Author Archives: Sacha Manson-Smith
Accessing heart rate data from Strava API
In my last post I looked at options for recording heart rate data. I settled on using a Garmin HRM strap, linked to my Garmin Edge 500 and Garmin FR70. I use the Edge while on my bike on the road and in the gym (you can link the Edge to a Wattbike, which is […]
Quantifying exercise – continuous heart rate monitoring
One part of The Glucose Project is to try and quantify exercise so that it can be correlated with insulin usage and blood glucose level. The question I want to answer is, depending on the amount of exercise I have done, how should I adjust my insulin dose? My first approach is to look at heart […]
The Glucose Project – correlating exercise and insulin usage in type 1 diabetes
I’ve finally found it. I have been trying to think of a good project to get my teeth stuck into – something that will get me up to speed with all these new Big Data technologies as well as being of some use – and I think i’ve got one: The Glucose Project. In brief, […]
Setting up Apache Pig
Apache Pig is part of the Hadoop ecosystem and is a procedural language which makes the job of processing data on Hadoop a lot easier than writing MapReduce jobs by hand. You can write a script in Pig Latin which, under the hood, will translate into MapReduce processes. This is often the quickest way of […]
Getting Hadoop set up – manual style
I’ve got a Mac, I’d like to get Hadoop set up. What do I do? I started by Googling, of course. First, get a Linux Virtual Machine set up. I went for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS running on VirtualBox. Get a Linux installation running inside a virtual machine. This guide worked for me for the basic […]
Beautiful Science at the British Library
The British Library are running an exhibition on data visualisation until 26th May 2014 – it looks amazing! Here’s The Guardian’s writeup.
Data Visualisation – The Guardian Masterclass
I spend a lot of time at work trying to get people to make decisions based on data I generate. The business people I present to have a lot on their mind and anything more than a single page presentation is unlikely to get any attention. Which means that the single page you do present […]
Big Data and Blogging
So what is this Big Data stuff anyway? It seems to be everywhere these days. For those who have managed to completely avoid hearing about it, Wikipedia has its usual comprehensive, if slightly dry, description. Don’t worry if you glazed over after a couple of sentences; I did too. So here’s my take: it describes ways […]
The Glucose Project 