Lifelogging: the recording device

Nice! Out of curiosity, what fraction of your past decade did you end up recording?

What is lifelogging for?

When is anyone, the lifelogger or anyone else, going to access the pile of data? I noticed this in the article that XiXiDu linked:

The first person I met doing this was Ted Nelson in the mid-1980s who recorded every conversation he had, no matter where or what importance. To my knowledge his archives have never been revisted, even by him.

And I remember reading a long article about Ted Nelson and Xanadu which said the same.

I'm not signed up for cryonics, so it appears from my inaction that I don't take alpha simulations vitally seriously, and beta simulations would come way behind. If some future people want to LARP what they know of my existence, good luck to them, but I can't see it as something I have any interest in. No, the only reason I could have would be a practical purpose here and now: a resource for me to access, a prosthetic memory.

So indexing and searching are fundamental, yet they seem curiously neglected or even defective in the examples in that article. Recording everything against the day that the tools arrive is, to my mind, backwards. When will that day come? What can I actually use lifelogging for already, here and now?

In practice, I do the opposite. I do not keep a journal. On occasions when I've had a specific reason to write one, I have always thrown it out (shredded) after the reason has passed. My diary is for future appointments, not past memories. I keep no financial documents except according to current need: when my shoebox of bank and credit card statements fills up, I shred the oldest half.

At work I keep all emails except for mailing list stuff -- partly for legal reasons (I work at the same university where ClimateGate happened, although in an unrelated department), and sometimes I really do need to search through the archive for something. At home, no email survives in the files more than a few years.

I have hundreds of old photographs gathering dust that I am minded to either scan and dump, or just dump. Obsolete audio cassettes that I could transfer to the computer and dump, or just dump. (How often do I play them? Never.) What would you do?

Check out the Vicon Revue. I'm into Lifelogging for years, I just don't record continuously yet. Note that I do not own the Vicon Revue but it is the only product I'm aware of that can do the job right now (in terms of size etc.), although without audio/video functionality. I'm simply using a compact camera and my iPhone so far. I even have a stationary camera in my room that takes a photo every minute. Last year I reached over a million files. Right now I got over 2TB worth of personal videos/photos/screenshots/logs etc., not sure how many files there are now though.

I often fantasize that lifelogging might be a cheap alternative to Cryonics, in terms of beta level simulations as described in some of Alastair Reynolds’ novels:

A poor cousin to an alpha-Level simulation, a beta-level is based on modelling the behavioural patterns of the person copied, attempting to predict their reactions to a given stimulus.

If you got my DNA so that you can clone me it might even be possible to imprint memories and behavioural patterns based on the lifelogs. I suppose that even without a DNA sample, given sufficiently powerful AI, such a beta-level simulation might be sufficiently close so that only a powerful posthuman being could notice any difference compared to the original. At least that's a nice idea :-)

Resurrection without a backup. As with ecosystem reconstruction, such "resurrections" are in fact clever simulations. If the available information is sufficiently detailed, the individual and even close friends and associations are unable to tell the difference. However, transapient informants say that any being of the same toposophic level as the "resurrector" can see marks that the new being is not at all like the old one. "Resurrections" of historical figures, or of persons who lived at the fringes of Terragen civilization and were not well recorded, are of very uneven quality. [Orion's Arm - Encyclopedia Galactica - Limits of Transapient Power]

A link on the subject (there were others, but they are behind a pay-wall now and I'm too lazy to look for a backup):

• Lifelogging, An Inevitability

Has there been any progress on battery life? I'm rather surprised I can't even find a reliable source of audio-only recording that is as convenient and useful. I had a system with a recorder I ordered off of thinkgeek, but it was rather crappy and lost data. I've tried with my android, but it eats up battery life. There don't even seem to be any good phone conversation recorders, at least for the Nexus.

There is a project on kickstarter that seems to be quite a bit better than the looxcie, called Zion Eyes, but they only have ~3 hours of battery with the note that: 'Aftermarket plug in battery packs are available to extend the battery life.'

Has anyone messed with the fitbit? I know it isn't for video recording, but it sounds pretty good on paper. I've found that the withings scale is a damn good modern way to track weight without having to do your own spreadsheeting.

If there is a more recent conversation about this, I will happily go there. This is just the first thing to turn up material from this year on the subject via the google.

foucist has suggested that one quick route to a lifelogger is to modify the uCorder to have longer battery-life, since it is almost perfect in every other respect. The uCorder recharges through its USB port, so one could hook it up to a USB battery.

USB batteries are popular for things like iPods, so we benefit from economies of scale; it seems possible to boost recording time to upwards of 10 hours with a USB battery like this $42 one.

Unfortunately, foucist also found that the uCorder manual says it cannot record while charging, and presumably wouldn't automatically draw on the battery anyway. So this wouldn't work (without a lot of manual intervention, and the uCorder takes hours to recharge...)

But the basic idea is sound - we just need to find a nice recorder which will run off a battery pack.

I've been doing audio-only with a $40 dictator from Wal-mart that fits in my pocket. It averages 150-200 MB a day. I generate hashes of each file and timestamp them so they're more likely to be useful if I ever need them for proof of something.

The thing that prompted me to start doing this was frequent arguments with close ones that often got down to "you said this", "no I didn't" type of stuff. It's oddly very assuring to have this recording. (FTR, I used it for that purpose more or less once. Although I find it useful for recording therapy sessions too.)

When a Camcorder Becomes a Life Partner

New Scientist published a life blogging article with the Vicon Revue today: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328532.700-total-recall-diary-of-a-lifelogger.html?full=true

Engadget published a Vicon Revue review as well: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/25/two-days-at-e3-with-a-vicon-revue-life-blogging-camera-video/

Note I am not a Vicon employee, just a potential customer. Has anyone here purchased a Vicon Revue? Current price is 299 English pounds.

foucist recently pointed out the Epic action video camera which is nice & small, but its Achilles's heel seems to be battery life - 2 AAA batteries won't take you very far.

I also recently ran into a description of the 'Cylon Body Worn System' which from the listed specs and mentions elsewhere, seems like the perfect lifelogging system - first sold in 2007 - but not available publicly. A more recent model does 720p HD, and the docs claim that its battery lasts 6 hours 40 minutes.

In other news, Flash continues its precipitous price drop. Now $40 will get you ~32GB of SD memory, twice when I wrote this post back in October.