Personal data infrastructure

Backlinks: Extreme Privacy

Quanitified self

QS and coding are a match made in heaven, so it's no surprise that the numbers people love building software to pursue their quantification.

My QS App

I am no exception to this trend. Nothing quite combines fitness and coding quite like building a web app dashboard to pull in Whoop, Strava, and fitbit data. Here's a screenshot of the dashboard I built:

personal-dashboard-screenshot.png

I thought about all the different types of data to pull in: tweets, emails, youtube, blog rss, spreadsheet entry, and credit card, the list is endless. The code that I wrote for this here now, and the README has lots of thoughts on it. I tried pull apart the Fitbit piece of this app so we could use it at MassMutual for our LivingWELL backend.

  • Strava vs Garmin

    I opted for Strava over Garmin for two three reasons:

    1. I update titles, crop activites, etc on Strava,
    2. it includes non-garmin stuff like Zwift,
    3. the API is so much more accessible.

    On point (3): you don't need a developer access, which I think I emailed Garmin for a few times.

    Strava is missing the background data like steps, morning readiness.

  • Fitbit

    I did add a fitbit auth setup, since I have a fitbit scale… though I'm not pulling in data from there, didn't finish setting that up. With just a scale, seems like it would be easier to type it in every day! See above, I did open source this part of the code, though I haven't yet refactored the base code to use it.

Laptops

Backlinks: Inventory

I have three personal and one work laptop, which rotates. Sam has a variety of chromebooks and a Galaxy A8 Tab.

We still have my iPad mini from … 2012?

Currently editing this on 2021 Macbook Pro (they're labeled).

See Computer setup.

Phones

Backlinks: Inventory

  • Me: iPhone 15 Pro Max, [redacted]. Bought the phone, brought it to new plan. Applecare is $10/mo.
  • Sam: iPhone …14? On her Mom's plan.

Some backstory, switched from prepaid [redacted] to [redacted] in 2024 to get better service. The [redacted] account was shared w my brother, and we took turns paying the account for many years.

Previously, used a iPhone SE 2 (upgraded to a SE3). Before that, I've had androids for a long time, and perhaps my favorite form factor the iPhone 5S with a LifeProof case (the case, not so much, but the phone was perfect). I've also toyed with a Light Phone (had it for a few days, it got basically no service at our house, Sam hated it), and an old "rugged" phone. I love the idea of using an Apple Watch as a phone, but haven't gone for it.

Way back, the Blackberry, the orange slide out…

For work, I have an iPhone 13 on [Redacted].

Password management

1Password + Yubikey. We have 3 Yubikeys (YubiKey 5 NFC), with NFC and USB, which are used for the most sensitive accounts that also allow them.

yubikey5nfc.png

My wife and I used a shared 1Password, we each have our own vaults and a shared vault. I have her recovery printout somewhere, and I've stashed a hard copy of mine somewhere too? Double check on these hard copies…

We used to have LastPass…oops!

Data storage

Backlinks: Home Lab

I've moved off of both Drive + iCloud (was paying ~10 and ~1 per month?) to a Synology DS 224 with 2x6TB Seagate drives. This now hosts this website along with all of my files.

We pay for extra cloud storage on Google for Sam.s

DONE set up backblaze / other off-site backup

Set this up a couple days ago.

In terms of cost, backblaze is SO much cheaper than iCloud or Google.

Email

I use Gmail for andyreagan.com, as does Sam ([email protected], also [email protected]). My google account was through the free Google for domains, until that became un-free in 2022ish. Now I pay for a small version of their enterprise offering. Google for domains moved to an enterprise like offering, but I don't mind paying (if it's free, you're the product). I'd pay for fastmail, or proton, or Hey, but Gmail works.

The google for domains account has a few limitations: I orphaned my fitbit account by transitioning it to this Google account (the transition worked, but you can't log in with a workspace account for fitbit). You also can't use the Nest ecosystem (I bought a camera once).

I have access to a number of other google accounts:

  • [email protected].
    • this is not a managed google account, the managed account was [email protected]. instead, this is google account without gmail.
  • [email protected].
  • [email protected].
    • a personal one (created 2024 for workspace limitations, don't really use).
    • also had created a data one for testing WELL Rider, but not sure I have the password for that anymore.
  • reasearchallofus.org.

Sam has a gmail through Simmons, for the library, turkey trot, and PTO as well. She manages these, I'm not 100% sure this is even the right list of accounts for her.

Website

Website is hosted on Synology. Domain is on inmotion hosting, and dns records on zoneedit. The DNS records point directly to

How to publish Org mode blog to HTML

Update 2024 summer: update to Cloudflare proxy my home IP. While sharing this setup with Florin (iOS dev at MassMutual Romania) I showed him that yeah, the DNS record had our home IP. He walked me through setting up the proxy so that this wouldn't be public.

Wifi

We use an Eero mesh network with 3 nodes, a significant improvement over a single point. I can get better wifi in the bedroom loft, so I could move my office back there.

LeverettNET is a town-owned network with symetrical gigabit for $60/month. Amazing! It turned on in late 2019, what timing. Before this, we had very very bad internet from [Redacted]. For a while, we had satellite so I could try to teach class from home.

VPN

Backlinks: Extreme Privacy

Tailscale connects the whole network together. Google auth for Tailscale.