On low standards

On January 4, 2017January 4, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

I want my Pebble back. In fact, after a week (?) of Apple Watch ownership, I’m kind of tired of Apple as an entity, for the first time in quite a while.

(Before you say it: yes, I’m aware I can turn this shit off. And I’m going to, as soon as I’m done complaining about it. I shouldn’t have to turn annoying shit off. This annoying shit should not happen.)

I am a smartwatch fan, as the three entries under this one that WordPress will select will no doubt demonstrate. I have simple goals for my watch: I want it to alert me when I get an important notification (“important” being determined by me) and I want it to be a watch and an alarm clock, and to have a battery life compatible with being both. I was worried about the Apple Watch’s battery; I plug it in while I’m reading at night and it’s fine, and it appears to be good to go to make it two days without a charge with no real trouble. It’s at 80% right now and hasn’t been charged since last night. That’s fine.

I just got a notification congratulating me for standing for one minute during each of the last twelve hours.

Read that sentence again, and drown in the banality of the universe. And realize that I was on my feet for the entirety of at least seven of those hours. I walked four and a half miles while I was at work, 9000 steps (less than usual; it’s Wednesday, my half day) and collapsed on the couch at home and fell asleep. I didn’t hit either of my “fitness goals.” I can’t set a step goal, which is kind of annoying. I feel like that ought to be available. But I can for damn sure be nagged to stop doing things and freaking meditate like some sort of techno-hippy once an hour and be congratulated at the end of the day because once per hour in the past 12 hours I, I dunno, got up to take a piss or something. But the watch doesn’t notice seven straight hours on my feet.

Bah.

Also, whatever was in the iOS update that pushed out Tuesday bricked my phone, and I was nearly late to work trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong and restoring my most recent (ie, months old) backup. So I’m not super keen about technology right now in general. But yeah: Bah.

(WordPress probably ought to not choose this entry as another chance to constantly re-add Uncategorized as a category or delete half my tags while I’m adding them. Just saying.)

In which I make poor decisions but am somewhat successful anyway

On December 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Work2 Comments

5547000_sd.jpg;maxHeight=550;maxWidth=642.jpeg So I caved and got an Apple Watch. It was an accident, I swear; I went into the store intending to just go on a fact-finding mission, secure in the knowledge that even if I were able to pick out one I liked there was no chance of there being any Series 2 watches in stock, and I wanted to physically put my hands on the watches to see how they felt and how they wore and pick one out based on that.

Well. Uh. Oops. Turns out they had exactly two of the exact one I was thinking I wanted– I’ve ordered a knockoff Milanese loop band (don’t tell anyone) that is literally like a seventh of the price that Apple wants, but the fluoroelastomer will do in a pinch, especially since I like to say “fluoroelastomer.”

Right now I’m a trifle underwhelmed, but the UI is largely responsible for that and it’s gonna take me a bit to learn. We’ll see how the battery life works out. I’ll report back in a few days.

I’d heard from my co-workers that the last week of December was going to be insane, but the same people who said that had been telling me that December in general was better than November. I have sold more furniture in the last two and a half days (I left at 2:30 today, as I usually do on Wednesdays) than I did in the entire rest of the month, and this week is already my second highest week of sales ever, with the weekend left to go, which is utter fucking madness. And that’s without any really big sales; I’ve just had a bunch in the 2-3000 range. Yesterday and Monday I was so busy that I could barely keep up with the customers; it was bloody insane.

I can put up with a little bit more of this, though, if the universe would like to keep sending it my way. It’s a problem I’m willing to put up with.

RIP

On December 7, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Pebble went under today, which makes me very sad. How long until I have an Apple Watch? Do you think I’ll even last through my weekend? Will I last through tomorrow? Who knows!

(I almost forgot to blog today. I was seriously a minute or two away from going to bed. Sorry, this is all you get. Hugs!)

In which I dislike some things and like other things

On September 23, 2015September 23, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

It has been… a really rough week.

For like ten minutes now, that’s been the only sentence of the post. I had four kids in my afternoon class inside the office before they even got to my class for real— one for bullshit heading down the stairs, two for post-lunch bullshit on the way up the stairs, and the fourth for what she was doing when I came back into the room after dropping the previous two off.

I came home early yesterday because I simply couldn’t cope with the idea of dealing with my afternoon class. Just couldn’t do it. I basically had a panic attack in the morning and insisted that they cover me in the afternoon. Luckily, our building secretary loves me so she was able to take care of it. I came home and collapsed into bed for a few hours and then spent the evening job-hunting again. I made it through today, and a couple of suspensions from the Magnificent Four will likely help with tomorrow, but…

Yeah.

Anybody knows anything about a job I might be good for– especially if it involves telecommuting and I can do it from anywhere, because chances are I’m not uprooting my family to move to you– let me know.

One good thing that’s happened this week: my Pebble Time Steel finally showed up! It’s one of these two watches:

One of those two models cost $250 and is on my wrist right now; the other costs $17000 and… is not. I know I’ve made this point a bunch of times before– probably every time I’ve mentioned the Pebble Time Steel– but I just find it so insanely ridiculous that I can’t stop talking about it.

A quick review? Well, it’s basically the same as my original Pebble, with a color screen, a bit more stylish… styling, and a few days more battery life. There’s also a microphone on it but apparently that feature’s not available for the iPhone version of their app yet. In other words, I love it, but most of the differences between it and the original are cosmetic. The new Timeline interface is interesting but hardly life-altering. I still halfway suspect that my next watch will be an Apple Watch but they need to radically improve the battery life before I jump ship. The battery on the PTS is supposed to last ten days between charges. The Apple Watch needs to be charged every night. The prettier screen simply cannot overcome that difference, especially when you include the considerably higher price of the Apple Watch.

So, yeah: point is, I like it, and eventually somebody’s gonna crack my skull open for it and then be very disappointed. But, hey: I won’t have to teach anymore once the mugger kills me!

In which we need to have a talk, #Apple…

On March 10, 2015March 9, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy8 Comments

First things first. This is my desk:

Now, normally it doesn’t look like this, but I’m trying to make a point, and that is: it is extraordinarily difficult to be more of an Apple fanboy than I am. I literally have one of every device Apple produces, and there are two iPads in that picture. I have so many Apple devices, in fact, that I forgot one while taking the picture– although I wouldn’t have disconnected my Apple TV from my set in the living room anyway– and I currently can’t find my old clickwheel-style iPod.

This is my current watch:

The only difference here is I have a leather strap on mine, as the rubber one my initial Pebble came with broke in half a couple of weeks ago.

I do not want an Apple Watch. Ordinarily (some of you will laugh at this, but I swear that I at least think it’s true) I do not believe my opinion to be a bellwether of broader reality, but I have to believe that if I don’t want an Apple Watch, then no one wants an Apple Watch. I own every device that Apple produces and am at this exact second wearing a smartwatch, a device that I have on multiple occasions referred to as my favorite tech purchase since my original cell phone back in 1998-99 or so. I am a white male with sufficient disposable income, a demonstrated interest in tech gadgets, and a distinct preference for Apple hardware. There literally cannot be a more accurate picture of the target demographic for this item than I am.

And I have no interest in this thing.

It gets worse. There are two watches in this picture. I have preordered one of them.

The watch on the right is a Pebble Time Steel. It will cost me $270 at the end of the month when the Kickstarter finishes and Pebble actually charges me. It comes with a backup strap made of metal in addition to the leather one, and is made of stainless steel. I’ll get it, if I remember right, at the end of June. Maybe July, I’m not sure. My current watch will be fine until it shows up.

The watch on the left is an Apple Watch Edition and it costs SEVENTEEN THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS.

I love you guys. Truly. I do.

But you are out of your fucking minds on this one.

In which I like things

On December 1, 2013December 1, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews3 Comments

You knew this already: I bought a Pebble smartwatch, intending to let it and the Fitbit Force battle it out for wrist supremacy and then to decide to keep one of them. The battle was swift and decisive; the Pebble won.

Here is what a Pebble does: 1) It is a watch, which displays the date. It has a variety of watch faces that you can choose from or switch on the fly by pushing a button. This last feature is pointless but kind of fun. 2) It has a backlight activated by an accelerometer; I flick my wrist and the backlight comes on. The time is displayed constantly, like a regular watch, unlike on the Fitbit, where you have to push a button to get the time to display. 3) It does silent vibrating alarms; in this it is more or less exactly like the Fitbit. Implementation for this is better (you can do it from the watch instead of having to use a separate app) but it’s still kinda gimped; unlike the Fitbit, however, the Pebble people are aware that their alarm is gimped and are vocally and repeatedly promising to fix it up soon. 4) When I get a notification on my phone, I get a vibration on my wrist and the notification displayed. In the case of text messages, it generally displays the whole thing; everything else is truncated a bit.

I cannot really express how much I enjoy these latter two features, folks. I don’t like alarms in general; I don’t like being woken up by loud noise and my phone beeping constantly gets on my nerves. Now, I’m fully aware that I could just keep my phone on silent and check it periodically (or, God forbid, ignore it) but I’m a bit too tied into my little digital world for that. Silent wrist alarms are perfect– my phone hasn’t made a sound since I put this thing on, because I put it on silent and am relying instead on all my alerts getting piped to my wrist. It’s subtle and me “checking my phone” is no longer as disruptive to things going on around me as pulling my phone out might be. I love it. The only way it could be better is if it had a microphone built in so that I could do voice texts as responses.

Two more things, actually: it also has 5) apps (supposedly; I haven’t actually checked this feature out) and 6) it can remote-control all the music apps on my phone– which sounded useless at first but comes in surprisingly handy when I’m driving; I can check my wrist to see what song is playing (much less disruptive than looking at the phone) and I can pause when I want to, which is actually easier than fiddling with the volume button on my dashboard.

Drawbacks: it’s clearly first-gen tech in a couple of ways; the display isn’t great (but the battery life is) and it’s dropped connection with my phone once in the couple of weeks I’ve had it, for no clear reason. They make a big deal about watch apps; they don’t seem terribly useful or I’d have downloaded it by now. And I had thought it was capable of duplicating the functionality of the Fitbit– counting steps and sleep tracking– and it doesn’t, at least not without one of those apps I haven’t downloaded yet.

That said? Once I figured out that I walk a good 8000-9000 steps a day during the week (about 3.5-4 miles, if I remember right) and substantially less than that on the weekends, the Force kinda stopped being useful. If I want to walk more, I need to… walk more. I’ve got a baseline, which is useful, but beyond that it’s not good for much. Sleep tracking, too, is neat at first until you realize that you already know how much sleep you get or don’t get and quantifying that isn’t terribly helpful.

Winner: Pebble. No damn contest.

Also: I hooked up the PS3 yesterday, and The Last of Us, or at least the first couple of hours of it, is fucking amazing; if it keeps up this level of excellence it will be easily worth the cost of the system. Since I also got a code for a free month of PlayStation Plus, and can therefore get Shadows of the Colossus for free (I’ve never played it; something I’ve been wanting to fix for years) I think I can safely feel good about this purchase even before getting to the Batman game, which I won’t like as much as many others have but will be well worth the initial cost of free.

See, I’m not negative all the time!

On the Fitbit

On November 14, 2013November 14, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews1 Comment

You may remember that I have a Fitbit Force, and I have been threatening to post a review of the thing. Here’s the short version: it has made me want a Pebble. Which is disappointing, because I don’t really like the idea that I spent $130 so that I could figure out that I actually wanted to spend $150.

Here’s the longer version: As a device for the very specific purpose that the Fitbit Force is created for, it works well enough. It keeps track of how much I walk every day. This is useful information– I’m a data nerd by nature, and I like the idea of keeping track of my activity. It appears to keep a reasonably accurate count of my steps given that it’s attached to my wrist; I’ve driven places and noted that bumps or whatever have incremented the steps by a couple, but by and large hand/wrist/arm movements don’t appear to ever trigger it. I’ve also walked around my house watching the display change, and it adds steps as I walk. It’s not great about stairs– I live in a house without stairs (well, more or less, as I never enter the basement without good reason) and my school doesn’t have any either, so basically if it’s registered any stairs at all at the end of the day something’s gone wrong. Right now, for example, it’s telling me I’ve climbed two flights of stairs today, and I’ve literally not climbed a single step.

I assume that the calorie counts work, although it took a minute to adjust to the idea that it’s literally trying to calculate every calorie that I burn– waking up in the morning and discovering that it thought I’d burned 400-some-odd calories while sleeping was sorta odd.

It also serves as a watch and a sleep tracker; I believe it tracks sleep just by noting how often it moves over the course of the night, and when I wake up in the morning I can check a little readout that tracks “asleep” vs. “restless.” I basically have to assume that “restless” really means “awake,” though, because short of getting out of bed and walking around it’s not going to process anything I do as me being awake– up to and including actually checking the time, which seems rather impossible to do if I’m asleep.

And… well, that’s it.

The best thing about it? I can set an alarm, and it vibrates on my wrist rather than making noise. Given that I’m supposed to be wearing the thing to bed anyway, that’s awesome, and I really don’t ever want to be awakened by noise again. I love love love the vibrating alarm.

I don’t love having to use my phone to set it (which isn’t really avoidable, as the thing’s user interface on the watch itself is limited to a single button) and I despise the fact that there’s no snooze option. This is implementable with a single button, mind you– a tap snoozes, a long-tap silences, or vice versa.

The catch is annoying; while it doesn’t seem to be wearing or anything like that, it’s difficult to snap closed tightly and I regularly knock it off my wrist while brushing stuff off my chest (TMI: I have a bit of a beard dandruff issue, okay? I brush my chest off quite a bit.)

The app’s functionality is… lacking. I can get a sleep report, data on calories/steps/miles (although I never told it a stride length) and a couple of other things for that day, or I can scroll back through other dates– in other words, I can get a day’s worth of data at a time, and there’s no option to look at the last week or month or anything like that. I can get more data from the website, but that’s stupid; the thing is attached to my wrist and bluetoothed to my phone; why the hell can’t I get a week’s worth of data from the app? Given how detailed the stats on website visits that I can get through the WordPress app are, you’d think that a device whose sole purpose is keeping track of biometric data would have more robust data reporting available through its app.

Sleep reporting is cool, but ultimately useless. I had four moments of restlessness last night: great! And six hours and 32 minutes of “sleep.” Okay. What do I do with that information? No idea.

It supposedly interfaces nicely with MyFitnessPal and a few other things; I haven’t had any good reason to use that functionality yet because I got burned out on calorie-tracking the last time I lost a bunch of weight and it got really annoying. I haven’t gotten back on that particular horse yet.

It displays the time, and has a nice, bright display. It does not display the date. It has room to display the date– or at least could add it as another screen that you reach with an additional button press. This omission is annoying. I have to push a button to get it to tell me the time, which is… well, also moderately annoying, but it saves battery life so I can live with it.

Basically? I want a smartwatch. I want notifications beamed to my wrist, and I want to be notified of things by a vibration, not a beep or a tone. I want to be able to see those notifications without getting my phone out, and when I do get my phone out I want the data that I see to be useful to me.

I am aware that this is not what a Fitbit Force is actually for, for the most part, although supposedly there are some firmware updates coming that will let it do notifications if it’s paired with iOS. Which mine will be.

So, yeah. I bought a Fitbit to figure out that I wanted a Pebble.

Dammit.