A Rainy Day

A Rainy Day

Byrichard

This morning it rained and this afternoon I fled from noise pollution. I had planned to write a blog post this morning but inspiration failed to come. I was distracted because I don’t know whether it is the USB ports on a PI 5 that have failed or if it is a drive or two that have failed after being plugged in for several weeks in a row without being turned off. The issue is with external drives.

I moved two hundred and thirty three gigabytes of audiobooks from one drive to another and now I am in the process of moving several years of photos from one drive to another. This drive will then feed audiobookshelf and Nextcloud. I am undecided as to whether it will also feed Photoprism or not. Nextcloud and Audiobookshelf have proved to be the more interesting the apps I have experimented with in recent weeks.

I noticed a fault this morning, which is why I was distracted. For some reason the drive is either failing after being on non-stop for weeks in a row, or the Pi5 has faulty USB ports.I would have tested the drive on a mac to see whether I have the same issue but I am waiting for several hundred gigabytes to be moved from one drive to another. Once the move has been made I can determine what the issue is.

At the moment I am tempted to move Nextcloud and Audiobookshelf to a Pi4 8GB, especially if the USB ports on the Pi5 have failed after a relatively short amount of use. I hope that it is not the drive that has failed because it might be harder to recover some data. Paradoxically I will have lost the three most recent years.

And Finally

It’s because of my experimentation that I have not deleted the photos from Google Photos, Flickr and other places. Once I know that my solutions are reliable I will be destructive about which services I am retiring and which ones I am keeping.

Rest and Recovery Apps

Rest and Recovery Apps

Byrichard

Either you can buy a collection of casios that each have different functions or you can download apps that have a niche purpose. I have been playing with Gentler Streak and Training day. One looks at heart rate and training. The second looks at resting heart rate and heart rate recovery.


According to the Gentler streak app my fitness “seems stable”. It looks at the routine over the last few months and years, and by this metric decides whether fitness is increasing, stable or declining. With the Gentler Streak app I am fine with my routine.



In contrast the Training Today says that I am overdoing it. I have played with the app for one day so I don”t understand the data yet.



I have been going for two walks per day, and on some days a walk and a swim, or a walk and a run, so it makes sense that the app would say that I am overdoing it at the moment. You can smooth by as many days as you like, from none, to several days. You can also adjust the default intensity.


Both apps give different results so they may be mutually exclusive, at least in my case. They’re interesting because they provide you with an overview of fitness over a period of time. Instead of “time” or “steps” these apps tell you about the health impact of training and whether to push harder, rest, or slow down. It is an alternate way of fitness training, without using Strava or other fitness apps.


Both apps are European. Gentler Streak is Slovenian, funded by the European Union, and Training Today is English. With this quick glance of both apps, I prefer Gentler Streak at this point.


I was inspired by an article about this type of app in the Google app where articles are suggested. This is a niche I had not yet played with.

Walking Into Heavy Rain
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Walking Into Heavy Rain

Byrichard

Sometimes you end up walking into heavy rain. That’s what I did today. I looked at the weather and because it was meant to get better over the coming days I assumed that this evening it would get better. Instead, as I walked it started to rain a little more, and then a little harder, and eventually quite a bit harder. Did I get wet beyond the top layer? Nope, but my beanie got a little wet, as did my fleece. My shoes on the other hand were clean, thanks to the flow of water.


I was lucky today, because if I had set off a little later then I would have been soaked by the time I got home. I skirted the rain by an amusing amount. I could have been drenched if I had set off later. I timed my walk to avoid the sunset, so that would have helped me avoid the rain anyway. I don’t want to walk at night.


Today I walked over 18,000 steps, according to the Casio, 8800 in the morning, and another ten thousand in the evening. In the evening, as the rain started, I decided to run for one kilometre. I tracked it with the Garmin instinct and the Casio. There was no reason to track with both, except that I was curious to see the result. If you want running time step count and distance then the Casio GBD-200 is fine. If you want cadence, heart rate zones, and other data then keep with the Garmin Instinct. To boot, with the Garmin instinct you get to check the weather first, and you might not be caught out, as I was.


And Finally


I was surprised that the Casio GBD-200 doesn’t allow you to select which sport you’re doing. If you track cycling then you will screw up the data, and if you track walking you will use the watch for many more hours per week than it is planned for. I am not often confused about how I feel about a device. I wish the casio would do more, but at the same time I bought it because it does less. I’m all the more confused because according to the Apple Fitness app I stood, moved and exercised enough and now I don’t know what the source for the data was. I need to keep experimenting.