You know, if you’re really good with Postgres queries, you could run entire businesses, blogs, apps, just by using SQL queries and not even have a frontend or backend. And when you want to present your data, you could use a well formatted PostgreSQL view to make it easier to read. This man’s entire status page could just be a view with appropriate columns. And if you want others to read or write data, you could assign them roles with permissions so they don’t go screwing things up or seeing things they shouldn’t.
I put my whole life into a single database
21–30 of 175 posts
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#22This is super cool. In case you don't make it through to the project's webpage howisfelix.today, and read through to the end, here is the creator's conclusion: Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first s…
> There were some, and it’s super interesting to look through those graphs, however retrospectively, it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project. This is my general feeling towards all quantified-self projects. Perhaps it creates interesting insights for some people, but I can imagine the kinds of conclusions I'd actually get from it will be things like "I'm happier on sunny days" and I'll say…
You’ve verbalized more about data science than most executives ever will.
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#23This post is interesting, but the whole project seems like a vanity project to put on your resume. I’d argue that it’s peak vanity project. Once you have the basics of collect>summarise>publish metrics, it’s trivial to add just one more. Do people really need every single aspect of their lives measurable to this degree? Does anyone (other than your mother) really care? I, for one, would hate for this to become a thin…
I think the main value in the "quantified self" area is (1) when there's something wrong and you're working to fix it (food allergies, mood disorders), and (2) insights gained by comparing data from millions of users.
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#24Neat, and interesting that his conclusion is that it's too much effort to do for oneself. My take on this is Timelinize[0], which is capable of downloading all your data from various digital records like social media, your phone, arbitrary files and unstructured folders, your Google account, etc. So it can aggregate data from Google Photos, Location History, Twitter, Facebook, text messages, and more, onto your compu…
I'm subscribed to your timelinize twitter account, awaiting the initial release.
Hoping it can suck in my missives from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Hackernews as a minimum!
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#25This post is interesting, but the whole project seems like a vanity project to put on your resume. I’d argue that it’s peak vanity project. Once you have the basics of collect>summarise>publish metrics, it’s trivial to add just one more. Do people really need every single aspect of their lives measurable to this degree? Does anyone (other than your mother) really care? I, for one, would hate for this to become a thin…
I thought Wolfram's version of this resulted in some interesting analysis: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-ana...
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#26This is definitely some interesting stats.
When I was looking at the stats, I realized I can never make something like this. Just alone the list of flying spots mentioned are huge for me. I don't think I have travelled at much internationally. Having a location graph for myself would be mostly few cities and maybe 1 or 2 countries(connecting flights).
Maybe 1 day I get to travel a lot. :)
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#27"Joining Megaco also means you join our corporate wellness program, via which we track your important life parameters and help you achieve Maximum Happiness and optimise Life Satisfaction.
* Please note that a Happiness score of at least 70% must be maintained to retain employment. Additionally, you must think about Megaco in a positive way for at least 2% of your out-of-work hours."
All bleak jokes aside, interesting work by the author.
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#28This is super cool, but it is all manual data entry. I've tried manual data entry for tracking my personal metrics and the gaps make the data relatively useless. Consistency is key.
Automation is key for 99% of the data with only a small amount requiring manual entry.
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#29This is super cool. In case you don't make it through to the project's webpage howisfelix.today, and read through to the end, here is the creator's conclusion: Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first s…
I would be interested in detection and correlation abilities here. I think simply collecting the data and graphing it doesn't help.
However, if enough metrics were automatically collected (when did I fall asleep and heart rate lower?) and there was some system that could sort through them (eating a 4th meal increases odds of ruby team scoring additional points by a factor of 1.3x) then you could possibly learn some neat things.
Some of the most interesting things have been pointed out to me by others. Things that are related but I didn't notice. Foods that seem to increase my chances of sickness and things like that.
Re: I put my whole life into a single database
#30Neat, and interesting that his conclusion is that it's too much effort to do for oneself. My take on this is Timelinize[0], which is capable of downloading all your data from various digital records like social media, your phone, arbitrary files and unstructured folders, your Google account, etc. So it can aggregate data from Google Photos, Location History, Twitter, Facebook, text messages, and more, onto your compu…
I'm subscribed to your timelinize twitter account, awaiting the initial release. Hoping it can suck in my missives from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Hackernews as a minimum!
Great! First releases will probably be private betas.
Twitter yes, Facebook somewhat (for now -- the API and data graph are very complicated!), Reddit probably not initially (but on my lists; need to learn how to get the data), and Hacker News probably eventually (also need to learn how to get the data).