hen it comes to quantified self, one question I frequently hear is “how can this data really help me”? It is a good question, especially since there are huge volumes of data about ourselves available, and it may not be obvious how to put it to use. I have used quantified self data to improve…
anuary seemed like a pretty slow month when it come to writing, reading, and walking. In fact, it may have been my slowest month on record when it comes to my FitBit data. I walked a total of about 198,000 steps in the month of January. This may sound like a lot. It comes to…
ith the holidays approaching quickly, people are beginning to think about New Year’s resolutions. Getting into better shape is always one of the more popular resolutions. And with the explosion of wearable tech devices–like a FitBit–on the market, I imagine there will be a lot of people eager to improve their fitness with the help…
or many writers, November is NaNoWriMo, which means a month of highly productive writing, often resulting in 50,000 words or more in 30 days, a rather remarkable feat. I wanted to take a moment to congratulate everyone who successfully completed the NaNoWriMo challenge, and also to everyone who attempted it, but didn’t complete it. Writing…
his morning at around 9:15 am Eastern Standard Time, I surpassed 10 million steps on my FitBit device. Here is what it looked like after I passed this milestone. For those wondering, 10 million steps comes out to about 4,600 miles. According to Google Maps, that about the distance from Washington, D.C. to the…
ince early in the year, I have been using Rescue Time on all of my computers to track how much time I spend in various applications, websites, and documents. Rescue Time is great because you install it, and it runs in the background, without ever needing me to take any action. Like a FitBit device,…
mentioned earlier in the week that I was not formally participating in NaNoWriMo this year, but that I was using the spirit of the event to jump start the second draft of my novel, and try to break out of a writing slump that I’d been in for the last month or so. While it…
t occurred to me recently that I haven’t been reading much science fiction. Strictly speaking, I haven’t been writing much of it either. My more recent stories have been more along the lines of mainstream alternate histories, with a slightly (barely detectable) element of science fiction to them. This isn’t anything intentional. I just go…
he Little Man started kindergarten this week. It meant a new school, and the new school has one of these well-organized systems of picking up your kids at the end of the day. But it can be a bit intimidating the first time. Basically, it works like this: You arrive at the school and pull…
ne of the most frequent requests I get regarding my Google Writing Tracker is to make my Daily Almanac available as part of those scripts. The wait is over. Today, I pushed out the Daily Almanac the Google Writing Tracker project on GitHub. For those who don’t know, my Google Writing Tracker is a set of…