Self Tracking

or I'm lazy

A few years back I decided to get in shape! Well, more like get rid of a few extra kilos around the belly. I started going to the gym, and was seeing some results but then I threw out my back... I couldn't work out and started to gain a lot of weight. It turns out eating the same amount of crap when not working out has some predictable side effects.

I decided to start tracking my caloric intake. I downloaded an app that let me set a limit and then enter the food as I ate it. It was pretty good but there was still a manual step where you had to enter the food. I then got a "smart" scale, which sends the readings to my smartphone. This was much better, without doing anything more than stepping on a the scale, I could identify bad trends as they started.

When my back got better, I started running a lot. And to aid me I was using a fitness tracker and a smartwatch. It tracks my heartrate, tempo and effort. Just start the app before a run and it will track it for you.

So, from these things I learned that I'm lazy. I don't need a smart scale to track my weight, I could just do it by hand. I don't need an app to see if I'm improving on my runs, just track the time and run a known distance. But the ease of these things makes it so easy that I don't even have to think about it, and I have all the data when I want or need it.

So how about something else I love to do, play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. A few years back I built an app that lets you see your economy in the game in real time, as well as some other stats that were less useful. But could I use that data to see how I'm performing over time? Am I getting worse or better?

I rewrote the "business" logic of the app to run on a server which can aggregate the stats after a game, and then connect it to a game and user. So now I have an app that lets you see, at a glance, what maps you're performing well on and what guns you are the most accurate and deadly with. You don't even need to start anything, once you have the .cfg file in your config it will send your data to the backend, which handles your stats and makes them available to you whenever you want it! There is however a "live" view which gives you a quick glance of your economy during a game, which can help you with your purchasing decisions!

If you want to check it out head over to the website and download the .cfg file, and download the apps to your smartphone.

If you find any bugs or want to give feedback, there are social links in the app as well as on this website!