
2012 Personal Annual Report - jehiah
http://jehiah.cz/one-two/
======
edw519
Cool, beautiful, clever, engrossing, and yet something about it bothered me.

It took me a while, but then it hit me: This is a beautiful display of
_inputs_.

Where are the outputs?

Where is the gorgeous dashboard that shows the results of all your hard work
and the benefits that others got from them? That's something I'd love to see.

~~~
peteforde
<http://statuschart.com> would be the ideal presentation medium for this. I'm
a fan.

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ForrestN
Beautiful design, but a little depressing as a picture of a life: work,
transit, texts, coffee, neutral facial expressions.

~~~
bmuon
I disagree. I think the interesting part is in the blanks in most graphics. He
does a very good job at keeping his computer use to work hours, so I think
it's safe to assume he has a life outside work. He sends a good amount of
texts which means he has people in his life. He drinks coffee mostly in the
morning which is good.

~~~
ForrestN
I'm not trying to say he has a "bad" life or is doing a "bad job" at
something. But he seems to be saying that these things are meaningful as a
representation of a year in his life. It's not bad to text or drink coffee or
ride the bus, but I wouldn't want to think of a year in my life in these
terms.

~~~
gknoy
Just because these metrics show evidence of how his time was spent, doesn't
mean that's how he thinks of the year. He might think of it as time spent
staying connected with far-away friends, while writing awesome code for a
company he loves.

As a parent, I have often wondered how much of my time is spent changing
diapers, getting water/milk/juice for my kids, overseeing clean-up time, doing
bathtime, reading, etc. I'd love to be able to look at a metric of this over
the course of a year. If, at the end of the year, I had an annual report which
included all of that (and work time), it would be very interesting to me as a
way to understand my life better. I already think of myself as a parent, and
know that these are the costs of being one, but that's not the only way I
think of my life in a year.

~~~
lelandbatey
Exactly. The reality is that we do spend most of our time doing rather mundane
things, but that's not a bad thing. Characterizing a year in those terms is
often really useful, and always interesting!

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nanook
This is amazing! For those who haven't seen this already, Stephen Wolfram's
been tracking such data for over 20 years
([http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-
analytic...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-
my-life/)).

I'm going to try to track some of my data this year. I'm more interested in
health data - sleep, exercise etc. It'll be interesting to see how other
activities relate to sleep and exercise.

~~~
lelandbatey
I really love the data you linked to, that's quite the commitment to keeping
track of data, and it's very interesting to read his anecdotes on it.

I'd love to do some of this information tracking, but nearly all of the data
that I've seen comes from DIY setups, with custom tracking systems. Does
anyone know of any open source projects that do this, or are willing to post
their own solutions?

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m0th87
Beautiful. I would pay for a product that I could just turn on in the
background and get reports like this daily.

~~~
riyadparvez
Manic Time. Just google it

~~~
mih
I second Manic Time. It's offline, so your data remains with you. Plus in
addition to graph visualizations, it also allows you to track what
applications, documents and websites you spend most time on.I reckon they have
a portable version of it too.

~~~
riprock
my problem with these tracking apps is that it's too easy to "cheat" the
system if you have more than one monitor. I typically have a video or stream
open on one monitor while I have focus on a window in another monitor so the
app doesn't log my distractions.

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arscan
What tools do you use to collect this data? Looks great, by the way.

~~~
jehiah
a lot of it is just simple python scripts to download/convert data to csv
files, and do some simple post processing.

for the computer activity i took a snapshot every 30seconds of what program
was active, and how long my laptop was active.

~~~
arscan
So you parse your credit card statements (or equivalent) for the coffee &
travel costs? I thought the travel was by distance (not cost) at first, which
is what I was curious about because it would require a more active role in
logging on your part.

Is this purely for kicks, or are you trying to use it to drive behavioral
changes (e.g. spend less on coffee)? I ask because I always think about doing
this, but I get a stuck on the "why".

~~~
jehiah
coffee data is more driven from foursquare checkins, and only partially credit
card transactions.

The motivation for me is a way to learn about my year (not directly to change
my actions), and part a fun exercise to get better at data processing,
javascript, and UI Interaction/charting. I like the hard deadline that a
personal annual report creates naturally (ie: it's no good if i release it in
june).

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codex
Has a use been found for this visualization, or is it simply info-porn? What
lessons can be drawn from this data? I must admit, I'm having trouble not
classifying this as a waste of time--the result of the evolution-bred desire
for tool-making, misapplied.

~~~
arscan
I asked the same question and he replied...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5021896>

I think that _"to get better at data processing, javascript, and UI
Interaction/charting"_ is a perfectly valid answer. But in general, I tend to
be wary of visualizations that don't ultimately inform some decision making
process.

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hamxiaoz
How do you track your sleep time? Anything with Fitbit or just hand
writing/computer/mobile entry?

~~~
driverdan
I can't speak for the author but I keep a sleep journal. I write down the time
I go to bed, the time I wake up, and any dreams I can remember.

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citricsquid
You could start using whatpulse to track your typing too
(<http://whatpulse.org>) and if you listen to music last.fm would be great too
(<http://last.fm>)

There was a really awesome program called Wakoopa that tracked program usage
for a few years, but they shut down their social portion last year :(
<http://social.wakoopa.com/>

~~~
jehiah
I've not heard of whatpulse, but looks cool. I rolled my own data collection
for keyboard stats last year.

I've highlighted some last.fm data in a few of my previous annual reports, but
it didn't make it this year (I Wasn't quite into new music enough recently for
it to be interesting to me).

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awesomekid
Really cool! So what aspects of the report surprised you?

~~~
jehiah
I was most surprised by the sheer amount of time I spend on the computer;
clearly I need to unplug more often. (Though you can tell I did drop off the
grid for a few weeks when my daughter was born, and again for a vacation in
August. At least that's a start).

~~~
enginous
The lesson is to have more kids, fast.

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omarkassim
Could you include a beard length index next year? I'm not certain, but it
definitely looks like it grew out somewhat over the year.

I'm all for a proper beard!

~~~
jehiah
best-idea-ever

Is there an official way of measuring beard length?

~~~
zemo
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Beard-
second)

probably best to measure it in time. that is, a clean shave is length 0, time
since last shave estimates length. If you use an electric shaver, the settings
on the shaver associate to a known length. If you trim with scissors... that's
a bit trickier.

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mmvvaa
Was the coffee move from Carte Blanche to Bourbon Coffee due to a change in
location or a change in preference?

~~~
jehiah
The bitly office moved, so my morning coffee habit had to switch slightly.
It's for the better thought; I <3 Bourbon Coffee.

~~~
bm1362
Dude, you've gotta stay away from Kava and Starbucks. You're paying above
$5.00 on average per trip!

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ww520
Thanks for the great presentation. I especially like the weekday/month
visualization.

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datr
Any reason behind the move to Starbucks as the end of the year?

~~~
jehiah
lies, damned lies, and statistics. Unfortunately i didn't have time data for
my other trips to Starbucks so that dataset is partial (I mostly visit
Starbucks on the weekend/holidays).

The transition from Carte Blanche to Burbon Coffee in the middle of the year
is when @bitly's office moved, and my coffee habit followed.

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rhodin
I did a similar report last year, focusing more on consumption (books,
movies..) <http://johanrhodin.se/RhodinReport/RhodinReport2011.html> Hopefully
this can be automated. I still have too many manual steps to perform.

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aditya
Good job presenting the data as usual, Jehiah! The d3 stuff looks nice :)

~~~
jehiah
thanks dude!

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pazimzadeh
Looks like the "water" and "I'm a Mac" shirts are big winners.

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mikeevans
Go on vacation at the end of July/beginning of August?

~~~
jehiah
yup. I actually managed to travel without my laptop for a few weeks!

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buremba
what did you use to take pictures from your webcam periodically? If it's a
python script, could you please share your code with us?

~~~
someone13
Here's a quick script I whipped up. No warranty, etc. Also, you need OpenCV
installed.

<https://gist.github.com/4476997>

OpenCV: <http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/>

------
mattlong
Lots of fun data here that is visualized well. Unfortunately Safari crashed
several times on my iPad 1 while trying to load it. :(

~~~
jehiah
doh. That's probably due to loading a full years worth of images as png's
(I've added support for webp images when browsing w/ Chrome but that isn't
going to help the iPad). Sorry i didn't get to do more than minimal iOS
testing.

glad you enjoyed the report.

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001sky
The 24x365 matrices for both _Coffee_ and _Computer activity_ \-- perfect
level of abstraction

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visualR
At first I thought this post was poking fun at the Bingo Card creator-style
annual reports.

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awesomej
A very beautiful way to combine together lots of tiny snippets of data. Great
fun!

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bliker
for a moment I tought someone from czech republic made it to top of HN

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tribeofone
and that was awesome!

