A speed radat that detected my walking speed

Seventy Kilometres Later – Adapting to Barefoot Shoes

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

I walk from three to fie million steps per year. In doing so I wear through shoes and through socks every six months or less. It makes sense that I would experiment with barefoot shoes since I spend so much time walking. 

The Experience

Initially I tried the Vapor Glove 6 and I was able to walk my usual routes without trouble. I did find one surface where it felt as though the shoes were not adapted to the weathered road conditions and that’s part of the reason I decided to try others. I also found that with the Vapor Glove 6 I could feel my heel stomp onto the hard road surface and I really had to be attentive to changing my walking style overnight. 

Of course, changing from one walking style to another is a challenge. That’s where the Trail Glove 7 come into play. Their sole is 14mm or so, rather than six. This makes a huge difference with my walking style.  With the Trail Glove 7 I have already walked 51 kilometres with ease. Contrast this to 19 in the Vapor Glove 6. The Trail Glove 7 are well suited to my walking style. I’m a strider, and as a strider I use my heel a lot. 

Driving

As a little aside I have tried driving to the shops and back with both pairs of shoes but find that the Vapor Gloves are slightly too soft for driving. It’s better to wear Trail Gloves. I know that flip flops are not recommended for driving. I’m not sure about sandals.  

Walking Style and Pace

If I was walking with people walking at a normal pace, and for smaller distances then the Vapor Glove would be fine. The issue with the Vapor Glove is simply that it has no heel amortisation. The rubber, even with socks is too thin. I need to consciously think of every step. When you walk 12,000 steps it becomes a challenge.  With Trail Glove shoes adaptation is gradual, especially with 10km daily walks. I really like wearing Trail Glove shoes.  

Conclusion

Although I like the idea of wearing shoes that are as minimal as the Vapor Gloves I prefer the Trail Gloves, for now. They allow me to get used to the act of walking “barefoot” without destroying my heels. The biggest hurdle for me is to adapt my gait to be barefoot shoe friendly. I hope that the wear pattern on my normal shoes will change. 

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JSON-LD and a Walk

JSON-LD and a Walk

Byrichard

A conventional tech blogger would usually just write about JSON-LD and completely ignore the fact that they went on a walk. I like to combine the two. JSON-LD, short for JSON Linked Document is an agreement for certain data fields to be used for specific purposes. The idea is to standardise terms within a database to make the sharing of data easier.


When you work with databases and data it is important to define what the schema will be. A schema is like a template but with data fields. It is an agreement, or requirement to have specific data about a product, asset or other.


For example for a book you will have


  • Title
  • Author
  • Date published
  • ISBN
  • Publisher
  • Location Published
  • Price
  • Description
  • Synopsis
  • Language and more.


A schema ensures that all fields are entered. This ensures that useful information is either A)Not forgotten and B)All entries look the same on a webpage. If you think I’m verbose look at Schema.org’s entry for book fields. By following these instructions data is interchangeable between all websites, without the need to re-map data


JSON-LD is a lightweight Linked Data format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is based on the already successful JSON format and provides a way to help JSON data interoperate at Web-scale. JSON-LD is an ideal data format for programming environments, REST Web services, and unstructured databases such as Apache CouchDB and MongoDB.

JSON-LD org: https://json-ld.org/


A Use Case


When I worked as a media asset manager we had to think about how to map data between a media asset management tool and a CMS. This required finding a way to map the data so that it would be compatible between databases. If done well databases can feed themselves, without the need for humans to do the tedious work of data entry, especially when thousands of data entries with dozens of fields each are involved.


On a smaller scale it means that we can create a webpage, setup a schema, add it to the top of the page, and search engines will know what the page contains, more efficiently. On WordPress it works automatically once you add the right plugin.


Experiment with JSON-LD


If you’d like to experiment with JSON-LD then you can try this site. It provides a quick way to enter data, and see the resultant JSON-LD data, which you can then paste in a web page.


The Walk


Today I saw quite a few contrails in the sky as I walked between villages. The weather is windy, but as usual the sun is out. I am going through my usual alternate route these days. It takes me through houses, rather than along the road. It is always worth updating routes, although I think that the new route might be shorter. I see that the route I took today is around 3 kilometres shorter than another. I cheated myself of an extra half hour of walking. It gives me more time to do other things.


The GBD-800 Continued

The GBD-800 Continued

Byrichard

The GBD-800 Continued is a step counting Casio with two serious flaws. The first of these flaws is that although the GPS from the phone can be used to map walks and other activities it has to be activated at the start of a walk and deactivated at the end of the walk. If you do not deactivate the GPS it will track the drive to and from the start of the walk, to the end of the walk. This isn’t ideal unless you’re on a multi-day hike.


The second flaw, and this is a real shame is that the watch does count every single step you take, and possibly more, but it doesn’t offload the data anywhere. It doesn’t connect to Google Fit, Apple Health or any other app. It will track your daily steps per day, and if you just want them on your watch and your phone then the watch is fine.



What frustrates me, after playing with the GBD-200 though, is that whereas the data from the GBD-200 is exported to G-Shock Move the G-shock connected app only allows you to export step information as an image with a map and a step count. There is no way to automatically get the data out of the app for use with other apps. With the GBD-200 and Move app you can transfer to Apple Health, Strava and Google fit.



I like the look and feel of this watch and I like to wear it but I still want my steps to be counted. For years now I have logged millions of steps so I don’t want to lose that data moving from device to device, unless that device sends the step number to another app. Out of pandemic I would not have any interest in step counts because I would be doing different activities with people, so I’d care about the activities, and people. As we’re in a pandemic I need different distractions. This is mine.


And Finally


When I bought the Garmin Instinct it cost 298 CHF. When I bought the Spartan it cost 473 CHF. The most expensive was the Apple watch Series 4 for 479 CHF. If Suunto had stuck to their own OS I would never have been curious about other brands and I would not flit from device to device once every two or three years. I would still be with a single brand. If we find a good cheap Casio alternative then we have a watch that lasts for years on a single battery, at a third to a quarter of the price. I see that as a win.

Walking In Heavy Rain

Walking In Heavy Rain

Byrichard

A few days ago I saw that heavy rain was announced for that afternoon so I thought that I would not go for a walk. In the end I did go for a walk in the heavy rain. I was wearing a reasonable rain coat so I could have stayed dry if I had also worn rain trousers.


I didn’t wear rain trousers so for at least half the walk I was okay. I wasn’t too wet. Eventually though I started walking into the wind and my trousers started to get wet. Usually when you walk in the rain it’s not that your coat fails you. It’s that the clothing that is not protected from the rain whicks the water upwards, from your trousers, to your t-shirt, to your sweater, to your fleece. In the end you’re soaking wet.


By this point you realise that you need to keep walking fast, to keep warm and to prevent yourself from catching a cold. In Wuthering Heights they speak of “catching her death” and in other films or books they speak of being at risk from pneumonia etc. If I stopped walking I was at serious risk of getting cold.


For the entire summer I enjoyed walking in minimalist shoes, but now that the cold weather has come, and due to the rain I have been wearing On Cloud 5 for walking. They’re expensive by my standards, for shoes but they have one advantage over barefoot shoes. They lift you a centimetre or more off of the ground. When there are rivers running down the road you’re walking along it’s good to have thicker soles.


These are not waterproof shoes so they get wet when it’s raining, or if you walk through wet grass. When watching a video on Youtube one hiker said that sometimes he prefers not to wear Gore Tex shoes, because when Gore Tex shoes get wet they take a while to dry, whereas others dry with ease. The On Cloud 5 dry easily.


Another feature, and with someone like me this is a feature, the base of the foot is easy to clean. There are no nodules to trap mud like with other shoes. If I went for a walk in muddy conditions with the trail gloves I would spend half an hour clearing the mud from between every element of tread, before being able to walk into the building. With the other shoes I’m ready to enter within seconds.


The other reason for wearing thicker shoes is that the road surface will now be getting colder, due to the drop in air temperature. It is worth having thicker soles, to insulate myself from the cold ground. Having said this I wore the shoes that would be least annoying to clear of mud.


Recently I was thinking about why I grew so tired of car traffic. One reason is that I lost the freedom to walk in the mud. I lost the freedom to walk along paths that were safe from cars but muddy. In losing this freedom I found myself exposed to car traffic almost constantly when walking along certain routes. When I could walk in the mud I could avoid a bridge where cars don’t slow down, despite pedestrians crossing.


When you can’t travel the muddy path, you’re stuck with the dangerous path, and that dangerous path is fatiguing. By trying not to get muddy shoes I lost my freedom to enjoy the walks that got my shoes caked in mud. Recently I have brushed my shoes with a brush to remove all traces of dirt.


I am so meticulous about having clean shoes that despite the cleaner just mopping the floor I walked along it with wet, but clean shoes, so I left no trace. A day or two later I walked into the building and I saw that other people had left a mess, not me. I still don’t understand why it’s the parents of young children that get annoyed by mud, when they have young children. I find it absurd.


I find it absurd but my shoes are clean and I no longer drop clumps of mud, even after walking for one and a half hours in heavy rain.


And Finally, when heavy rain is falling it tends to clean shoes, as you walk, so the layer of mud that would form, doesn’t, because it’s waterlogged and washed away by the rain. Next time it rains so heavily I will wear rain trousers but I think that the rain will whick up from my shoes to my socks, from my socks to my trousers, and from my trousers to everything else. I should have been like someone else, and worn shorts.

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.

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