Posts

Step Tracking with the Casio ABL-100WE

The Casio ABL-100WE range of watches look similar to the A-168 range of Casio watches with one key difference. It counts steps like several G-shock watches do but rather than have a massive case that can survive a ten meter drop onto concrete it looks “elegant”, like the a-158, a-168 and other casio models. This is a water resistant watch, so you shouldn’t go scuba diving with it. It has a battery life of about two years, depending on how you use it.

Twitter Account Deactivated

Yesterday I finally took the step of deactivating my account, and then reactivating it, and then this morning deactivating it again. Normally when I lose interest in a social network I just forget about it and I’m done. In this situation I didn’t forget about it though. I went a step further. Three factors pushed me towards this decision. The first is that Musk wants to use our tweets to feed AI and I don’t want my tweets to be used that way.

How Old Fashioned A Petrol Engine Seems

Every single time I go from driving an EV to driving a petrol car I am struck by old fashioned and smelly old cars are compared to new ones. In this context an old car is any car that has a petrol engine rather than an electric motor. I had to play musical cars just now, and put the winter tires into the petrol car, to get them swapped so that I can drive in winter safely.

Running Somewhere

If I run in a loop I will eventually have to run uphill and that can be strenuous. If I run in a straight line then I can run downhill for at least part of the hill and then a slightly shallower gradient uphill. I mention this because although my walks are loops my runs are linear. There are two rational reasons for linear runs. The first is that when you’re running you want to run where there are fewer people, and less traffic, because both people, and traffic slow you down.

Sliding from iOS to Android

Recently I switched from an Iphone SE from 2020 for a Fairphone 4 and the migration has been easy, except for two apps. Whatsapp and Signal. With Android it’s easy. You backup to Google Drive and you can slide between Android devices with ease. With iOS the backup is in iCloud so sliding between devices should, in theory, be easy to, but I don’t remember finding it that much fun. If it wasn’t for this apps we could slide from Android to iOS and back without a second thought.

Charging Electric Cars in Switzerland

After some trial and error I finally managed to get an electric car to charge at public charging points. The first success was at an evpass charging station where I was able to charge 13.1kW/h in an hour and 14 minutes using the app on my phone and a credit card for 8.48 CHF. The second time was with the TCS eCharge RFID tag that I ordered from the Touring Club Suisse for free.

Running With the Apple Watch SE

Apple push us to get the Apple Watch Series 10, the Ultra 2 or the Apple Watch SE in third place. If you’re a runner, and you don’t feel like spending on the Ultra or the Ten then it makes sense to get the SE instead. Although the SE is the cheaper option it still provides us with plenty of running metrics. It provides heart rate, pace, power, cadence, vertical oscilation, ground contact time, stride length, workout time, distance, elevation gain, average cadence, average pace, average power, active kilocalories, total kilocalories and more.

Electric Vehicle Charge Time

It’s easy to drive a petrol car. You fill up, and 500-600 kilometres later you fill up. With Electric vehicles it is the same in theory. In practice it isn’t that simple. The EV charging market is fragmented and each company has a different app and possibly RFID tag. The result is that you can either be loyal and use just one app or you can have two or more apps on your phone.

Replacing Social Media With Solitaire

Recently I have noticed that I like to play Solitaire for many games in a row. It has replaced my social media habit. I know that solitaire is a solitary game but at the moment I enjoy it. I tried several versions on iOS and android but my current favourite is the Netflix version of Solitaire. I find that I can spend hours playing Solitaire as I watch TV and films.

Bluesky Thinking

I have spent the last day or two playing with Bluesky and I believe that it has potential, At it’s base it’s like Mastodon, but with less anarchic user base, and fewer trolls. This could be because I haven’t spent weeks using it yet. Threads has a good community and good community tools but it’s part of the Facebook empire and within a few weeks adverts will appear and that will drastically feel the look and feel of the social network.