A Raspberry Pi 4, top, and Pi 5, bottom.

Experimenting with Paperless

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

As I was experimenting with a Pi zero 2W I came across Paperless NG which is a simple to install app that allows you to catalogue paperwork automatically on a local machine rather than in the Tech Giant Clouds like Google, Amazon, Apple et al. It didn’t like being installed on the Pi Zero so I installed it on the Pi5 and it works well.

The aim of the app Paperless is simple. Every time you get a letter or document you can upload a photo of it, a PDF, or other form of files, and it will run OCR to read the content, establish who the correspondent is, and help to automatically catalogue your correspondences over time. In this way you get a letter, scan it, feed it to paperless, and it will keep an organised record of correspondences from this moment on.

The advantage of this app over projects like Nextcloud is that it has a specific purpose so you can use it to deal specifically with documents. The more you use it, the more intelligent it becomes, and the more practical it becomes. If you’re lazy a photo is good enough for OCR to work, and if you’re more meticulous you can scan documents and have them automatically catalogued.

And Finally

At the best of times paperwork can be boring, and at the worst of times it can be stressful. With a solution such as this you can scan documents in seconds, and OCR will take care of the rest. When it comes time to fill in tax documents everything is ready and waiting. Instead of taking hours to find bits of paper, everything is a keyword away.

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The Suunto 5 Peak and Suunto App
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The Suunto 5 Peak and Suunto App

Byrichard

A few weeks, or even months ago, I noticed that the Suunto and Sports Tracker apps play very nicely with the Apple watch, especially Sports Tracker. For this reason I spent quite a bit of time playing with the sports tracker app with the iphone. In fact it almost convinced me that I would get a new apple watch, to play with sports tracker.

Apple Watches are Expensive

The Series Four Apple Watch I have now is over four years old with a charge cycle every day of those four years. As a result of this the charge does not last as long as it used to. It barely survives the day now. It loses 25 percent when I’m sleeping with it on my wrist.

I considered replacing the Series Four with the SE because the SE is the cheapest apple watch available but it’s still over three hundred francs. The Garmin 45s is about 150 CHF and so is the Suunto Peak 5. The Garmin 45s is a speciality watch, focused mainly on running, and to give you VO2 max info. The battery lasts a day or two before it is desperate for a new charge.

Buyer’s Remorse with Garmin

Although I like the Garmin Instinct now I had problems with the Garmin Etrex 32, the Garmin Instinct, and was disappointed by the Garmin 45s. I wasn’t so happy with the strap, with battery life and with visible GPS mistakes. I am happy with the Etrex SE but it still feels a little limited, unless you love geocaching. If you like geocaching then this device is awesome. I am not yet a fan of geocaching.

The Suunto App

I have been tracking workouts with Sports Tracker, which was then bought by Suunto before becoming the Suunto App and they have recently used AI to provide a text based coach. It tells you how you’ve been sleeping, how you’ve been working out, what type of workout you’re doing and more. It also provides a heat map of your workouts for the previous month automatically, without paying a premium, since you already paid for their watch, via the Suunto app. The Sports Tracker does want payment for certain features.

The Suunto Peak 5

For a while I was sad to see that Suunto had dumped their watch os for Android’s watch OS instead and I expected them to fold and give up. It has been a few years since then and Suunto is still around and adding features, which is why I decided to plunge and revert to Suunto watches. The Suunto Peak 5 is the cheapest watch they sell, for 139 CHF if you’re not bothered by colour and looks.

I have now worn the watch for several days and worn it 24 hours a day for several days, with no wrist problems, skin problems, app problems or battery problems. It did nag me twice. It nagged me once for starting a workout without waiting for the wrist HR monitor to be ready, and a second time for not waiting for the GPS to be ready. Other than that it has been fine

What I’ve tracked

I have tracked at least two walks, two bike rides and more. I have also used it as a timer and alarm clock and these features worked fine too. It took a few days before I setup the sleep function but for two or three days my sleep has been tracked.

Compared to the Spartan Wrist HR Baro

Compared to the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro it’s small and elegant. It fits nicely on the wrist. Instead of having a strap that has a think through which you thread the strap it has a button, like with the apple watch but for the end of the strap. It doesn’t flap around or get loose when you’re showering or doing sports. With the Garmin Instinct and other watches it’s easy for the strap to come lose and flap around.

No Buyer’s Remorse, So Far

The Suunto Peak 5 is not a new watch. It has been around for years. I didn’t get it because I was annoyed that Suunto had changed OS, but also because I felt that it was not an upgrade compared to the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR baro. It has fewer features but that can be used for fitness training. Due to the heatwave I haven’t been pushing as hard as I would with lower temperatures.

Amused by the Old Charger

One of the surprises when I opened the packaging was the charging cable. It’s the same as I had for the ambit 3 and other devices, rather than the spartan. The new cable is shorter though, so it’s nice that I can now choose between using the old charging cable when I need more reach, or the new one when I want to save on weight, or waste less energy on cable resistance.

The Case for Cheaper Watches

The range in price for Suunto watches is from 139 CHF for the Suunto Peak 5 to over 800 CHF for the Peak 9. The normal range is from 300 CHF upwards. In contrast the Apple Watch SE starts from 255 CHF upwards, but it has to be charged almost daily and it is fragile.

In my experience, and as you can read from certain reviews watches like the Peak 5 cost less but give the same user experience as the more expensive watches. Several reviews speak about how good the GPS is, and how light the watch is. They also speak about how good the battery is. It’s ideal for my use case.

And Finally

The Suunto 5 Peak, despite being a cheap watch provides a lot of functionality. The Garmin 45s is cheaper, lighter, and smaller, but it doesn’t feel as well finished and the GPS is more erratic. As I struggled with the conclusion to this blog post I checked the GPS track of my walk yesterday. I was geocaching at two points so I looked at the squiggles when I was under trees and a bridge and the tracks are crisp. I am using GPS and Galileo combined.

So far I am very happy with the Suunto 5 Peak. If you’re looking for a low cost tracker, to use daily, then it works well.

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Arte have a twitter channel for their programs

Byrichard

A few days ago I noticed that twitter was tweeting their programs as they were on in German and this looked like a good idea. I commented it was a shame that they didn’t have the same in French. Within a few days it’s there. This morning I saw Arte’s tweet for one program and so I’m watching a guy play some Chopin on the Piano.

I spend quite a bit of time watching the twitter stream so if someone gives me their program details, as an opt in then there’s a good chance that I will tune into the program on the spare of the moment.

If I had intended to watch the program at 2038 in three days time I would have forgottten about it. As things are that’s what’s playing on the right side of my screen now.

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Ingress and the Sony Xperia Z3

Byrichard

Ingress is a game that requires a data connection, GPS data and the screen to be on. As a result of this battery consumption is high. Earlier today I took the Sony Xperia Z3 out in the rain and played for two solid hours non stop walking from portal to portal and the battery was at 50 percent. This is excellent compared to other devices.

Screenshot_2014-12-14-16-25-59 Screenshot_2014-12-13-20-16-29

 

The phone is also waterproof to a depth of one meter therefore the rain we had this afternoon was no hindrance to game play. Every so often I had to wipe the screen as the touch screen stopped functioning as well as it should due to the signals it was getting from the rain.

 

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Why Audiovisual Content That’s Not On-Demand is Dead to Me

Byrichard

I’m online from 10-15hrs  a day on average and as a result I’m used to having everything available within a short amount of time. I also had access to a PVR with a hard disk upgrade for quite a long time. As a result of both these developments anything that is not available to me when I want to watch it goes unnoticed. That’s because “It’s an on-demand world” as was concluded in one edit I worked on for a client about the future of broadcasting.


From a young age I had quite a choice of channels. Some were French, some were Italian and others were German. That’s because it’s Geneva and you get the French tv channels as well as the Swiss national channels. That’s access to about 7 channels over the air in analog form. With Sky digital the number of channels increased from 10-30 and finally to several thousand. Recently Sky started to broadcast a greater range of international content.


The next move was the PVR. The ability to record up to three hundred hours of program content to disk from two receivers at once. If you allow for a backlog to develop then you’ve got a fake video on demand on service. That’s great. It means that when you know which programs you want to watch the machine will take care of it.


A cheap version of this is available online through platforms such as Itunes where it’s powered by RSS feeds. At the beginning you’ve got very little content as you learn more about the technology but over time you end up with over four hundred podcasts in the back catalog. That’s quite a bit of choice.


Youtube, Revver, Myspace, Dailymotion are true video-on-demand services in browser form. Each of these websites allows you to download and watch thousands of short video clips without a dedicated time. That’s great. A housemate wanted to watch some comedy so we went to youtube, downloaded, and watched a selection of programs on demand.


Of course, the next step is Joost like platforms. It’s like a television channel but you can select when it’s convenient to watch the program rather than setting your life around the program.


There are two reasons for this. The first is an increase in capacity. The second is progress in technology.  We went from having four channels to 10 times that number with Freeview and with satellite broadcasting we’ve gone from 20 channels to several thousand. We’ve also gone from one user interface, the television set with five channels to the computer, and unlimited choice. That’s why media content that is not on-demand is almost dead to me.

Playing with StatsHunters

Playing with StatsHunters

Byrichard

Today I saw a link to Stats Hunters on the Google App so I clicked through on a laptop, once I was sitting at a computer. This is an app that looks at Strava data and gives you a summary of how many activities you’ve done as well as how far you have travelled. 


According to the data this Strava add on can access I have 2753 logged activities with a total distance of 25,l404 kilometres. November 2018 was my best month with 898 kilometres travelled. I think this was kilometres ridden on Zwift if I remember correctly. 


My longest ride was La Visit Horlogère where I cycled from around Nyon to Le Post, around the Lac de Joux and back down via St Cergue. 


The biggest vertical gain in a day of hiking was the EuropaWeg part 1 where I gained 1803.2m of altitude. 


It’s fun to see the distance per year graph because my best year was 2775km of distance travelled. For context I had 2775 in 2019, 2487 in 2020, 2267 in 2021 and 2499km in 2022. The pandemic has really affected how far I travel by bike and by foot, despite hardly driving to do any of these activities.  We should not ignore how much we can do, without touching a car. 


You can see a breakdown per week for the last year if you want to., 


The general stats are interesting. My average distance per activity is 9.23 kilometres. My average speed is 9.29 km/h. My maximum speed is wrong, because that’s when I played with a GPS watch in a plane. 


The website gives a lot more information than I am exploring in this blog post. It’s interesting to see the hour stats. This tells you at what times of the day you are most active. 


In the type statistics you can select from moving time, distance and other factors. My walking habit accounts for 36.8 percent of sports, with hiking accountiing for 28 percent. That is 64.8 percent of my sporting time. Bike rides account for 20 percent and running for 4 percent. 


According to some stats I have done 2639 activities of 0-35km, 107 between 35-70km and 7 between 70-105km. The main reason for this is the mountainous nature of the landscape. If it was possible to do longer distances without too much climbing then I would. 


And finally


Although I have done no group activities for years now, my sporting habit endures, and has thrived. I have done so much more now that I don’t wait for the weekend to do things with others. Solitude is not a reason to do nothing. It is a reason to do more. I like the data trends that this app shows. 

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