Auckland – Quantified Self Meetup!

I just found out about the Quantified Self Meetup today, and was stunned / amazed to meet so many other like minded Self Quantifers!

http://www.meetup.com/Auckland-Quantified-Self-Meetup-Group/photos/22461592/373941472/

The following are my (VERY MESSY) notes from the catchup:

DEVICES WHICH ARE COOL
– EEG [Emotiv $300USD, $600USD dev version] Open EEG [~$300NZD]
– Scanadu Scout http://www.scanadu.com/ (Tricorder)
– Scanadu Scanaflow (Urine measure)
– Fitbit
– Basis B1

– Bitlano is $149EU but does EEG and ECG!
– Lumoback (?) is pretty cool
– Fitbit (Tim has one spare)
– Watch which has
– Tektrack? [“wasn’t that good”]
– Oxygen bar down in Auckland central
– Sensory deprivation tanks (one in Hamilton, not sure if any in AKL? – I have pretty simple diagrams etc if people want to build a salt tank etc)

APPS AND WEBSITES
– Splunk for analysis of logs (very creative use of open source software)
– I have used Odesk tracker + my own keystroke program
– Realage.com
– RescueTime
– StayFocused (browser plugin which gives you times of day to do productive surfing eg block FB / Twitter etc)
– XBMC (to track TV watching – could be interesting to map this against mood etc)
– 43things.com (goal setting site)
– Things (best Todo tracker I have found)
– Saga – Life blogging
– Jeffrey – Time tracking (Pet uses this with logs through to Splunk)
– Grock is great for streaming data
– I wrote down Croncs but I have no idea what that was!
– Lift is surprisingly effective for building habits (similar to Seinfeld “chains” concepts).

FITNESS APPS
– Runkeeper [Mark said it was good as it has Health Graph?]
– Gymhero for workouts
– Mapmyrun for running [good as has elevation and accurate calories]
– MyFitnessPal [good for calorie, nutritional diary etc]

– Sleepcycle on Iphone [You can hack out the raw CSV]
GOOD DIARIES
– https://penzu.com (basic free form diary)
– I have tested Twitter for tracking data but not a big fan (@mybodylab)
– 750 words
– Also using Evernote

McNamara is going to:
– Get Jay an EEG for the weekend 😉
– Explain why you get smarter the longer you get hungry!

Mindful meditation
———————————
– Sensory deprivation tanks
– Also use of golf balls + pink or white noise / Binaural
– Meditation (different methods including Mark has been using “complex but simple Buddhist meditation for up to hours at a time for a full day, as well as 10 day sessions up at the buddhist centre – I think it is this one? http://www.kagyu.org.nz/home.html)
– Many developers use meditation of various formats (mantra, silence, total mindful presence)
– I have personally used binaural and experiemented with bio feedback (eg HR), to then control and be able faster move to certain mind states.

BOOKS
Marvin Minskey – Society of the Mind
Lifehacker – By Gina
4 Hour Body, 4 Hour Chef and 4 Hour Work Weel – Tim Ferris
On Intelligence (from the guy who started Palm)
Peter Singer (?)

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/lifehacking

OTHER LINKS
I am tracking my projects when I get to them up at
www.43things.com
https://twitter.com/mybodylab (but I gave us this unstructured data source)
ultimately it will make a blog and maybe a book:
www.mybodylab.com

This lists some of these projects. On Quora there is a fair bit of a good community of likeminded people!
http://www.quora.com/Jay-Best/Fun-Projects