A firefish checking his phone

Reverting to a Single Watch

Byrichard
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Today I asked Google Bard whether I should wear two watches at a time and it told me not to. Specifically it told me not to wear a Garmin watch, and a Suunto watch at the same time as they may interferer with each other and more. Before the Apple Watch I only wore one watch at time. I wore the Suunto Spartan watch. When I got the Apple Watch I started to wear two watches at a time because they feed two different databases and the data is not shared from one to the other.

That Was Before

Recently, I noticed that Sports Tracker plays very nicely with the Apple Watch so it tempted me to play with Suunto again, but Suunto does not play nicely with the Apple Fitness App. Neither the Apple Watch nor the Garmin watch play nicely with each other. The result is that if you want data from Suunto, and Garmin, and Apple, you need to wear three watches, for the three apps. Since I have two wrists I can feed two services at once. We are forced either to wear two or three watches, or give up on collecting data for one service.

What Bard Thinks

When asked whether I should wear a Suunto and a Garmin Google Bard feels that I should pick just one and stick with it. If I ask it how many people wear two watches it tells me:

“There is no definitive answer to this question, as it is difficult to track how many people wear two watches. However, anecdotally, it seems that the number of people who wear two watches is increasing.”

If you are considering wearing two watches, I recommend trying it out and seeing how you feel. There is no harm in experimenting, and you may find that you like it more than you thought you would.

Why Limit Myself

I am not wearing two watches because I like wearing two watches. I am wearing two watches because Garmin and Apple want to force me to wear their devices in order to get data so that I can use their apps. With Sports Tracker, and the Apple watch I can track what I do via the Suunto App and via the Suunto App, I can update Sports tracker and Apple, but not the fitness App.

Data Clashes

The other reason for which I want to reduce the number of watches I wear, down to one, is that Suunto and Apple Fitness data clash, so after a one and a half hour walk the Apple Fitness app says that I have burned one to two hundred calories rather than the 500+ that both fitness trackers agree with. I look eccentric for nothing if I wear the Suunto watch and the Apple watch together.

Bard’s Opinion

As I wrote this blog post I asked Google Bard a number of questions. In so doing I learned that it discourages you from wearing two different brand watches at the same time due to possible interference and more. If you want advice about which to pick though, it will provide you with what makes them different from each other. Google Bard will provide you with a side by side comparison of the key feature differences between two or more watches.

And Finally

The Suunto 5 Peak will become my primary watch. The Garmin Etrex SE can track my walks and hikes, and the Garmin Explore device can track my bike rides. It’s amusing that in all of this thought and consideration I don’t think of Strava, where all of this data is collected anyway. I lost interest in Strava years ago, when I read about venture capitalists investing millions, because at that point the site stopped being on a human level.

Wearing one watch at a time is fine.

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The Romans on Twitter
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The Romans on Twitter

Byrichard

Over a few months I have seen that tweeting about the Romans is growing in frequency. The accounts that I see are tweeting about Roman Britain. They share images of mosaics, digs and new discoveries. It is a way to follow archeology and Ancient history in a modern context.


https://twitter.com/romanmosaics/status/1411934843928199170


By following tweets about the Romans in Britain it is a way of being reminded on a daily basis about new discoveries, new experiences, and new places to visit. It is a way of seeing how extensive Roman Britain was. People walk along the roads, show remnants of ruins and more. They also share the opening times of museums and areas of interest as well as events that may be taking place.


https://twitter.com/FelicityCKnott/status/1411056140721561610


When I was writing about the Romans I had to write articles and posts. I had to do research and I had to make sure that the information I was providing was accurate, and correct. Now, with a tweet you can share information about the Romans without hours of research.


https://twitter.com/Roman_Britain/status/1411730871938437128


It is important to keep history alive, and it is important that such accounts exist because they are a way of making history life. Rather than read a few lines of text in a book we can see images, video and more. We also see that these are things we can experience, if we are at the right place at the right time.


https://twitter.com/PeterCNStewart/status/1411409703574376448


England has a wealth of archeological sites that date back to the Romans so to follow tweets about the Romans in England, is a way of seeing that you do not need to travel to Europe to learn about Roman history. You can learn about it locally, if you know where to look. Accounts like Roman Britain News make this a simple task.

Become A JavaScript Developer Completed and GeoJSON

Become A JavaScript Developer Completed and GeoJSON

Byrichard

We’re in a pandemic, and it makes sense to invest time in learning. I completed the Become a JavaScript Developer course last night and today I played around with some code to see if it worked for what I wanted. It didn’t. I also listened to a live stream which discussed geojson, smapshot and other projects. I like the idea of geotagged data, and an open API to allow for the data to be shared more easily


I could see this as especially useful for climbing, hiking, archeology and other activities. This reminds me of photosynth, mixed in with photogrammetry and other technologies. When images are taken they are geo-tagged but another layer is added, by detecting the angle the picture was taken at. Whether it was looking down, up or in another direction. In other words in three, rather than two dimensions. This is great for modelling, but also for helping people get a sense of the images that they’re looking at. Climbing pictures, where we can see the upward or downward angle would be interesting.


It would also be fun to write a blog post, find the api information, and include that within a geojson file, to provide location info, angle, and other data. This data could then be ported from a photo app, to a hiking app, to a website and more. With more images 3d models become possible. Imagine gathering Via ferrata images and documenting the route.


Of course they can also use this for mapping glacier progress, or regression, coastal erosion and a multitude of other topics. I found this talk really interesting, and I see plenty of uses for such data.

TimeTagger and Christmas

TimeTagger and Christmas

Byrichard

It’s the twenty fourth today, and people who have been good will soon get things, and those who haven’t will get a lump of coal. Given enough pressure that coal could become a diamond. At such a time it’s interesting to take stock of how productive, or unproductive the year has been. One tool with which to do this is timetagger. Timetagger is either a free app, if you set it up on a local machine, or a paying app if you use a cloud services version.

What makes this app interesting is that it allows you to keep track of tasks by title, and tags. Imagine that you’re writing a blog post. You can use writing, blogging and relevant terms to make finding all time spent working on a specific topic quick and easy.

Resume

An interesting feature of this app is that if you work on a task, and then get interrupted to make coffee or for a fire drill you can pause the activity, and then return and set a second start time. You can count the same task and keywords more than once. If you have a task that you do on a regular basis this saves time.

Simple to Use

To start tracking you press play. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking at yesterday or another day. It will automatically start “today”. You then press stop and you’re done.

At the end of the day, week, month or quarter you can see a report for specific tags in isolation, or relevant tags. It’s quick and easy to use.

So far I have tracked twenty hours but by this time next year I will have tracked several hundred. I find that by using this server based app I don’t kill the battery on my phone as fast as before. I start the timer and know precisely what I have been working on. I know by title and tags.

If you’re tracking for yourself then you can add as many tags as you want, but if you’re tracking for a client then avoid using more than one tag, unless requested to use more. I experimented with reports and you can select to see all “linux” time, but you also see secondary tags. This might look less professional if you use this app to track time spent professionally.

If you’re working as a freelancer you can use the name of a client as the tag and log the time you arrive, and the time you leave. Even if you don’t need to give a time sheet you can double check it to make sure that the hours are correct.

A To Do Variant

For a while I was playing with To Do apps. You give yourself tasks that you have to complete on a daily, weekly or other basis and you just tick that you did it. Time tracking is taking the To Do list a step further. You’re actually tracking the time that you spend on a task, daily fo weeks or months at a time. It’s important to account for the time you spent, not just what you did.

It’s a good habit to have, whether you’re being paid to track or not. If you get into this habit, in your free time it will be able to do this automatically when you can justify your hours. This app only allows you to track one activity at a time. You can start a second activity but it will pause the first. You can’t track “Time spent in the office”, and then “time spent on a sub task”, at the office.

Self Hosting vs Paid Solution

Self hosting is free but you need to configure the app, and make it accessible when you’re away from the server. With paid solution, for three francs per month you have access from anywhere.

And Finally

With this app you can track the time you spend filming an event, and then you can track the time you spend ingesting footage, logging and more. You can track the time you spend editing and then the time you spend exporting the video files. You can then track time spent on modifications. The application is highly modular and you can start and stop timers with ease, and tag tasks.

The beauty of self-hosting on your local network is that the data is private. No one can use it, other than you, and those you hand reports to. Other solutions may use AI and other tools to quantify the data you give them.

With TimeLogger you could track “learning Linux” or “Learning German”. With this you can track “learning ‘irgendwie’, ‘irgendwo’, ‘irgendwas'” and more. It’s as modular as you want it to be.

The WordPress Fediverse Instance. 

The WordPress Fediverse Instance. 

Byrichard

For weeks, or even months, I have had the activitypub plugin installed on my blog and after the creator of that plugin asked us to check how many friends we had I noticed that my wordpress blog was working as a Fediverse instance. 


What This Means


When I noticed that my blog had a username and that I could follow it I did, and when I posted a blog post that blog post appeared in my Calckey timeline. The blog post that I wrote displays as a note on Calckey, that people can read with ease, without leaving the comfort of their Fediverse instance. 


It means that the blog I have been writing since around 2004 is now a fediverse server, with minimal effort. Add the plugin to any wordpress blog and your site becomes part of the fediverse. Any platform that plays nicely with WordPress now has the potential to be an instance. This lowers the bar. 


No Need For Bots


Every time I write a blog post, from now on, it will be added to the fediverse as a post that people can interact with. I don’t need to write any scripts. I don’t need to make any API requests, or anything else. I write a post, publish, and I’m done. This streamlines the process for all content creators. 


The Drawback


Wordpress works fine as a Fediverse instance as long as you don’t want to comment, or reply to comments on your posts. It will share content in one direction, not two. 


Another drawback is that heading information is lost when it is converted from a blog post to a fediverse post in a fediverse timeline. The h2 and other header types are lost. It would be nice to transfer this information across too. 


Writing in a Vacuum


When Auttomatic dumped Twitter for being too expensive it made blogs more quiet. That traffic dried up. By adding ActivityPub though they made wordpress integration with the Fediverse seamless. If you share to Facebook, Reddit or Twitter you need to actively share it. You need to say “I want to share to Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. 


With ActityPub it is built in, once you have installed the plugin. I came across this integration because I was trying to see friends information within the app. Following and reading my blog requires a single click and people can read every post from that moment on. My blog is now fully integrated within the Fediverse. People can read it without ads on the fediverse, or see it with ads on my server. 


And Finally


I usually don’t like bots that feed clickbait into social media timelines because they’re noisy and a waste of time, requiring you to click to another site, see the clickbait, and then return. With activityPub for Wordpress your blog is the instance. You post only to your server, and others can opt in. This is important to me. It’s my instance, my cost. The follow cost to my blog is low, one post per day. 

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