Visualising running data

[benfoxall]

Technology is a huge part of our lives. Though there is always a space between the virtual and real worlds. How can we make this gap smaller?

Our data is nothing without us.

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• inverse jumbotron - linking physical/virtual (twitter) worlds
• glass?
• gps route visualisation

[benfoxall]

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately — Henry David Thoreau

To have purpose, you need to understand your world. Using openness and data to account for ourselves lets us do that.

[benfoxall]

The title would be - "Being open with your data", sounds like it's about open data, but it's actually about embracing your data

[benfoxall]

This could be extended with a vote session, where some of the questions would be:

• "this will be relevant in a little while"
• have you ever had inbox zero
• do you still have it?

Which would link to a section about opening my inbox data, and how that's allowed me to keep my inbox count down.

[benfoxall]

Technology can be closer to us

• The Treachery of Sanctuary - the way people stand when they are using this, if they are exploring their own bodies that have been augmented.
• Birdly - "yesterday I felt like I could fly"

[benfoxall]

Music vis:

• identify repeating patterns of track plays; isolate dynamic playlist (example - running, links to later on). Interesting relation to genetic sequencing?
• obsessive tracks (repeated)

[benfoxall]

First version of talk description:

We generate a lot of data as we go about our lives.

Some of our data might be linked straight back to us, or maybe it’s been anonymised as part of a larger dataset, or maybe it never even left our own devices. Regardless of where it is - we still have a connection to our data - it exists because we do.

We’ll take a look at what makes our data personal; the things that make it much more than an entry in a big dataset, and how we can be open with our data whilst observing our right to privacy.

We’ll also explore some visualisation principles and how it’s more than just graphs, and if we have time I’ll also touch on what to do if you get attacked by a bear.

[benfoxall]

http://reasons.to/speakers/index.php?id=benfoxall

[benfoxall]

Themes

• your data is more meaningful to you

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Intro / setup

About Visualisation

Main point - think about what we're trying to do. Data can be beautiful, but drawing graphs/vis'es can be provide us with a bunch more stuff.

• What is visualisation
  • Tables can be fine (could <table> be a theme?)
• Functionality before Beauty
  • Start with excel
• Preattentive Attributes

Collecting Data with Frontend Web Technologies

• Why we need scripts to collect data
• How we can replace this with a backend server
• How we can replace this with a front-end app
• Who we are trying to support

Runkeeper Data

• "boring" tables / aggregations
  • total distance
  • total time?
• distance / time
  • scatter
  • more detail (lines)
• distances of each activity
• canvas plotting - good; plotting it with whatever, interesting projection
• d3 projections - take the basic projection, change it into others
• mapping coords to an svg element
• layout svg elements
• bbox grouping
• webgl heatmap
• webgl threejs points

LastFM visualisation

• What data is available
• Weeks visualisation
• Streamgraph visualisation
  • union of 2 listeners, of 3, etc? > correlation of users
• Track requests
  • Seeing playlists

http://leebyron.com/streamgraph/ http://vis4.net/blog/posts/streamgraph-color/

Runkeeper part 2

• Augmenting data
• Our data represents more than itself
  1. embrace your data
  2. understand what data you're creating

Wrap up

• …

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missing things

• Open Inbox - could fit this into rk2 if I changed the subject to "being open"

[benfoxall]

second slide:

I don't give a shit about this anymore

I've been planning to give this talk for over a year, and now I don't care about it very much; but that's a good thing.

[benfoxall]

Fitbit - "Your data belongs to you!"

1. It doesn't seem to be possible to download intra-day, which is stored by fitbit and accessible with partner apis.
2. The request for the csv contains a base64 encoded blob with info on search_engine, os, screen size, stuff like that.
3. "Body Type": null, - screw you, Fitbit. (via garrett)

https://github.com/qslabs/FitbitIntraday

[benfoxall]

Passive collection - why lfm is good. Fitbit wireless sync is one of the key things to me.

[benfoxall]

GPS Altitude accuracy - http://gpsinformation.net/main/altitude.htm

[benfoxall]

Millar - like jq, but for csv

[benfoxall]

Visualisation Narratives

Where you use data visualisation to accompany a story.

• Colour name visualisation
• Machine learning explanation
• NYT stories
• Guardian vaccine article
• [ ] check to see if there is a better name for this.

[benfoxall]

http://www.lastchart.com/#lfm=benjaminf ( https://github.com/darosh ?)

[benfoxall]

Lots of data available - beacon network for wait times http://www.blipsystems.com/jfk-displays-actual-wait-times-using-beacons-that-monitor-mobile-phones/

[benfoxall]

Quantified self things

https://www.moves-app.com http://app.moveoscope.com

via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPLwFnZqcM8

"large scale experiments are not always the most effective way to get useful data"

Self quantification examples:

• astma problems, gps enabled inhaler http://propellerhealth.com - allows

"the best way to learn is to do"

Other thing

What data are we able to get from our devices? (good if I need to fill time?)

Web-based data visualisation on mobile devices

Interesting talk by Dominikus Baur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2ZlDrx6dAw

http://do.minik.us/projects/touchwave

Data visualisation design

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG6fFjIFxbo

Good examples of misleading vis (budget vs gdp) & some really nice charts - tonnes of info

[benfoxall]

being open with our data:

• Ashley Madison
• Datasift pylon searching

[benfoxall]

Human generated data:

• http://footballradar.com/about/
• Aardvark search engine

[benfoxall]

https://blog.gyrosco.pe/the-making-of-gyroscope-running-a4ad10acc0d0

https://www.mapbox.com/ http://vizicities.com/