to kick off the New Year than by giving tips on how to improve your overall quality of sleep? I decided to write this post as a mini-review of the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach and share some open source tools and APIs to help with saving your Zeo data for your…
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Learning Faster – Automatically Extract Highlighted Text from PDF Documents

Reading Time: 8 minutes Overview I never really considered myself a “highlighter” until a couple years ago.  Back in school I would, on occasion, highlight some interesting passages while doing homework or reading books and jot them down later.  More often then not though many of those highlights would go to waste.  After all, what good are highlighting interesting…
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GeoLocation (GPS) and Self-Tracking

Reading Time: 5 minutes You know what they say: Location Location Location.  I posted a reply to yesterday’s Quantified Self article answering what degree of self-tracking I’m already doing.  Here’s the rundown: Mint for financial tracking and monitoring of budget and spending habits Fitbit for tracking activity level, calories burned, distance walked and sleep quality (New) MyZeo for detailed…
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The Quantified Self

Reading Time: < 1 minute Since my last post on Personal Informatics for Fitness Tracking I’ve been digging deeper into the emerging trend of self tracking (a.k.a personal informatics) and have come to realize that there are a lot more people out there interested in the same things as I am than I orginally thought.  Tracking knowledge is one thing,…
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Fitness Tracking Platform – Personal Informatics for Fitness

Reading Time: 4 minutes When I woke up this morning, I didn’t say to myself “Boy, I don’t have enough going on and need to add just ONE more huge hobby project to my list!”.  But these things tend to happen, and when creative ideas ‘pop up’ it’s best to take action and at least start writing them down. …
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Fitbit – Perl API Hosted at GitHub

Reading Time: < 1 minute Last month I announced a new “hacking” project – creating a Perl API for my FitBit device.  Traditionally, whenever I host one of my projects I usually include both the project page and source code all from my site.  I’ve had a number of requests from various people to help with contributing changes on this…
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Fitbit – Unofficial Perl API and CSV Download

Reading Time: < 1 minute The other week I received my Fitbit and have been in geek heaven ever since. Fitbit is a tiny magical device($99 USD) that automatically tracks your fitness and sleep statistics. Throughout the day it will track your calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, your activity level, and even track your sleep patterns. All of this…
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