unclebooboo (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} unclebooboo) wrote,@ 2009-07-05 22:18:00 |
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Self Tracking software
A recent collection of articles on self tracking from Wired magazine left me wanting to be unify the ways in which I track various data about myself.
On a daily or nearly daily basis, I weigh myself, record my blood glucose, check my blood pressure and resting pulse, and keep track of my weight lifting, running, and other forms of exercise. For the last year or so, I've been keeping hand written records of blood glucose, BP, and pulse, while logging my runs on the mapmyrun.com web site.
I have a rule about using any of these advertising supported web sites that I will always keep backup copies of my data, and I also try to arrange things so that I can get my data out of the web site in a standard format. For example, I keep regular backups of my livejournal and Google mail accounts. I have a Google "My Library" with over 1300 books from my professional library- I keep a backup copy of this data in .xml form, and I've written XSLT code to translate it into a plain text file. With respect to my running records, I've got .gpx files of every single run that I've done since February of 2008- these files could be used to recreate my running log.
Using a web based system like mapmyrun.com has the advantage that it's easy to access the data from home or the office (or some Wifi hotspot at a coffee house on the road), and makes it possible to export the data to my facebook page, blog, or whatever. Another advantage of using the mapmyrun.com web site is that I can easily produce maps of my running routes from GPS data.
However, the mapmyrun site isn't setup for logging all of the health related data that I'm interested in. Moreover, the company that runs the mapmyrun.com web site keeps changing their terms of service, and over time the web page has become encrusted with more and more advertising. The last straw was that they've now made it impossible to access logs from more than 3 months ago unless you're a paying customer.
So, it's time to adopt a new approach to self tracking. I've decided to setup a spreadsheet on Google Docs. This will be accessible from all of my computers, and I can easily download it in .xls format so that I have a version that I could run entirely on my own. Furthermore, this gives me the flexibility to add columns for all of the weird data (BG, BP, RHR, etc.) that I'm tracking. About the only disadvantage of this is that I'll having to deal separately with mapping my runs on Google Maps- I'll keep my mapmyrun.com account going just for that purpose.
Are any of you using a similar approach?
A recent collection of articles on self tracking from Wired magazine left me wanting to be unify the ways in which I track various data about myself.
On a daily or nearly daily basis, I weigh myself, record my blood glucose, check my blood pressure and resting pulse, and keep track of my weight lifting, running, and other forms of exercise. For the last year or so, I've been keeping hand written records of blood glucose, BP, and pulse, while logging my runs on the mapmyrun.com web site.
I have a rule about using any of these advertising supported web sites that I will always keep backup copies of my data, and I also try to arrange things so that I can get my data out of the web site in a standard format. For example, I keep regular backups of my livejournal and Google mail accounts. I have a Google "My Library" with over 1300 books from my professional library- I keep a backup copy of this data in .xml form, and I've written XSLT code to translate it into a plain text file. With respect to my running records, I've got .gpx files of every single run that I've done since February of 2008- these files could be used to recreate my running log.
Using a web based system like mapmyrun.com has the advantage that it's easy to access the data from home or the office (or some Wifi hotspot at a coffee house on the road), and makes it possible to export the data to my facebook page, blog, or whatever. Another advantage of using the mapmyrun.com web site is that I can easily produce maps of my running routes from GPS data.
However, the mapmyrun site isn't setup for logging all of the health related data that I'm interested in. Moreover, the company that runs the mapmyrun.com web site keeps changing their terms of service, and over time the web page has become encrusted with more and more advertising. The last straw was that they've now made it impossible to access logs from more than 3 months ago unless you're a paying customer.
So, it's time to adopt a new approach to self tracking. I've decided to setup a spreadsheet on Google Docs. This will be accessible from all of my computers, and I can easily download it in .xls format so that I have a version that I could run entirely on my own. Furthermore, this gives me the flexibility to add columns for all of the weird data (BG, BP, RHR, etc.) that I'm tracking. About the only disadvantage of this is that I'll having to deal separately with mapping my runs on Google Maps- I'll keep my mapmyrun.com account going just for that purpose.
Are any of you using a similar approach?
