Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I put my whole life into a single database

krausefx.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 175 posts

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#71

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

dpeck wrote: post #22
SamBam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's a bit more nuanced. It's true that you do research looking for insights that would give you a competitive advantage, and you don't find many - and very often the results don't justify the cost. On the other hand, if you don't do that, you risk staying behind, so some form of data analysis is absolutely necessary for any business - you can't just run on your gut feeling especially once you exceed a certain size.

As a side note, people tend to be very unimaginative in the initial stages of data analysis: very often they just take the data they have instead of thinking what data they need to have. And obviously the results correspond to the initial limitations. So much effort is put into data munging and other stages when your inputs are incomplete or plain irrelevant to what your business actually needs.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#72

Post by samuelbalogh »

id wrote: post #69

Wow, and I feel bad for going on one (usually short) flight per year on average...

Same here - I do fly 1-3 times a year and I always feel bad about it.

I can't help but think that flying will hopefully become a taboo topic, something that people do occasionally but definitely don't brag about.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#73

Post by polote »

SamBam wrote: post #20
scrollbar wrote: post #7

This 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…

It doesn't make a lot of sense to try to correlate things with your mood that you think are correlated. Because giving a mood grade is biased. For example if you feel like you don't sleep enough, the day you will sleep a lot you will want to give a higher grade.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#75

Post by ra120271 »

scrollbar wrote: post #7

This 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…

When reading above the experience I have is that I rapidly correlated with apple watch heart data that my heart rate stays high when I drink alcohol in the evening, resulting in poor sleep.

Conversely I can see when I have been likely to have been drinking from my heart rate.

I think the key here is the passive data collection with intuitive data presentation to drive low barrier to entry analytics.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#76

Post by TomSwirly »

scrollbar wrote: post #7

This 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 think it's fascinating - and horrifying - that he tracks everything except his environmental impact on the planet.

He has to be in the top 1% of polluters, given his obsessive flying and consumption of technology.

Dozens if not hundreds of charts, depicting every single thing except the thing that is destroying our world.

I filed an issue on his github.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#77

Post by karol »

This is super cool. However over the years I have seen super cool things being noticed by powerful organisations and made mandatory for the greater good of the corporation or the society. I would not like to see that happen with this one.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#78

Post by TomSwirly »

dabedee wrote: post #45

This project is super cool. I would recommend the author starts tracking the amount of CO2 he emits in a year, which could easily be approximated with the flight/transportation and food data he has. Carbon emissions per Capita per year in the US: 18 metric tonnes. In Italy: 8 metric tonnes [1]. Author is probably close to 60-80 with all the transatlantic flights. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2…

I filed this issue: https://github.com/KrauseFx/howisFelix.today/issues/3

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#80

Post by TomSwirly »

nsane wrote: post #34
caust1c wrote: post #31

Looking through his travel history, this man must have a massive carbon footprint. I really hope that the world stops idolizing the digital nomad lifestyle.

Exactly my thoughts! Calls himself a digital nomad with a photo of just two suitcases, yet each photo is a different wardrobe and a different country. Either I'm just being jealous, or he is indeed this vain, or both.

I filed this issue: https://github.com/KrauseFx/howisFelix.today/issues/3
Post reply on HN