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A book on Sleep and Sleep Tracking Apps

Byrichard

Why We Sleep

Sleep is something that we do almost every day and yet explore it only superficially. We either say “I should go to sleep” or “I wish I had slept longer”. Recently I read “Why We Sleep”. It’s an interesting book because it explores the topic in such depth. I learned that birds sleep on power lines and the birds on the right and the left of the group are sleeping with one eye open. Half of their brain is sleeping whilst the other half is awake. Half way through the sleep cycle they hop around and the other eye is opened and that half of the brain takes over. Sleep is a fascinating topic.

Sleep As Android

I have been playing with two apps for over a year now. One of these is Sleep As Android. When I first started using this app it required being placed in the bed to detect when I moved. Over time they developed technology so that it uses “sonar” to detect when we move during the night. Thanks to the “sonar” feature I can keep the phone up to a metre away from me.

I might have tracked up to 576 nights of sleep with this app. With this app I can see the duration, the irregularity, how much of my sleep cycle is deep, how efficient it is and how I rate it. It shows my how bad or good my sleep deficit is and what my chronotype is. According to the app I am a morning lark.

This app gives advice. This app believes that to maximise sleep I should go to sleep at 23:15 and that to maximise deep sleep I should sleep 8hrs 10.

Sleep Cycle

Another app I have played with extensively is Sleep Cycle. I used this app to track my sleep for several hundred nights of which six months was whilst working as an aircraft deicer. This is relevant because I was trying to go to sleep for 1800 and waking for 2am. Of course, I usually went to sleep around 2000 or so. I mention this because if any sleep specialists read this blog I am ready to share the data. Since then I have gone back to sleeping more pleasant hours.

This app provides you with a sleep graph per night, the time you went to bed and got up, sleep quality, time with noise, sleep notes, wake up mood, heart rate, step count and total nights tracked. I have tracked 303 nights of sleep with the app.

When you look at the trends tab you can see sleep quality and you can compare it with entire countries. You can track how regular your “went to bed” graph is, how much time you spent in bed, the time at which you woke up, what factors result in better sleep, decreased sleep, weather effect, air pressure, moon and location. You can also track your heart rate when you wake up. My average is currently 47 bpm, average in Switzerland is 67, Denmark, 65 and Turkey 73. The heart rate measurement comes from shining light through your finger and the phone detecting the change in colour per heartbeat.

Apparently, my best night of sleep is on a Tuesday and it gets progressively worse as the week wears on.

 

The Suunto Spartan Wrist HR
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The Suunto Spartan Wrist HR

Byrichard

Suunto Spartan Wrist HR

My latest Suunto device is the Suunto Spartan Wrist Hr. This is a practical device that finally includes two features that I really wanted to see in a suunto device. The first of these is the Wrist heart rate monitor function and the second is a step counter that tracks physical effort on a daily basis and that can be reviewed later.

Used for a multitude of sports.

I have used this device to track hikes, runs, indoor climbing, outdoor climbing, walks within cities and 7 minute workouts. Two of the devices strengths is that I no longer need to wear the heart rate monitor belt. This saves a few seconds and when you’re hiking or doing other activities with groups this is a nice feature. The second nice feature is that it detects GPS signals and provides a position within seconds. This means that you don’t need to wait or two like you needed to with the Suunto Ambit 3 and others.

Fitbit replacement

I have owned a number of fitbit devices and I liked that they tracked step count and heart rate 24 hours a day but I did not like that the data was siloed. I also disliked that most of their devices are not shower proof. This means that you need to take them off every single day. With the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR I can wear it 24 hours a day and keep track of my movements throughout the day for multiple days between charges. I can also keep track of data for the day, the week and longer periods of time. In effect it has allowed me to stop using the Suunto Ambit three and the Fitbit charge 2 in tandem. I am back to wearing just one device.

Movescount and Sports tracker combined

I am currently beta testing the Suunto Version 0.4.0 app and it now combines Movescount and Sports tracker, two apps that I have now been using to track fitness activities for years. I have been using sports tracker since it was available on the Nokia N95 8gb. I am now at over 1100 tracked activities and I like the data that both apps provide. Combining both apps is a nice move forward.

A list of drones I have tried this year.

A list of drones I have tried this year.

Byrichard

Trying various drones

This year I finally bought a few drones to play with and DJI and Hubsan are currently my favourite brands. The most fun to fly indoors is the Hubsan Nano Q111 drone, or something to that effect. At first this is a hard and temperamental little drone to fly. Just getting it off the ground is a challenge., This challenge comes from the fact that it has no pilot assistance. It slews to the right and the left and it has no altitude hold. This means that constant little inputs are needed. As the battery depletes you need to give the drone more power simply to hover. With practice the drone is really fun and best of all I didn’t break any props. I only burned out two of the motors when the drone got caught in something.

I tried flying the Q4 as well but the results were disappointing.

I tried flying the Demon something by some brand and this was a flop. The problem with this drone is that the props are well protected against colliding with things but the struts are too fragile. Within just a flight or two I broke the strut to one of the props and it is now great at spinning in place rather than flying.

DJI

Earlier this year I saw someone fly the DJI Mavic pro during the IFSC World cup and when I saw how easy it seemed to fly my interest grew exponentially. I saw that it could guide itself back to it’s take off point and was autonomous. For a while I hesitated about buying my own drone until I finally decided to buy the DJI Spark. This is a really fun drone to fly. It’s simple and intuitive to use and it provides great images. I have now flown it in France, Spain and Switzerland. What makes this drone so great is that it’s tiny, ideally suited for when I go hiking and to do other sports. I have 7 batteries for a total flying time of 105 minutes. I calculate three batteries per day and one spare. I am now at my 99th “flight” with that drone, My next flight will be number 100. We’ll see how I celebrate that.

Addressing the Stigma

There is a lot of stigma around drones. People are afraid that they will be used for spying, that they can be used as weapons, that they can interfere with aviation. The truth is that most drones are small and light and that the lens is wide therefore they can be heard from a distance. People refer to the sound they make as that of a large bumblebee. Not only can you hear them but you can also see them quite easily. Rules are in place to prevent us from flying above 120 metres in most countries, around cities and above crowds. We also have to fly them within visual range. This means that whenever people can see the drone they can see us. They can ask us to stop flying or they can ask questions.

As drone enthusiasts, we can work as ambassadors to show that drones are not the stigmatised devices that they were encouraged to fear. We can show them the beautiful images and videos we can get and we can also show them that some of them are relatively easy to fly. The better we behave as early adopters the fewer restrictions we will see implemented down the road. We have a moral duty to obey the rules and sensibilise the lay public to how much fun they can be.

 

 

Flying the DJI Spark is fun

Flying the DJI Spark is fun

Byrichard

My most recent flight with the DJI Spark was fun. As I forgot the miniSD card I decided just to fly it in sports mode over some empty fields. I ended up flying over 4km within visual range. It was fast, responsive and behaved just as I wanted it to.

Indoor flying

Flying the drone indoors is possible. Thanks to its downward facing cameras and proximity sensors it detects when it flies too close to objects and stops. It does have the weakness that if it detects objects below it or objects ahead of it it will back and rise. As it has no upward looking sensors and no sensors looking behind or to the sides the risk of collisions increases. For these reasons flying indoors is more demanding. It also displaces a large volume of air. It will shift light objects so be careful what you fly over.

Outdoor flying

Every September the cows come down from the mountains and I decided to fly over them to get an original perspective. The advantage of filming swiss cows with a drone is that they’re wearing loud and noisy bells. This means that the drone is not noisy enough to be heard.

As there are fewer flight restrictions I flew over the Jura mountains and the footage I got was nice. I often use PolarPro ND filters and tweak the images in post production. The reason for this is that the dynamic range on this camera is low compared to others and the ND filters help the camera cope. I bring the blacks up, lower the highlights and adjust the mid tones slightly. The result is images such as you see in the video below.

It takes practice to get smooth shots. The controls are not as gradual as I would like so I sometimes cut from shot to shot when the camera is already moving at the desired speed. With time and practice, I aim to start and stop shots smoothly.

Small and portable

This drone is small and portable. It can easily fit into your hiking bag and with a few spare batteries, you can get some nice shots whilst hiking.Each battery lasts for about fifteen minutes so having 3-4 batteries should give you the desired flexibility. I usually take off from the ground after it has acquired 10 GPS or more. I then fly it, get the desired shots and then land it in my hand. When landing I don’t use the return to palm control. I get it close to me and then select land. I let it come down on my fingers and let it throttle down. This is a useful feature for when you are flying on a mountainside as there may be no suitable landing spots.

 

Drone Rules and regulations

Before flying the drone I study the flight rules and regulations for the country where I am flying. If you are flying in Switzerland then I suggest using this website to quickly identify what restrictions are in place before you fly. I also use this website to see what rules and regulations are in place before flying in France. In theory, the DJI maps provide you with this information already but in my experience, they are not as up to date as the Government flight restriction maps for drones.

 

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The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone

Byrichard

The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone is a tiny drone

The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone is a tiny drone. It is not much more than a flying circuit board with four engines, a battery and a cowling. It is very light and fits easily on the screen of an iphone SE, along with it’s controller. Such a small drone requires practice to fly properly. This is because there are no flight assists. When you take off you need to apply just the right amount of thrust to hover and you need to make small adjustments to keep it from drifting. With practice you gain control of the quadcopter.

Constant adjustments

I found that when taking off it is good to get above the ground effect. This is because when it is within the ground effect zone it tends to skim in one direction or the other. Once you’re at 30 centimetres it becomes more stable. Keeping it at a specific height takes tiny thrust adjustements. As the battery depletes you need to give more thrust for it to stay at the same height or rise. Eventually it runs out of thrust and drifts to the ground.

When you turn the drone on the lights flash and when you turn the controller on the light on the controller flashes red for a few seconds. Once the controller and the drone are paired the light turns green. The thrust control does not spring back to neutral so if and when you feel that the drone is about to crash throttle to zero.

More demanding to fly than the Spark but a lot cheaper

Having a tiny drone like the Nano Qç H111 is fun to get to grips with flying a drone although it could be frustrating at first. With drones like the DJI spark you can get the drone to take off automatically and it keeps itself in place using GPS, onboard cameras, sensors and more. If you lose control with a spark you just let go of the controls. With the Q4 H111 you you have to compensate and counteract the issue.

 

At 30CHF you’re not taking a big financial risk and props are available if you break them.

 

Manu Chao At Paléo
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Manu Chao At Paléo

Byrichard

The Manu Chao Concert

Manu Chao was on the Grande Scène at Paléo last night. His concert lasted for an energetic two hours. He kept saying”Vous êtes Fou, Paléo”. He gave a lot of energy and so did the audience. For two hours he jumped around, for two hours the audience jumped around too. The sea of faces and people were impressive. In the distance you could see pac-man and a few ghosts bobbing up and down with the music.

Online sharing has evolved

While I was at this year’s Paléo two things were different. The first is that we now have unlimited data plans. When I was last at a Paléo Manu Chao concert we had limited data plans and it was a geeky thing to share to stream the event. Today you see that many people are sharing the event with their facebook friends. The other difference is that we are now capturing Paléo souvenirs in 4K and sharing panoramas with our friends.

Panoramas

When you take panoramas and share them to facebook the image pans as you pan the mobile phone. I tried creating panoramas during a few of the concerts. The image above was created with an Iphone SE and the inbuilt panorama function. It works well as long as you’re lucky enough not to have sudden changes in light.

I like panoramas because you’re in control. You can pan the camera to see what you want to see. It’s also a means by which to get context.

Affinity Photo Panorama

Affinity Photo is a photo editing software that I bought when it was on promotion. It has a panorama function to stitch multiple images together. During one concert I took a series of pictures looking up and down. When I got home I used the panorama function and this is the result.

The Right side of the transmission chain – acquisition
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The Right side of the transmission chain – acquisition

Byrichard

The right side of the Transmission Chain is at the event itself.  Transmission chain is a term used to describe the route that a signal takes from an event venue to the device on which you are watching an event. As a camera operator the right side of the transmission chain for me is at the event itself.

Belaying

For the IFSC World Cup in Villars this year I was both a camera operator and a belayer. Belaying at a world cup event is an interesting experience because it’s rare to clip and unclip from so many climbers in such a short amount of time. Climbers have a limited time to get up the route. They have six minutes. This means that every 12 minutes or so you’re belaying a new climber as they progress up the wall. It’s a great task for introverts. You observe what the person is doing. When they need rope you’re ready to give it. If they’re struggling you make sure to amortise their fall. When they make it to the top or come back down you help them untie the rope and then you start again.

Camera operating

Aside from this task I was camera operator during the semi-final and final of the climbing competition.  This means that whilst most people were standing in the crowd watching the competition I was on a podium in the middle of the crowd filming the climbers as they progress up the wall.

From here you see the crowd and you see the climbers from a privileged point of view. You can see the climbers and what they are doing comfortably. You’re also more attentive. You’re following their every move, watching as they clip and progress. You see them progress and you hear the commentator and hear the crowd cheering.

When you’re on the “wrong” side of the transmission you’re hearing the international sound and you’re seeing what the vision mixer is seeing but you’re not seeing the event in context. The image below illustrates this.

In television broadcasting you usually have the cameras, an OB van and an SNG truck or fibre connections. These go from the venue to the Network Operating centre. The signal is encoded either for web streaming and sent to the content distribution network or it is sent on to national broadcasters. On that side of the transmission chain you are in an air conditioned office as a passive observer ready to react if there is an issue and waiting for the event to end.

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Thoughts on Google’s fine.

Byrichard

In a Facebook dominated world, in a world where people see Facebook and the Internet as the same thing it saddens me that Google gets a 2.7 Billion Euro fine when Google is an excellent source to search for products, reviews and the best deal.

 

“What Google has done is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules,” Ms. Vestager said in a statement on Tuesday. “It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.”

source

As a geeky consumer the website that I used most frequently to shop for electronics is toppreise, a swiss price comparison website. With that site I can usually find much better prices than if I was searching on Google, and best of all the products I order via the websites they recommend are based in Switzerland. Thanks to Google Translate in the Chrome web browser I am able to order from German web stores despite their providing content only in German. It is thanks to Google that I can get the best value for money.

 


If Google has a monopoly then this says more about the web user than the price comparison and shopping landscape online. I hardly ever, if ever click on Google ads when I carry out a web search for the simple reason that most of them are not available in Switzerland anyway.

If people are buying from Google, Amazon, Kobo and other websites then European businesses are suffering. Fnac, Mediamarkt and other companies are based in various European countries so consumers, who are well informed do have a variety of choices if they are not lazy.

As a blogger and content creator my biggest frustration is that we no longer have people jumping from website to website like we used to when Google was dominant. With websites we would be generating income for each other. In the age of Facebook we generate content, we attract our friends, and they make money off of our backs, off of our time invested. It’s precisely for this reason that I started blogging daily. It was to try to redistribute some of that income.

Facebook deserves a bigger fine than does Google in my humble opinion and based on my experiences.

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Clean Water for Hikes and cycling, without the weight

Byrichard

Clean water is important to have when you’re cycling, hiking or climbing in summer but the issue is that it is heavy. When I go cycling I go with just one flask and I fill up the water bottle when I get to fountains that are marked as safe to drink from. When I go hiking or climbing I usually do not go with more than one and a half litres of water although I have gone with up to three litres for a hot summer day’s activities when the temperature is above 32°c.

In Switzerland, France and Italy you theoretically do not need to walk with that much water because you cross streams, fountains, rivers and lakes. If you had a water filtration system you could theoretically purify the water from these sources and continue hiking. Yesterday I came across Katadyn and two solutions for water filtration.

Katadyn BeFree

The Katadyn BeFree is a collapsible water bottle system that you fill from unfiltered water and then filter as you drink. This system also allows you to refill clean water containers within a very short lapse of time. It takes very little space in your bag and it’s light. It’s easy to have this with you at all time. It would be practical for cycling and climbing. You leave home with clean tap water and when you run out of clean water you fill this system and squeeze clean water in to your clean water bottle and continue the day’s activities. I have seen this system for 45 CHF in Switzerland.

Katadyn Hiker Pro

The Katadyn Hiker Pro is a slightly more expensive but portable solution. It allows you to filter water straight from a river, stream or lake to a clean water recipient.  It has a first filter on the hose that goes from the water source to the pump. The pump has a pre-filter to get rid of any sediment still suspended in water and the third filter filters out almost all bacteria. Clean water then flows from the pump to the clean water container. If you’re climbing near a river or exploring a via ferrata near a waterfall then the need to carry water is reduced.

SteriPen Water purifiers

According to this article you can go a step further to stay safe. Almost every article and review mentions that the two systems above are not designed to kill viruses. If you want to go that extra step then you have the Steripen Aqua UV Water purifier.  It is meant to kill almost all bacteria and viruses. The link is to the cheapest model. The second option is to boil water.

“Boiling can be used as a pathogen reduction method that should kill all pathogens. Water should be brought to a rolling boil for 1 minute. At altitudes greater than 6,562 feet (greater than 2000 meters), you should boil water for 3 minutes.Apr 10, 2009” source:

Water Quality maps

If you’re going to drink river or lake water in Switzerland this document from March, 2017 provides maps with water quality information. In some areas waters may be contaminated with chemicals or pesticides and it is good to check that cattle are not upstream of your water source.

For a more recent article: How To choose A Water Purifier or Filter for Backpacking.

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European Identity and Free Roaming

Byrichard

European Identity will benefit greatly from free-roaming. Today roaming fees between European countries have been scrapped. This means that your mobile phone is the same whatever country you go to. It means that you will have the same access to minutes and data. When you travel you will no longer need to change app permissions to reduce data cost. It also means that your images keep backing up via your data plan.

Navigation and gaming

It means that you can use apps like waze, TomTom Go and others as you cross from one country to the next, and the next after that. When you’re playing a game like Ingress, Pokemon Go and others you will no longer need to buy a new sim card for every country. I use Waze in Switzerland and Tomtom go abroad to save on data but with Tomtom Go I only get traffic data when I have data.

Reviews and information

Google Local Guides, TripAdvisor and other apps will benefit from free roaming across Europe because when we travel we visit new restaurants, new bars, new museums, new village squares, hotels and campings. Many of them already offer wifi but now there will be no need for that wifi as we will be able to contribute at the end of the experience rather than in the evening when we get back to where we’re staying.

Walking is one of the key activities when travelling. You can easy get from 20-50,000 steps a day, especially if you’re doing Ingress missions but also as you look for a restaurant that looks or smells okay and with local cars parked in front. The only issue is that in towns cars can’t park in front of restaurants. With free roaming we can check reviews and leave our own feedback.

Roaming Free Europe is great because it means that we no longer need to buy sim cards that we use for a week or two. Switzerland is slowly aligning to roaming free tariffs.