Living Statistically

There is a whole statistical tracking world out there I didn't even know about. I just discovered daytum.com. I haven't figured out what I want to track just yet, but it's virtually limitless.

Any tips?

I ask these questions realizing at this point I have exactly 1 reader... me. We'll see if that changes over time... and I will of course be monitoring with Google Analytics.

And The Winner Is

As I mentioned in my first blog post, I'm pretty fanatical about my iTunes statistics tracking. iTunes keeps pretty basic stats so I was happy when I recently discovered last.fm which is a great companion to iTunes. Last.fm allows you to break down your track and artist listening habits in more granular detail than iTunes.

Something of a significant milestone happened a couple days ago with my music tracking: A new first place band emerged. That band was The Black Keys. The fact that The Black Keys are now at the top of the "Top Artists" list is quite impressive considering it was only one year ago that I first discovered them (ok, I didn't discover them, but you know what I mean). In that quickly spent year they have surpassed all the other bands I've been listening to, supplanting The Rolling Stones at the top spot.

Congratulations The Black Keys, I'm sure you're very excited to hear this news and it will keep you going.

Now, I will say that if I had iTunes tracking back in college, Led Zeppelin would have created such an insurmountable lead in the "Top Artist" category that they would likely never be replaced. I'm not exaggerating by much in saying that for a 3 year period Led Zeppelin accounted for 99% of my music repertoire. It all started when a friend of mine left a couple Led Zeppelin CD's at my house by mistake. From that moment on over the next few years, Led Zeppelin was all I listened to. They still hold the top spot in my iTunes library for most songs in the library given the countless live bootleg recordings I have.

Who are your Top Artists?

2009-06-28 Workout

I recently began using iFitness for the iPhone to track my workout progress. It has a good list of workouts although their routines aren't very good, so I've gone ahead and created my own routines. It was crashing quite a bit, but a recent update has seemed to (mostly) fix that problem. I'll write my own review once I've used it a bit more and had more time with it. For now, here was todays workout:

Workout Summery: Jun 28, 2009

Jun 28, 2009

machine lateral pulldown

Set 1, 150 lb for 10 reps

Set 2, 150 lb for 8 reps

Set 3, 150 lb for 8 reps

arnold press

Set 1, 45 lb for 8 reps

Set 2, 45 lb for 6 reps

Set 3, 45 lb for 4 reps

cable triceps pushdown

Set 1, 75 lb for 10 reps

Set 2, 75 lb for 8 reps

Set 3, 80 lb for 6 reps

rear lateral raise

Set 1, 35 lb for 9 reps

Set 2, 35 lb for 8 reps

dumbbell biceps curl

Set 1, 50 lb for 10 reps

Set 2, 52.5 lb for 8 reps

Set 3, 52.5 lb for 6 reps

barbell bench press

Set 1, 155 lb for 10 reps

Set 2, 175 kg for 9 reps

Set 3, 185 lb for 6 reps

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Here We Go

This is a quick first post just to get things up and running.

Today I picked up the latest issue of Wired magazine and there was an article entitled "Living By The Numbers." It's basically about people using all the tools available to us to keep statistics on everything about our lives.

In the article one of the people being interviewed was Roni who called herself a "stat whore." I thought to myself, "I am totally a stat whore!" And I have been for a long time. I love tracking stats on the various things I do. I love the fact that iTunes keeps tracks of the songs I listen to. I'm actually so insane about keeping the iTunes stats that if a song is only half way finished and I'm about to turn off my iPod or computer I wait until the song finishes so it's stats will be properly updated. I'll even admit to taking things a bit further than most; if I want to listen to a song on vinyl, I will actually queue up the record AND start playing the album on my computer just so the stats update on my computer even though I'm actually listening to the vinyl.

So, in this age of "hey, look at me and what I'm doing" mentality, I thought I'd start a blog tracking all the things I keep stats on. As we stand right now on day one these stats will be on running, the gym, and iTunes. I'll be looking to add more things to track as we go.

Thanks for stopping by (although at this point I'm guessing a google search led you here and this site is not remotely what you were looking for).