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I put my whole life into a single database

howisfelix.today

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Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#211
post #91
post #38

A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying. Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.

There is a section comparing flight emissions to US citizen average total emissions. This might make him feel good, but only 30% of an average American's emissions come from transportation and just a sliver from flying, so it's very likely his total emissions are much higher.

I believe you misunderstand what "average" is: Americans (or people in general), on average, do not fly much.

Some — eg. those who've moved for work — probably fly 10-15x the average, and 10-15x of people fly 1/100th of average. Flying cost and availability correlate with average needs, but that presupposes that some people have higher needs altogether.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#212
post #4

The takeaways at the very bottom of the page are valuable: > 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 started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting f…

One interesting actionable takeaway fact is that if you do such a project spending so much time on it, your life outside of it likely sucks.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#213
post #38

A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying. Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.

I work as an airline pilot, and I just recently calculated mine to be 65,658 tonnes in my 10-year career so far (not quite so bad when calculated per seat-mile, but still eye opening!). https://jameshard.ing/pilot/#statistics

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#214
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't give a crap, in the most boastful way possible. Sorry if my zealotry isn't your zealotry.

Thank you for destroying the Earth!

Thank God I'm a single human and don't have nearly that much influence over the Earth.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#215
This reminds me of someone I knew slightly back in the late 70s: Robert Shields, who kept the world's longest diary [0]. He was eccentric but very nice...but he wrote 33 million words, filling 90+ boxes, of every detail of his life for decades, only quitting when a stroke rendered him unable to type about ten years before his death. I doubt he tried to reach any conclusions based on his journaling, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Shields_%28diarist%29

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#217
post #4

The takeaways at the very bottom of the page are valuable: > 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 started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting f…

Having set up Analytics on all my websites, I noticed absolutely zero change in sales volume therefore Analytics is a waste of time.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple of things: 1) NO ONE is suggesting any one forego flying altogether, or skipping their once-a-year overseas vacation or periodic family visit. 2) THIS level of flying is not normal and is exactly the kind of harmful behavior people have in mind when they complain about frequent flyers. 3) Whinging about summits and Taylor Swift is just a bad faith red herring argument. Obviously less flying is better, no matte…

28 flights per year. That's 14 round trip flights. A little over once a month. Not at all surprising if once a month. Or divorced and kid is in another state. If we're generous and assume each trip is actually 2 flights (i.e. connecting flights), then it's 7 per year. Yeah, more than typical. But not insane.

> Not at all surprising if once a month.

Typo: Should have been "Not at all surprising if for work".

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#220

Bravo. This is my dream and also my nightmare. I was super into the quantified self movement a while back, before Apple Watch, writing Withings Scale API wrappers in Ruby and Fitbit days. Every time I try to seriously track metrics of my life, the excitement of the insight gets worn away by the friction of recording and managing. I expect LLMs can help reduce the cost of this by an order of magnitude but then, as you…

For the few times that I have tracked myself doing various activities, I have found that I didn't even need to do anything with the data, I was actively changing habits whilst I knew I was being monitored. For example, I wore a GCM for a few weeks and I found it difficult to live my "normal" day to day lifestyle. I wanted to do the things I felt were "right" and "healthy". Whether or not that is a good thing or not i…

Totally makes sense. Eventually being confronted with the measurement is its own motivator. Some sort of “future self” awareness or something.
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