A map of me: Life-tracking with funf

I've been running funf ever since I arrived in California -- almost six months now.  If you haven't seen it before, funf is a great little android app for passive life logging.  It can track anything your phone can track: GPS, accelerometer, battery, text messages, etc.

The downside is that it's buggy.  I ended up having to use a very hacky workaround solution to get my data off: exporting data via email, downloading the zips, then running the funf_analyze_mac script to parse them all to sql. It's a clunky pipeline, but works for the moment.

Here's the first payoff: a map of everywhere I went between November and February. It's pretty neat to be able to see the neighborhood where I work in San Francisco, the train line along the edge of the bay, the two cities where I've lived since moving here, and a few trips south and west to Los Gatos and San Jose.

I haven't done much work to make this beautiful, but I find it very engaging anyway.  (It's my data, after all.)

My next plan is to write a script to isolate places where I go often or spend a lot of time, and then mash those locations up with data from other sources based on timestamps.

Pain points on Pulse newsreader

Pulse newsreader came preinstalled on the kindle fire I got for Christmas (thanks, Sam!).  On the whole I like it, but a few glaring bugs and omissions really hold it back.

• Bug: after pressing the star button on one post, it gets stuck for all the other posts on the blog.  AFAICT, you can only star one post per blog per session.  Clunky.

• Bug: when I'm offline---I do a lot of my blog reading on the bus---Pulse doesn't seem to remember which blog posts I've read.  I read it, swipe it, and then next time I'm on the grid it seems to pop right back up.  I can't tell if it's doing this all the time or just a lot of the time, but it's a pain to hit the same articles two, three times, and up.

• Feature request: I love being able to post to twitter with two clicks.  (This is nice for Pulse too, because they get their name in the link.)  Can you let me queue tweets in offline mode, then sync with twitter once I get back on the grid?

• Feature request: alternatively, can you provide an API to starred items?  If I could get at those (say as RSS), I could automate the posting to twitter myself.

Pulse, are you listening?  Fix these and I will be your friend forever.  Until then, I'm looking suggestions on blog readers...

Ubuntu fail (and fix): After the latest "update," unity crashes on alt-tab

I love ubuntu linux -- as loyal a user as they come -- but I still have to share this horror story.  It's a good case study in the ups and downs of working in a fully open-source environment.

Last week, I installed routine updates to ubuntu on my main work computer. Unfortunately, there's a huge bug in the latest update: switching windows using alt-tab crashes Unity, the main GUI for ubuntu 11.10.

This makes it impossible to open new applications -- or even shut down without holding down the power button. It also disabled keyboard input to the terminal -- like severing the spine of the OS.  Since alt-tab is a deeply ingrained reflex for me, the "update" made my computer almost entirely unusable.

For the record, this is by far the biggest bug I've run into so far with ubuntu.

The bug was reported early on, but I don't know how long it will take to fix. After four days, the status was "critical, unassigned," which I take to mean "we know it's a problem, but haven't got to it just yet."

In the meantime, I still had work to do.  I posted to various forums (like here), but didn't get much in the way of specific help -- unusual for the ubuntu community.  For the most part, I worked in a campus lab (which brought its own problems: missing software and no admin rights -- the reasons I'd come to rely on my laptop so much.) When I absolutely had to use my laptop, I sat on my left hand to avoid the temptation to switch between windows via the keyboard.

Today, I finally knuckled down to finding a workaround on my own.  It took me about an hour to discover gnome-shell, the major competitor to Unity.  From there, installation and configuration took less than 10 minutes.  I don't like gnome's look as much as unity -- too much chrome -- but if it makes my system usable, I'll keep it.

Here's the site that gave straigthforward installation instructions for gnome-shell:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-gnome-shell-in-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-ocelot.html

Here are some other links that were helpful, but probably not necessary for the final fix:

• http://askubuntu.com/questions/29553/how-can-i-configure-unity
• http://ubuntuguide.net/classic-menu-indicator-update-added-system-settings-menu 
• http://ubuntuguide.net/classic-gnome-style-menu-in-ubuntu-11-10 
• http://bloggezmoy.com/2011/05/17/how-to-add-an-application-to-the-gnome-3-application-launcher/

Also, there was a brief time where I disabled unity, but didn't have gnome running yet.  This meant that my only way to launch applications was from the terminal.  Here are some commands that will save your sanity in this situation:

• Ctrl-Alt-T : Load terminal, from anywhere.  If you turn off unity, this is the only way to launch new programs.
• firefox &  : Load firefox from terminal.  Now you can get online for help.
• gnome-session-quit : Now you can log in and out.
• shutdown : Now you can shutdown without yanking the power cord.

Follow up on personal elephants

Three thoughts from the talk about elephants and motivation I posted yesterday...

First, I found a website that talks about Buddhist symbolism, including elephants.  The metaphor is perfect:

At the beginning of one's practice the uncontrolled mind is symbolised by a gray elephant who can run wild any moment and destroy everything on his way. After practising dharma and taming one's mind, the mind which is now brought under control is symbolised by a white elephant strong and powerful, who can be directed wherever one wishes and destroy all the obstacles on his way."

Second, the closing thought in the talk is from Kara S, about getting to know your personal elephant. Her comment reminded me of a conversation from Paulo Coelho's wonderful little book, The Alchemist:

    "My [elephant] is a traitor," the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. "It doesn't want me to go on."

    "That makes sense," the alchemist answered. "Naturally it's afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won."

    "Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world."

    "You mean I should listen, even if it's treasonous?"

    "Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your [elephant] well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you'll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them."

    "You will never be able to escape from your [elephant]. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow."

Coelho uses the word "heart," instead of "elephant," but I'm sure he won't mind the substitution.

Finally, I referenced a bunch of studies (in passing) in the talk, but didn't include any citations, because I ran out of time.  If you happen to have links/refs to articles, books, videos, etc. in this area, can you paste them into the comments?

If you haven't seen the original slides yet, I'll leave these as teasers.

How to ride, eat, tame, etc. your personal elephant

This is a talk I gave at the annual "Hill Street TED" activity that my local congregation puts together.  These are short talks in TED format, put together by members of the congregation to share aspects of their life and work that don't get talked about much at church.

Here, I've taken my slides from the talk, added a script, and revised the format to better fit the web.  After going back and forth, I left in the Mormon references, even though I know some of them will be lost in translation. I also added a few slides based on comments and feedback from people at the talk. This let me put in more details and one-off ideas that just didn't fit into 10 minutes.  Enjoy!

EDIT: Slideshare is giving me grief, so here are pdf versions of the talk with speaking notes, and without. 

View more documents from Abe Gong.

IFTTT confusion: mea culpa, but not really.

I've been playing around with IFTTT, trying to get this blog, my G+, and facebook accounts to sync.  Apologies for missed posts and weirdness.  (If you don't get this post, please let me know, ha ha.)

For the most part, I blame google and its lack of a clean API.  I would use your circles more if they worked well!