Category Archives: excercise

New Years Resolutions 2013

So.. For general ridicule, these are my resolutions for new years. Don’t normally believe in that kind of thing myself, being more of a ‘JFDI’ kind of person, however, on the theory that putting them out there make it more likely to get done..

  • Listen to music more, podcasts less (music podcasts count here).
  • Don’t buy any more (e)Books, and read the ones I have!
  • Practice the violin at least once a week and get back to lessons by the middle of the year
  • Practice Tai Chi Chuan at least one morning in the week (hopefully with the family)
  • Finally clear out the loft in time to fit insulation before next winter..
  • Build something (perhaps more than one something) with my Raspberry Pi
  • Get out to more live events with Mrs Kript and 2.0..

I’m giving myself some exclusion on the eBooks thing already; if another Humble eBook Bundle ships (since I support the model and want to promote it), the Hugo Awards Voters Packet (might get sticky this year with other projects but..), and if any of the following release new books; Jim Butcher, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Charlie Stross, Garth Nix (but only if he releases any more ‘Mr Fitz..’ stories), David Blank-Edelman, Tom Limonchelli and possibly Cory Doctorow, Ben Aabromovitch and Peter Morwood (if her releases another in the ‘Horse Lord’ series). Oh, and any work requirements for technical books, although since we now have individual SafariOnline subscriptions, that shouldn’t be needed, right (twitch)?

Yeah, the eBooks thing doesn’t look likely does it..? ;-)

Fitbit and the Quantified Self

So A. bought me (at my request), a FitBit Ultra for my birthday. I’d read about them a few times from some of the alpha geeks (ahem) that I follow on twitter and the like, and my interest was piqued by the (rather lackluster, I thought at the time), coverage in Fitness For Geeks (I now realise that there’s not much more he could have written – the tools work fine, and you can download the data for your own analysis, not much need for hacking. Or is there..).

Its a very nicely thought out device, it ‘just works’, and the fitbit website has a decent dashboard to graph your steps, calories, miles traveled, even sleep patterns if you use the included wrist strap at night (which I have been, mostly). There is even a Perl Module to grab the data from the website (I plan to use the sample script to download my own data; after all; if their service is free, and they’ve sold me the Fitbit, how long can it keep going (this is perhaps a flaw in the Quantified Self model, but more on that below)? They do have premium subscriptions, and regularly announce new products, so it seems likely for a while, but, anyway, its my data, so..

The only complain I would have is that the Fitbit needs a cradle to Sync and charge, and a small sync deamon. As detailed on this page, the security is a little lacking, possibly due to the decision to allow any cradle to sync any fitbit (it can do this wirelessly). I was expecting to be able to buy spare cradle’s, but, not that I can see, which precludes me having one at home and one at work. Bit annoying. Fitbit obviously realised this as they’ve launched the FitBit Zip, a version of the Fitbit that doesn’t require a cradle and can sync to phones (perhaps via NFC? Or wireless, like their scales..)

The open source community seems pretty active (particularly the OpenYou project) around the device, which means a non fitbit.com client can’t be far away, should this worry you, or require you to use tools you don’t approve of.

So, its been over three months now, so what have I learned? Well, first of all, its noticeable that time with a toddler at the weekend means I have no problems making the 10,000 step daily target, and that I struggle to do so on a work day, especially if its been one with more coding! So far so fairly obvious.
I notice that, when I do make the 10k target, I feel tired, so that if I was expecting do be doing a lot more running around, I need to be in better shape!
The sleep timer has showed me that, far from the insomniac I thought I was, I’m asleep within 5 mins, on average, and awake at least once in the night, something I’ve got no conscious memory of.

Since getting the FitBit, I’ve also found something that looks to be an open source equivalent, with even more sensors, the EZ430-Chronos watch from TI. This has accelerometers, temperature monitor, integrated wireless for heart monitor etc, and a wireless interface to a PC. There’s plenty of Open Source code for it, too, with uses from a fitbit-alike, to using the wireless as a door opener and RFID personal item finder! I’ve added it to my Gadgets list, but as I’ve not done anything with the RasberryPI I’ve got (yet), I’m not rushing out to buy it, even at the insanely cheap price of £35! I mean, you can’t buy many normal digital watches for that!

Of course, once you start getting reports on your calorie burning, you start to wonder how much you’re consuming. I tried a couple of Apps and websites, including the Fitbit one, but finally settled on MyFitnessPal.com, as it has iPhone/iPad, Android and web clients, all of which are best for different things. The Android client, for example, has a barcode scanner which makes entering purchased food easily. All of them allow you to enter meals you’ve made yourself, but that’s quite laborious. Fortunately, other people have often done something similar, so you can use that, and guess (which I also tend to do with the portion size). This means my recording is not quite as accurate as it could be, but hey, its better than nothing. MyFitnessPal also links with the FitBit site, so you can feed the movement data from the Fitbit into their site to get an accurate report of how many calories you can consume without going over your consumption ‘limit’.

I’ve found I’m a lot more aware of my eating habits since doing this, and have tended to eat slightly less, and certainly hold back on more food if I’m near my limit. Its also made me realise my portion sizes didn’t need to be as big as they were, so I’ve been able to cut back a bit. Overall, that’s lead to a weight loss of 7kg. Not huge, but hey, its in the right direction, and I think, sustainable.

All of this is a good example of ‘The Quantified Self’, something I’ve read a fair amount about in Fitness For Geeks and ‘64 Things‘.
An example of the Quantified Self approach is this OReilly conference talk summary, or you can go to QuantifiedSelf.com.

Basically, its using data about how you live your life to do more of what you want to be doing, and take better control. Lets see what I’m still doing in a year!

Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health

By Bruce W. Perry

I bought this pretty much the day it came out, if memory serves; I think there was an O Reilly ‘deal of the day’, or bundle, or some-such, and I’d been meaning to get it anyway. I got about a couple of chapters in and the Hugo Voters Packet descended, and I didn’t read much else for a while, but went back to it for something more factual every now and again. Once The Hugo season was over, I got back into it in earnest.

Initially it got off to a good start, with a roundup of some healthy lifestyles, gadgets and so forth, and it was here I was convinced to get a fitbit (this is a whole other post, TBA), and then I hit the chapter on Nutrition.

Nutrition is important, and can underlie a lot of fitness, health and so on, but it was all detail, no relevance. It took almost the rest of the book before nutrition reared its head again, and this time it came with practical advice; it would have been better structured, IMHO, to get the reader interested in all the reasons why they need to monitor their nutrition before wading through fifty pages or so of quasi organic chemistry. That being said, I’m likely to go back to it now that I’m a few months in, and review it, and I suspect it will be of more use on repeated readings. I know the books is in the ‘..for geeks’ series, but this felt like mindless, obsessive trivia rather than useful information. Again, to reiterate, it came good in the end, but it very nearly caused me to give up altogether.

The book definitely hits its stride in the last third of the text; I was genuinely sad when I finished it because I didn’t have more to read. Its also done a good job in establishing the fundamentals – I’ve got a lot to think about, and a lot of places to start looking. I’ve incorporated a lot of his suggestions into my own regime – I’ve even tried Tabata Sprints (and as a consequence I now understand more when an athlete says they exercised until they nearly threw up!).

If I have criticisms (other than the nutrition section), it would be around little emphasis on home rolled tools to monitor assorted health/fitness aspects, tie-ing the assorted websites together, open source tools to monitor the devices/get your own data out and so forth, and a lack of physiological information; if he can go on at length on nutrition, surely a section on the muscles and skeleton of the body is worth a mention – my personal biology is poor, so a guide to the assorted muscles, stretches for each and so forth would have been a useful addition and, the more I think of it, a glaring admission.

Well worth the money I paid though, and I’d definitely recommend, although I suspect its for people already convinced of the need for exercise and health, rather than a clarion call!

I’d include some notes and highlighted terms, but iBooks has decided to only forward a few on, rather than all the ones I’d made; yet another reason to read in PDF with GoodReader for decent annotation tools (can create annotated PDF files)!

Chariots of Fire 2009

My time was a disappointing 11:44 (I’ve done 20 seconds faster in the race, and in the run up training), but then I’d not been putting my heart into the training and couldn’t fire up on the day.  Our team, however, managed a very respectable 1.07.54.

Chariots of Fire 2009