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The Unquantified Self and the Garmin Etrex SE
Since boyhood I have liked watches. There was a period when I wore none, but eventually I got the habit back and now I regularly wear two watches. I don’t wear two watches because I like to wear two watches. I wear two watches because Apple sends to one database and Garmin sends to another, and there is some functionality that is dedicated to one platform. If you want Apple functionality you have to wear an Apple Watch, and if you want Garmin features you need to wear a Garmin watch.
The Etrex SE Solution
The Garmin Etrex SE is different from the Garmin Etrex 32X because it’s a cheaper, simpler model with a built in ability to communicate with iPhones and other mobile phones. The advantage of this is that you can track your daily walks, cycling, flying and other sports for up to 160 hours non-stop before you need to recharge or swap the batteries.
An AA Advantage
The other advantage of the Garmin Etrex family, but especially the Etrex SE is that it requires two AA batteries that can be swapped within seconds, but last for 150 hours or more.
By accident I left the device on overnight and it tracked for 19 hours and still had plenty of battery remaining for that day’s walk. With this device you can track walks, bike rides, and more for days at a time.
In contrast the Edge Explore can track for three or four hours before needing a recharge if it is in normal mode, but many more hours if it is in battery saver mode.
The Garmin instinct can track for a day or two at a time, before needing to be recharged, but to charge you need an external battery and time. With the Etrex SE you need a few seconds to swap batteries.
Geocaching Built In
If you enjoy geocaching then this is a great device because it pairs with your geocaching account and makes it easy for you to see surrounding objects and their location. It allows you to mark and navigate to geocaches of interest, with ease.
Up To Date Weather
Although it can take a few seconds to load you can also get live weather conditions with the device. This is based on weather service information, not a built in barometer.
GPS Precision
When walking I noticed that GPS – All GNSS accuracy bounced between 3-4 meters. That’s good enough to detect if you’re swapping back and forth from side of the road to the other. I played with that level of accuracy with another GPS.
Wrist Freedom
As the title suggested one of the advantages of the SE is that it’s a small, portable GPS that you turn on, track yourself, and turn off. It automatically transfers the walk, run, bike ride, flight, car drive and other activities to the Explore and the Garmin Connect apps, so you have the convenience of GPS watches, without needing a free wrist to use it.
Sports Aware
With the Garmin Etrex 32 you can easily track an activity but when you get home and sync the device to your computer you need to tell it what sport you were doing. You also need to physically either remove the SD card and sync, or you have to plug the GPS into the computer and sync that way. With the SE you can tell the GPS, either at the start of the activity, or when you save, that you’re walking, hiking, running, skiing, driving, using an ATV, flying and more. You don’t need to connect to Garmin Connect and manually tell it what you were doing.
Instant Charge
I write this more as a joke, than a serious advantage. With this GPS if you notice the battery is low, you don’t need to plug it into a wall, and wait for hours. Simply remove the back, swap the batteries and get on with your adventure.
Garmin Explore
When I looked at a comparison of the 32, the 22 and the SE I noticed one big difference between the three. The SE has no built in maps but it does have Garmin Explore, and Garmin Explore has good maps. This means that although the Etrex SE is limited due to its lack of maps, it does punch way above its weight and price, by pairing with the Explore App. You can draw your route whilst charging your phone, and then it syncs to your devices, for you to navigate with ease.
Limitations
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It has no memory card slot, so you can’t expand to keep track of more activities or maps.
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it is quite big and bulky. It does fit into a pocket but like a Cuckoo bird it will kick out its neighbours. You could place it in the side pocket of your hiking bag, or the top pocket, depending on preference.
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No Maps built in. For navigation and maps you need to use your mobile phone. Location information is shared between the phone and GPS live, so you do have maps, but this requires you to use mobile phone battery life. With the Garmin Etrex 32x and other models you have maps built in.
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GPS or All GNSS services. With this device you can’t tell it “I want to use Galileo, and no other GNSS. You can only choose between GPS, and “all GNSS” which I think is a limitation. I would like more freedom to choose.
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Pairing is limited. If you want to track heart rate, temperature, cadence and other data then you can’t. It tracks your location, speed and altitude but not much else.
And Finally
If you want a GPS for navigation then this is not the gps for you, unless you’re navigating to geocache locations. This is one of the cheapest GPS devices you can get. It’s cheaper than a lot of watches, handheld GPS and more. The device itself is limited, in terms of maps, but if you pair it with the Explore app, then it becomes a powerful option, for navigating and more.
I am surprised that the device has so few reviews. I spent less than a minute drawing a walking route with the Explore app and I could sync it to the Garmin Instinct watch and Etrex SE within seconds. It’s smooth, fast, and intuitive.
The Garmin Etrex SE, although, very simple, demonstrates the future of GPS navigation devices, taking full advantage of Android, iOS and excellent battery life.
Ingress and the Sony Xperia Z3
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.
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.
The Social Media Reflex
This morning I uninstalled Facebook and Twitter because most of the tweets I saw were people complaining about things or posts that would fit perfectly as blog posts on a website. We have moved towards the Social Media reflex, rather than towards an open sharing habit.
Before social media, we would have conversations on web forums and within comments on websites. As social media centralised all of those conversations so the engagement between people declined. With that decline of conversations so we shift towards two things. The first of these is complaining, rather than engaging. When you complain there is no expectation of a response so the personal investment is low. Add to this that algorithms are designed to promote posts that have a lot of engagement and you have a perfect storm of pessimism.
That pessimism has no positive outcome and it is for this reason that I removed the two apps from my phone. Twitter and Facebook will probably make their way back on to my phone within days or weeks but I’d like to resist and see what change occurs.
I have kept Instagram and Whatsapp. Both of these apps, although part of FB help us keep connected with people we still see in the physical world. I also love to walk around and take pictures to share to Instagram before reusing the same images for blog posts once I have time to write a proper blog post.
We need to take back the time we invested on Social media, and reuse it for productive pursuits as we did before Twitter and Facebook post-2007. Twitter and Facebook were productive when they were just websites, rather than profitable.
Blogging, as a challenge
I like to see blogging as a daily challenge. The challenge is to find inspiration to write at least three hundred words on a topic every day when possible, and after every adventure when not possible. We improve our writing and creative skills. We go from a blank page to remembering what we did, as well as developing our ideas from 140 characters to three hundred or more words. The result is something that others can read. When it’s about hiking, Via Ferrata, climbing, travel or other topics it may even inspire them to follow and try the same thing.
Another part of this challenge is to write half a paragraph or two and run out of inspiration, think for a few minutes, walk around, put some batteries to charge and then coming back with more. Whereas a tweet or facebook post is a single thought shared within seconds a blog post is a cohesive collection of thoughts that join together to form a blog post. Every blog post is an intellectual journey.
Sustained positivity
Aside from finding inspiration for blog posts another challenge is to try to keep them either positive or neutral. If you write a negative blog post you are not anonymous and it is sustained for a few paragraphs. If you write a positive blog post and sustain that for a few paragraphs. The reader and the writer have gained something.
Something Worth sharing
Blogging is about creating something that is worth sharing. It isn’t about filling time like Facebook or Twitter. It is about thought, inspiration and experiences. It’s about having something positive to share. Whereas some people want to write a thread I do more than that. I leave the stream of constant interruptions and I focus on just one thing, until it’s done, or I run out of inspiration. I wish that the same people who write twitter threads would write blog posts instead.
To write a blog post is to invest your time in an activity that may get no response, or if it does get a response it maybe years later. This doesn’t matter. We read entire books without leaving a response for the writer, except the money we spent to buy the book. Social media has tricked people into believing that without a response, whether a like, a favourite, a comment, or a share they are being ignored. “I’m not writing a blog post because no one will read it, that’s why I write a thread of tweets”.
The time that you spend writing a blog post is the time that you have invested in a finished product. There has been less “mindless scrolling”, fewer interruptions and best of all you have something tangible to show. “Yes, I did spend an hour writing this blog post, but I did something productive with my time”.
Compare that to this article in the Guardian. ;-). I haven’t uninstalled the apps because I’m worried about the time I spend on social media. I uninstalled the apps because the Return on Investment (ROI), as a user, is almost zero.
Walking “Barefoot” with The Vapor Glove 6
Most shoes are designed to protect the heel with a cushion of air or material that absorbs heel strikes, before they are transmitted to the rest of the skeletal system. With barefoot shoes, especially the Vapor Glove 6 those heel strikes are not absorbed. You feel the force with which your heel is hitting the ground.
Winding Up
I tried three walks with the Vapor Gloves. I decided to try purchase and try the Trail Glove 7 as a result of my Vapor Glove experience. I like the Vapor Glove shoes but I was worried that if I used them too often, too quickly, I would end up with a fracture or pain. The Trail Gloves are great because I get the “barefoot shoe” experience, without the unforgiving heel strikes.
The Long Walk
Yesterday I went for an 11km walk with the Vapor Gloves and I felt fine for almost the entire walk. I felt fine until the last kilometre when I felt that the base of my foot was getting tired. Feet do not get any assistance with the Vapor Glove 6. After walking with them I can feel my leg muscles, my heels and I could feel the plantar fascia getting tired. Today I will rest my feet by wearing either normal shoes, or the trail glove shoes, for my daily walk.
Feeling Textures
Walking with barefoot shoes is interesting because you feel textures. When you walk on the painted lines you can feel the contour. You can feel the change in texture from tarmac to smooth paint. You can feel the edge.
When I was walking with the Trail Gloves two days ago I could feel a much softer than usual feel under my feet. The rubber felt really smooth compared to normal shoes. It felt like the bike tyres after they have had time to warm up. It was that same quality of smootheness. It’s enjoyable.
Trail Glove Wear
I have logged around 60km with the trail gloves and they are showing signs of wear. The tread is gone from the left heel as well as from the left toes. I have the same wear pattern on normal shoes. It will be interesting to see if I get a similar wear pattern on the Vapor Gloves.
In Summary
I was reading a book where I read that normal shoes are like casts. Our shoes are encased and move minimally. As a result of this immobility our feet become weak. Our weak feet affect our knees, our hips and the rest of our body. By wearing shoes with a raised heel we are walking uphill even when we are walking downhill. With barefoot shoes we are dumping all of the assistance provided by normal shoes, and we are re-learning to walk as if we were barefoot. That’s why it’s meant to be done incrementally, to avoid injury. So far I have enjoyed the experience.
The Francofous like to migrate
The Francofous are part of the seesmic community and can be differentiated by their ability to speak french and their avatars. Originally formed around Seesmic and twitter they are now migrating to both plurk and phreadz, two services I have talked about in the past.
What is nice about this community is that it’s a core of 20-30 early adopters who move and try new communities as a group rather than individuals. What this means is that whereas in previous years we would jump from one community to another, start without knowing anyone and over weeks and months get to know people here we have a core of people moving with the times.
Of course I speak about the Francofous this way but they’re not the only ones. Many of my English and international social media friends are doing the same thing, moving from one fesh community to another to see what the strengths and weaknesses are. They’re also testing out the sites, seeing what works and what doesn’t. They’re illustrating how many of you will use these sites once the barriers to entry have come down.
There’s another factor that’s important to take into consideration. Those who are early adopters are used to using twenty to thirty sites several times a day from google reader to plurk, to seesmic, to phreadz to gmail to flickr, youtube, dailymotion, vimeo and many more. At the same time most of my university friends are happy with facebook and gmail. They’re lucky, everything they want can be found in one place ;-).
How far are these communities from the mass of mid to late adopters? Quite a few months to a year ahead of the pack.
Manu Chao At Paléo
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.