Personal Blog

MindStream – NeuroSky EEG Data Streamer

July 24, 2011

Reading Time: 2 minutesSince 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

July 13, 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutesI 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

June 26, 2011

Reading Time: 2 minutesA 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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Fitness Tracking Platform: Update on Progress

March 13, 2011

Reading Time: 4 minutesLast 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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Zeo Personal Sleep Coach – Hacking Your Way To A Better Night’s Sleep

January 2, 2011

Reading Time: 5 minutesWhat’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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GeoLocation (GPS) and Self-Tracking

August 28, 2010

Reading Time: 5 minutesYou 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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Automatically sync & import Garmin TCX data

July 10, 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutesOver the last few weeks, I’ve been gradually increasing the supported devices for TRAQS.me. As of today, I’ve successfully integrated FitBit, Withings, GPS data (GPX files), MyZeo, and now Garmin Heartrate monitors (TCX files). Devices like FitBit make syncing and importing data relatively fast. As soon as the device syncs with the ANT-based station, data…
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Firefox Scrapbook Hacks – Viewing and Saving Webpages from Anywhere!

April 3, 2011

Reading Time: 4 minutesThis 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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Kicking iTunes to the Curb

March 6, 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutesI’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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Learning Faster – Automatically Extract Highlighted Text from PDF Documents

December 17, 2010

Reading Time: 8 minutesOverview 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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