Can filming one second of every day change your life? [video]

I recall a Nova or something on PBS several years ago where an MIT student had built a contraption that did essentially that. The thing that struck him when analyzing the data was how much every day was more or less exactly like the other.<p>He wasn't particularly philosophical about this fact, but I remember thinking this could be very depressing to some people - and jostle others into doing more with their lives. Still, as the narrator of the linked video says, "trying to make the best documentary of my life" seems to take an odd third-person perspective of one's own existence.<p>In another vein entirely, I've always felt there was something bordering on the "sacred" about memories. They're as personal a thing as you can have. Being able to rewind and see everything that ever happened to me would take something away from that for me. As with many technologies, you'd gain something, but lose something precious too.

The key line for me was at the end, when he says "trying to make the best movie possible is making me live the best life possible". If this is nothing but a trick to make one more introspective and aware of one's own life, I applaud it.

I've always been inspired by the story of Jamie Livingston, who took a Polaroid everyday from 1979-1997. The photos follow his life as a circus performer and photographer/videographer in NYC. He was killed by a brain tumor, and his photos follow him up until his last day in the hospital (his friends took the photos for him). Incredibly moving to see his life unfold in thousands of "in-between" moments.<p><a href="http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1979.htm#1979/1" rel="nofollow">http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1979.htm#1979/1</a><p>More on Jamie: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Livingston" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Livingston</a>

I doubt it was only the act of filming 1 second per day that changed his life. It was the discovery of the method and the process of refining it that lead to a life changing experience.<p>I don't think you will experience that by downloading an app. Come up with an own idea on how to reflect upon your life.

The article doesn't say a lot about the app. But, for people with a "creativity through technology" mind, the current tech climate is great for these sorts of ideas. Documenting is something we can do more of. It's valuable. It can be fun. Maybe all we need is better tools.<p>How about better ways of documenting your children growing up. Documenting yourself getting old. If we want to get really into it, maybe there are ways of finding lessons in our life that can be passed on.<p>I've heard interesting anecdotes about taking a picture of all food before you eat it leading to much healthier eating.<p>There have always been great diarists. Sometimes their benefit could only be seen years later. Maybe we can do it beter now with apps and web and video cameras in every pocket.

This reminds me of an Android app I wrote a while back. It's called PhotoChron (free! - <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.photochron&#38;hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.photochron...</a>) and lets you take a photo a day to join into a video.<p>I've used it mostly for recording my kids growing up (e.g. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Nr7pw-I0g" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Nr7pw-I0g</a> ). It's amazing having a chronicle of them imperceptibly turning from newborns into kids and I recommend it for any new parent. Apps like Everyday ( <a href="http://everyday-app.com" rel="nofollow">http://everyday-app.com</a> ) do a similar thing on iOS.

I'm surprised no one has linked to this: <a href="http://noahkalina.com/36/44#1" rel="nofollow">http://noahkalina.com/36/44#1</a><p>He's been taking pictures every day since 2000.

I've started doing something similar this year. But instead of video I take one picture that represents the highlight of that day. I also take a picture of myself. Then I'll write a small program that will combine the image, self shot, title and a map into one image and finally generate a video from those images.<p>Combining this with my OhLife daily diary I hope I'll have a pretty good overview of my life and a treasure of memories (I'm very bad at remembering things from my past).<p>edit: I've now realized that this man was the inspiration for my project (I've seen this before new year) :)

Reminds me of another cool "picture every day" project -- this guy took a photo of himself once a day for 6 years with the lens cap on -- <a href="http://www.mrwillvincent.co.uk/Two-Thousand-One-Hundred-and-Ninety-One" rel="nofollow">http://www.mrwillvincent.co.uk/Two-Thousand-One-Hundred-and-...</a>

&#62; Everyone will probably have a different experience with their videos, he says, but he says self-reflection is never a bad thing.<p>People's infinite capacity to forget things is both a blessing and a curse.<p>Be prepared, when reminiscing about the good times, to be reminded of some equally bad times.

This girl takes a photo daily: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxxxKwlra8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxxxKwlra8</a>

ROOM for thought is a similar app that asks you to make a photograph every day at a random moment. The app (iOS-only for now) is free:<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/id585556618?mt=8" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/id585556618?mt=8</a>

I thought a video of 1-sec clips would just be glitch and confusion, but it's actually pretty cool. I bet if it were my own life it'd be really fun to watch at the end of the year. This year I'm doing a phone photo a day at least.

This brings to mind Lifelapse (<a href="http://www.lifelapse.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lifelapse.com/</a>) -- you hang your smartphone around your neck and let it take snapshots of your day. I always thought it was a fun idea but never got to try it. Probably a great thing while traveling.<p>I used to do this with my desktop using TimeSnapper (<a href="http://www.timesnapper.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.timesnapper.com/</a>), it does provide an interesting view on where your time goes throughout the day.

A one-second video is seldom going to show more than a single photograph. Sure, there's a little motion, but the quality is worse and if you want to stop and take a look you have to pause the video. I'd stick with taking one photo a day.<p>I know there are counterexamples. But for those things, you'd probably want to take a longer video anyway. What kind of events is a 1-second video the best way to capture, anyway?

I'm considering trying this. It seems like the bias of choosing the second to record would be mean that it wouldn't actually represent your day well. I'd be interesting if someone made two videos from two seconds from each day: one they chose and one taken after they were prompted by a random timer. The videos would probably be completely different.

One screenshot every day.

I am reminded of Betteridge's law of headlines:<p>&#62;"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

This is an interesting idea, but how did he decide which one from 86,400 sec in a day that's worth to keep?

That would be an awesome app! BUT, I think 1 second is WAY too short. It's actually annoying to watch such a video, and you don't really get something out of it. I think 5 seconds is already a better number.

Anybody knows if the app is available yet? A search for ""1 Second Everyday" on the Apple App Store doesn't return anything.

I jus downloaded his app - I will try doing what he says for 1 month for starters and check the result.

Tout is the twitter of video apps in that its supposed to be 15second vids.<p>I think 1 second is a little too short...

Quite a bit in common with Memoto...

no it really can't

Any way in which you can record bits and pieces of your life now will most likely come in very valuable later on when you have children and grandchildren. You don't have to record everything, of course, but having a nice overview of each year with a few pics here and there with stories to tell is very cool.