Swiss walks

Twitter's Not For Me

Twitter has a new For You page inspired by TikTok’s For you page according to Quartz. Many years ago we had Seesmic, a video chat community where people could share video messages 24 hours a day. We even experimented with recording videos and sharing them by phone when this was still novel. Tik Tok has a critical flaw, as do plenty of the more popular social networks. As someone said on Mastodon today, “You have to be fast to say something new, before hundreds of other people have posted every possible reaction.

Apple Health Step Data Sources

Yesterday I spent some time looking through Apple Health Data Sources. I see that there are plenty of data sources. These are the Apple watch, the iphone, Alltrails, move, connect, stepsapp, pacer, Suunto, Ingress and three more that are marked as inactive. Move is the app that gets data from some Casio watches. Connect is Garmin connect and gets step data from Garmin devices. If I take steps and they are logged with a casio or a garmin device they do not count in iOS apps but if I take steps with Garmin and Casio devices without also wearing the Apple watch the same steps are not counted.

Catkins in January

Until today I didn’t know what catkins were because I never looked them up. “A catkin or ament is a slim, cylindrical flower cluster (a spike), with inconspicuous or no petals…” according to Wikipedia. They are out at the moment and I know this is unusual because a few days ago I saw an article about how it was unusual to have pollen warnings at this time of year. The Swiss weather app shows that there is a lot of pollen.

The GBD-800 Continued

The GBD-800 Continued is a step counting Casio with two serious flaws. The first of these flaws is that although the GPS from the phone can be used to map walks and other activities it has to be activated at the start of a walk and deactivated at the end of the walk. If you do not deactivate the GPS it will track the drive to and from the start of the walk, to the end of the walk.

Getting Back Into Running

I am getting back into running at the moment. I have run several times recently, irregularly enough not to feel pain in my knees or other articulations so this is a good sign. The advantage of running, over other sports, is that it’s easy to catch a bus, car, train, parapente or other form of transport and start running. The second advantage is that it is twice as fast as walking.

Tomorrow I Have The Long Drive

Tomorrow I have the long drive. For 12 hours or so I will be driving the car with few stops and plenty of time to daydream.

Negative Watch Displays

The Casio GBD-200 and GW-B5600 both have negative displays but the GBD-200 has a display that is much easier to read in low light. The contrast is good enough to read at dusk with the GBD-200 but not the GW-B5600. When backlit both are easy to read. I chose to wear the GBD-200 today, on a whim. I will get back to proper blog posts soon.

Feeding the Seagulls

Feeding the Seagulls by the Mediterranean Sea A woman feeding seagulls by the sea.

Feeding the Seagulls

Feeding the Seagulls by the Mediterranean Sea A woman feeding seagulls by the sea.

Playing With Garmin Coach

Today I began playing with Garmin Coach. I decided to try one of the running programs. It’s the first of January, first day of the year, and I have already been for two walks and a run. The run was a calibration run so I ran too fast and too hard so I burned out on the first task. I ran at 16km/h and 230 steps per minute for a short burst before tiring and slowing a bit.