Month: February 2013

Challenge accepted…

Tim Dobson challenged me to this…

Therefore, I want to post a blog post, everyday, for the month of February. What’s more, I want to challenge my friends, my colleagues … neighbours … pets etc to join me.

Rules:

  • Your blog must be public
  • Virals/Images/Videos posts are allowed, but only if you comment somehow on the content.
  • 1 post per day, for 28 days of February, by the same person

Questions:

Q: Why?

A: Why not? Being able to write coherently, repeatedly is a valuable skill. Doing it on your own can be boring/lonely. Knowing other people are also having to rush for the 23:59 deadline is somewhat warming.

Well I guess this is your challenge accepted…. Although I might double post once in a while…

It still amazes me that I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years… Although I do need to alter my archived posts as they all point to blojsom/blog still…

I bought a Fitbit twice?

Fitbit Ultra

One of my new year’s resolutions was to Be fitter and heather

Been consistently loosing weight at a slow pace but I do need to do more exercise. I’m hoping to find more of the things I like doing including volleyball in the next year. I’ve been consider a lot of what happens in the QS (quantified self) world and eying up the FitBit Ultra as it seems just open enough to do interesting things and work with my setup. My family got me enough Amazon credits to buy one which is great.

So I bought a Fitbit Ultra… Unfortunately its certainly a pain… More of a pain that I was prepared for originally.

First problem was the fact you need to get it started by using its own proprietary dock and software. I don’t have a spare Virtual Machine on my new laptop and I rather not go through the hassle of running a VM just to setup it up. So I went to my neighbor and he set it up instead.

Once that was done, I was able to see the stats on the website and the android apps which I installed. However I wasn’t getting updates…

In the end I saw they launched another Fitbit, titled Fitbit One which synced over Bluetooth 4.0 instead. So I swapped it and paid the difference on Amazon…

Although I still had to do the original setup using a mac or pc. The hope is I will be able to do the syncing from now on over the Bluetooth connection of my ubuntu laptop, or my phone/tablet with the fitbit app. Weirdly I can’t seem to find Ubuntu drivers for Bluetooth 4.0, altought Bluez says they have some support. Frustratingly this “feature” is still coming on Android although it works on iOS devices (as usual)

I’m holding out hope for the OpenYou project. But right now, it seems to be a process of waiting and waiting. During that time I’ll keep using it and hoping it keeps the data till its sorted…

Living the life of Seinfeld

New York, USA

I’ve been re-watching the Seinfeld TV series and getting a whole new outlook on the series. In some regards seinfeld’s life is very similar to my own and I seem to share the geeky level of critical analysis of the mundane. Maybe because that’s what makes life much more interesting. The analysis of relationships and life isn’t just smart but ever-so perfect…

Anyway I came across important life lessons learned from watching seinfeld

Dating is brutal

An important life lesson from Jerry Seinfeld

The reason that dating can be so brutal is the scrutiny that you put each other through. Because whenever you think about this person in terms of the future, you have to magnify everything about them.

The guy will be thinking “I don’t think her eyebrows are even. Could I look at uneven eyebrows for the rest of my life?”

And of course the woman’s looking at the guy, thinking “What is he looking at? Do I want somebody looking at me like this for the rest of my life?”

Good stuff…

Broadcast or Perceptive Media?

I was half watching Newsnight and working on my laptop, on Thursday 31st January on BBC2. Newsnight finished and the weather came on. Now the #uksnow is pretty much out the way, I’m not so interested in the weather.

Anyway as the weather man ran through the upcoming weather forecast, I looked up when the man mentioned Manchester. A few moments passed and I thought well its related to rain, so Manchester is a obvious target. A few moments later, Manchester was mentioned again and I looked up again. My glance become more of a stare as I thought about perceptive media.

The moment of attention or as I like to think about it, a moment of deja vu. Was powerful enough to make me lift my head and divert my attention to the weather for a few more moments at least.

The ability to connect and engage with people using slight differences in narrative. It doesn’t require huge sweeping changes, just clever well written narrative.