Category: Featured

Art Analyzer

Reading Time: 4 minutes Analyze artwork using GPT Vision and LLM This past weekend I spent time diving deeper into OpenAI’s GPT-4 Vision capabilities. I figured this would be a good excuse to blend my interests in software development, AI/LLMs, and artwork. I wanted to see how quickly and effectively GPT-4V (gpt-4-1106-vision-preview) could analyze artwork given an uploaded image.…
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Blogging in 2019? Looking Forward and a 15-Year Retrospective

Reading Time: 2 minutes Let me start by saying, where in the world does time fly?! Getting a new personal website refresh done and porting over hundreds of blog posts from the last 15 years was long overdue – 5 years by my count. So, better late than never! Blogging seems to be a thing of the past for…
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Home Automation with Belkin Wemo, Twilio, and Siri

Reading Time: 3 minutes Ultimate Hack Mashup – Belkin Wemo + Twilio + Siri A quick note: For another home automation trick and those interested in finding out about the earlier Twillio callbox+TV popup/notification hack check out STEM (https://github.com/ericblue/STEM).  Certain models of Samsung TVs allow popups for incoming phone calls for Samsung phones, but this can be extended to…
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Quantified Self Meets Virtual Reality

Reading Time: 6 minutes This week I’ve had a few of my interests intersect – the Quantified Self, virtual reality, biofeedback / neurofeedback, and consciousness.  Earlier this year I came across the Oculus Rift , a next gen virtual reality headset, that looks to be a game changer (no pun intended).  Like many people fascinated and growing up with technology…
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The Creative Breakthrough: Lessers Give Up, Masters are Stronger

Reading Time: 6 minutes I’m currently working my way through the excellent book Mastery by Robert Greene.  Actually, I’m listening to it as an audio book through Audible.com.  I’ve never been a fan of audio books, but I’ve found that it’s great to listen every day for about 30 minutes or so on my morning walk.  It may take a while…
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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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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.

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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TRAQS.me – Tools for Reporting & Analysis of the Quantified Self

Reading Time: 2 minutes A month ago around this time I was anxiously awaiting the first annual Quantified Self conference in Mountain View, CA. This was a fantastic conference on many levels and, although a little late, deserves a future post detailing the great sessions, people, and companies who were there.  I didn’t have an official speaking session, but…
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