My renewed interest in programming and love of the python programming language has birthed another project that is sucking away most of my free time. After learning the basics of Python I coded Kantanji as a project to help with my study of Japanese. Now, I am combining my interest in personal data security with some more things I have learned to do in Python to build a Life Logging program called… Life Logger.
What does Life Logger do?
The program basically interacts with the GPS on my phone and a bunch of application programming interfaces (API) to spit out a “log” of my “life”. How much have I travelled, cities visited, steps taken, most listened to music/artists, most played PC games etc. Right now I have it working with Spotify (music), Google fit (activity), Steam (games), Twitch (streaming), and Geoapify (location). I will add more functionality as I go.
Why build a Life Logging program?
Personal data security and privacy is a big topic these days but I honestly believe that the average person doesn’t have enough understanding of all the data we willingly and unwillingly share. Social media, consumer points programs, smartphone usage, online shopping, media consumption etc. are all valuable data that companies use, trade, buy, sell and share. Life Logger is one newbie programmer exploring his own data with the hopes of having others look up and see how valuable their search history, music preferences, location data and shopping habits are.
What form does the Life Logger project data about myself take… I am not sure yet. I might do a monthly log series of automated tweets (@Jamaipanese) or some kind of log graphics generated by the program. I do know I want all this to be AUTOMATED so I don’t have to do anything to get the logs generated. I think I will be working on this for a while and continuing to learn as I go. Would this be something you would be interested in seeing a Youtube video about? Let me know in a comment below or Tweet me @Jamaipanese.