Apple

When I was at university the second time, as a mature student I estimated that my social network was around 600 people deep. In light of this it seems absurd that I hooked on to Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Why would it make sense to hook on to both of these technologies when I was already surrounded by people.

It’s even more surprising, given that Twitter came out in 2006, and I had already been at uni for at least two years. Of course it helped that I was at uni when Facebook was still new and exciting because I was in the prime social situation for it to be relevant. If I had been in the world of work instead, then it’s likely I would have ignored FB and Twitter.

Recently someone said that the Apple watch is seamlessly integrated and easy to use. I never considered its simplicity of use because I grew up playing with GPS devices from the etrex 32 to the Nokia N95 8GB to several dozen watches and devices over the decades. As a result the difficulty of Garmin, Suunto and other platforms is normalised.

I did switch back to the Suunto Run watch on Monday or Sunday and I was surprised to see that I had not started the device properly. I noticed the same with the Coros Nomad a day or two later.

For years I have been struggling with the Apple Watch concept. With the Series 4 it’s because a hairline fracture killed the touch screen functionality. That’s why I got an SE, and eventually the SE 2. Now, with both of these the screen survived, and with the SE 2 I got the battery replaced so it is good for another two to four years.

The Apple Watch SE 2 is one of the cheapest Apple Watches. I wanted to keep the ecosystem, without paying excessively for it. The battery replacement saved my SE2 because the battery was down to 78 percent health. The entire watch was replaced.

If I was up to mischief I would say that some people, especially Apple users, suffer from clouded judgement. Of course I mean this as a pun. If you use Android devices, or Windows machines, or Linux, you can purchase a microSD card and within seconds have one or even two terabytes of extra storage. With such a vast amount of storage you can keep decades of photos and videos with greater freedom.

Yesterday I woke up feeling tired and both Garmin and Apple said that I neded to rest. What I thought were allergies turned out to be a one day cold, I hope. According to the Apple Watch my HRV crashed down and in the evening I definitely had a cold/flu dream.

My dream, paradoxically, was sorting through a list of photos via checksum or some other technology. What I spent my waking hours doing made it into my dreams.

As I write this my consolidated photo album is being uploaded to kDrive, to serve as an offsite backup but the journey to this point took about two weeks, due in part to experimentation and learning to use various tools.

Tools I used

• rsync
• Google Takeout
• Flickr Export
• jdupe
• Gemini
• Euria
• Le Chat, by Mistral

Work Flow

The first step is to request your data from Google Photos via the Google Takeout Tool, the Flickr Export tool for flickr, and to download all your photos locally from Apple Photos before disconnecting the local library from iCloud. Disconnecting Photos from iCloud gives you 30 days to realise you made a terrible mistake and fix it.

Yesterday I turned off iCloud Photo synching, and then I wiped my photos from iCloud Photos but before that I took several precautions.

Triple Backup to Apple Devices with Enough Storage

The first precaution I took was to ensure that the Photos app on a mac was downloading all the original photos locally. While this task was taking place I also got an iPhone 8+ and an older iPad to backup my photos locally to their hard drives.

There was a time, for decades, if not centuries, when a watch provided us with the time. We would wear it in a pocket, attached to a chain, we would stare up at a clock tower and we would see the time. We might even hear church bells to indicate every quarter, half and full hour. In the last decade we have gone from wearing watches to tell time, to watches that quantify us.

Since Strava has decided to sue Garmin, and since Suunto has decided to sue Garmin as well, for different reasons, I feel now is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of how to upload to Garmin and Strava manually.

Exporting to Strava

Garmin

If you record an activity with a Garmin device, you can navigate to connect.garmin.com, log in and go to the activity. You can export file, TCX or GPX. I usually export the file, double click, and then use the .fit file to upload to Strava. You can add a name, photos etc.

In the 2000s I was using a Nokia N95 8gb with Sports tracker to track my walks every day. Eventually, when I started scuba diving I switched to Suunto to track dives, and eventually wore one for hikes, and then I upgraded to the Suunto Ambit 2, 3, Spartan Wrist HR Baro and then the Peak 5.

At the same time as I was jumping from one watch to another Sports Tracker was growing, and then Suunto bought it, and it became Movescount and this app was truly fantastic. I really loved the web app. It then became the Suunto App. Sports Tracker and the Suunto App are iterations of the same app. The Sports tracker app plays nicely with the Apple Watch, among other apps, whereas the Suunto app plays nicely with Suunto and Xiaomi devices.