Fitbit Flex – Sleepy Time
Posted: Thu 20 February, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Health, Insomnia, Project 42, Reviews(ish), Sleep - or lack thereof, Technology Leave a comment »Carrying on from yesterday’s post, I’m writing a bit about how I’m doing with the Fitbit Flex, a wristband pedometer and sleep monitor. Today it’s more about the sleep monitoring that the Flex does.
As with the pedometer side, the sleep monitoring can be a useful tool, but it’s not something to rely on absolutely.
The sleep monitoring is activated manually (which is usually OK, but could be a pain in the ass on occasion) and also needs to be manually deactivated – which is more of a pig, because if you forget, it screws the figures. It would be nice to have some automatic deactivation in there, although I suspect that the variables for it are pretty wobbly.
Based – I assume – on movement during the night, the Flex can report on “Sleep”, “Disturbed Sleep” and “Awake”. “Sleep” is – again, I assume – when the sleeper is motionless, as REM sleep paralyses the body. (which is why most people don’t sleepwalk, or do anything else physical that they’re dreaming about) “Disturbed Sleep” is when the sleeper is moving about. I’ve no idea how it discerns “Awake” though – it pegs my awake-in-bed time as ‘disturbed sleep’- so I assume that “Awake” means “Registered as sleeping, but actually walking around”. As such, the categories are a bit rough, but at least provide an illustration of sleep quality – or lack thereof.
One thing I do find affects me though is actually looking at the results. (Which is a bit meta and ‘chaos theory’, but bear with me) It’s one thing to feel like you’ve had a bad night, but it’s another one entirely to know it with the readings from the Flex. And yes, I could ‘leave it’ til later, but damn it, I’m interested. However, it does make me feel more tired, more justified in being tired, with that knowledge of “Oh yeah, but I had a crap night”. Seeing the information makes me aware of that crap night, and does affect how I feel during the day. (Similar to how reading a horoscope first thing can sometimes subconsciously direct you towards doing the things ‘predicted’)
It is interesting though. It’s proven that I usually actually get by on 3.5-4 hours sleep per night most of the time, and that it’s really only when I’m on sub-three-hours that I feel shockingly bad. I have good nights (rare), bad nights (common) and very bad nights (thankfully not quite as common as I’d thought)
I’ll keep on using the Flex for this – as I’ve said, it’s a useful indicator, if nothing else. Whether I continue to be aware of the timings or not, bearing in mind how much that knowledge affects me, remains to be seen.
Fitbit Flex – Taking Steps
Posted: Wed 19 February, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Health, Project 42, Reviews(ish), Technology, Weigh Less, Weight Loss Leave a comment »It’s now been a couple of months since I got the Fitbit Flex, and it’s been pretty interesting. I didn’t buy it to boost my fitness, or any of that other rot – I just wanted to see how much I do walk on any given day, keep track of it, and also to look at how I sleep. (which I’ve written about before)
The sleep monitoring is quite useful – although I do wonder about how it affects me subliminally. (of which more later in the week)
For the walking / pedometer, it shows I’m currently walking about 3 miles a day. Not brilliant – but equally, not at all bad. I started this year with the intention of getting out and walking more, and getting into a routine of doing so. (This actually started back in November-ish, but has been more fixed since January) I try to make sure I walk around the village (a decent mile loop) most days – although I still sometimes fail to do so when the weather is truly vile – as well as walking more when I go to the local cinema etc.
The Flex helps me keep track of that, and it’s been useful. There is a certain satisfaction when it buzzes away on my wrist, letting me know that the daily target (currently set at 5,000 steps a day, approx 2.5 miles) has been achieved. And weirdly it does get into your head – I find myself thinking “Oh, well if I park there, it’s a longer distance to get to the shop/cinema/whatever, I’ll be closer to that target” and similar.
If nothing else, it’s a useful tool for just keeping track of exercise through the days and weeks – but also as a minor kick-up-the-arse for actually getting out and walking more.
Convergence
Posted: Sun 12 January, 2014 Filed under: Change, Design, Geeky, Health, Technology, Thoughts 1 Comment »Since getting the FitBit Flex, I’ve been thinking a lot about technology, innovation, and devices.
Why?
Because actually, despite being useful, the Flex feels something like a backwards step. Despite it still doing a number of things, it’s nowhere near as advanced as it could (and should) be.
Yes, this one device – worn on a strap on the wrist – can detect/monitor motion, whether that be steps, or motion during sleep. It can communicate via Bluetooth with my phone. But really that’s about it. It’s not got GPS to show where I’ve been, it’s not got a display for showing time, heart-rate, or anything else. In essence, it’s a pretty dumb device.
How has this happened? I remember back in the late 80s and early 90s when Casio were bringing out watches galore, and they could do so much more than the Flex. Casio’s corporate history is amazing for the number of innovations and firsts. Their first databank watch was made in January 1984, their first watch with GPS was released in June 1999. Within that time they certainly made watches with thermometers, weather predictions, heartrates, and many others.
So why are we now in some ways less advanced than these watches of 20-odd years ago? Why can’t my Flex also display the time, or be able to monitor my heartrate? Casio did it 20 years ago – it just seems bizarre that we can’t get one device to do all that now.
Monitoring Sleep
Posted: Thu 9 January, 2014 Filed under: 2013/14, Domestic, Dreaming, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Insomnia, Project 42, Sleep - or lack thereof, Technology Leave a comment »Over the years, I’ve kind of got used to sleeping really badly – although I’d still like to know the causes, and whether it really is as bad as I think/feel it is.
The reason I’m not sure is because – as I think I’ve said before – according to partners, sometimes I’ll have slept through the night, but woken up and been convinced I’ve had a bad night. Yes, I apparently manage to dream that I’m waking up and having a bad night. And yes, that is really really fucked-up, however you look at it.
Anyway, as part of the whole ‘weighing less’ part of this year, I was also wanting to monitor (or at least better monitor) my activity, steps-per-day and the like. So I’ve ended up ordering a FitBit Flex which should let me keep an eye on all of that at once. It’ll also integrate with a couple of other apps on the phone etc., which will make for some interesting reading over time. The only downside is that I’d have liked one that also allows me to check/monitor heart-rate (and really, why can’t you get a wearable wristband device that’ll do that? It can’t be that difficult, surely?) but there just isn’t anything like that around at the moment. The closest would be the Pulse from Withings – but that doesn’t do the integration stuff, and doesn’t keep track of heartbeat in the way that I wanted.
I’m not relying on it, or assuming it’ll be the thing that changes everything for me – but it should at least answer some questions, particularly about how I sleep. And that at least will be interesting, and make it worth what I’ve paid. Anything else is a bonus, really.
Big Screen
Posted: Tue 15 October, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, People, Technology, Television 3 Comments »An email went round work yesterday, that Costco have a 65″ TV on a special deal for £2,000. (I don’t know why we get these emails, but hey ho)
I’m just gobsmacked by that. A 65-inch screen – that’s nearly five-and-a-half feet of diagonal screen-size!
I honestly don’t get the desire/need for these super-large screens. Admittedly some of that is due to the fact I live in a tiny house where something that size would take up about two-thirds of the available wall space, but I still don’t get the appeal, the way that TVs now seem to dominate living space.
I used to have a big-ass wide-screen TV, although that was pre-flatscreens, and was a huge lump of Sony Trinitron that took two people to lift it. Even that though was only about a 36 or 38″ screen – this advertised one would be nearly twice that in size.
Fair play, other people seem to want TVs this size – it’s just not something I aspire to own, and I can certainly think of many better things to spend £2,000 on.
Data Migration – Kindle
Posted: Mon 10 June, 2013 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Getting Organised, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »By contrast to the ease of migrating data to the new laptop, resyncing a new Kindle is an absolutely shite experience.
The actual purchase/delivery of it is great – ordered on Friday, arrived today. But synchronising it is crap.
Rather than a simple “download everything” option – or even having a “download everything on this page” – you have to choose to download each eBook individually. Even on the website, it’s a list with individual controls. Not even a checkbox against each item and a ‘download all’.
Why? I’ve no idea. But it means that what should be a simple “connect this device to my Amazon account” to download everything becomes a nightmare of (in my case) roughly 1,000 mouse-clicks. That’s no exaggeration. I’ve got 260 books on my Kindle. For each one you’ve got to click on “Actions”, then “Download”, then Select the device (there’s only one device – at least fucking auto-select it!) . For each book.
It’s a truly painful and shit experience, and there’s an email going to Amazon to explain that.
More Broken
Posted: Fri 7 June, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Stupidity, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s obviously the month for tech stuff to break.
Following on from the laptop, the iPhone battery pack, and the iPhone cable, the Kindle’s just died. (I know, I know, “That doesn’t happen with books”, blah blah) My own fault, out with friends last night, had the Kindle (in a case) in my pocket all night, and somewhere along the line it’s got squished, and the screen has cracked in the way eInk ones do, so it’s no damn use to anyone.
I *should* have left it in the car, but forgot. That’s the way of things sometimes. No idea exactly when it happened, although it was probably when five of us crammed into a taxi, which was fairly tight.
Ah well, live and learn.