After last night’s epic (by Cambridge standards) 4″ of snow. The Cambridge Rambling Club A group walk around Histon was cancelled so Sally & I met up with Jill at the usual starting place in Harvey Road and concocted our own walk up to Coton (where we bumped into the B group) then across to Grantchester for a scone and cuppa at The Orchard with a ramble back along the river to Cambridge.
A very pretty walk in the snow, although my legs found it quite tiring like walking along the beach. The most surprising part was that the Coton Footpath had been largely cleared of snow so was easy walking.
My Fitbit said I covered 15.4 miles burning 2700 calories the Etrex GPS made it 14.7 miles (3mph) so pretty close. I took quite a few pictures and also made a Everytrail of the walk here.
Snowman on a wall
It was interesting to see the different types of snowmen that students had been making especially the latest trend of creating them sat down on park benches etc My favourite was this one on Elizabeth Way.
The day ended with one of Sally’s wonderfully relaxing hot stone massage 🙂 I tried to use my Zeo sleep measuring device to see how deep a sleep I go into, but it insisted I needed to plug the iPhone in 🙁 and lets face it when you are so relaxed can you be bothered….
Having just read or skimmed Mark Zuckerberg’s letter in the regulatory filing to make Facebook a public company. I thought it would be fun to do a Wordle on his public letter about Facebook. here it is.
Wordle - Mark Zuckerberg S1 filing letter
Just love our the word People (41 mentions) stands out!
In fact the words in numerical order, from Textalayser, are people(41) our (30) facebook (17) build (16) building (15) make (15) world (14) want (11) better (11) best (11)
( through the process of building a team — and also building a developer community advertising market and investor base — i’ve developed a deep appreciation for how building a strong company with a strong economic engine and strong growth can be the best way to align many people to solve important problems)
Here’s a bit of a review of Sleepcycle, Fitbit & Zeo as ways of monitoring your sleep activity. It has to be said at the outset that I have never suffered from a problem with falling asleep or staying asleep 🙂 My only problems are my nocturnal ramblings to take a pee due to my enlarged prostate 🙁 and folks (but not Sally!) complaining about my snoring.
I started with the SleepCycle iPhone app which gave lots of pretty graphs like these and allowed you to set an alarm which woke you when you are in the lightest sleep mode near to the alarm time. However, it became unreliable with the iPhone falling out of the bed in the night. Plus it’s very inconvenient having your phone buried under the sheets 🙂 also there is a slight risk of it overheating when it’s charging during the night.
My next trial is using the Fitbit Ultra, the sleep monitoring with this is more of a by-product of the monitoring of your energy usage in 5 minute increments throughout the day. So there is no capability of setting alarms etc. You fit the Fitbit into a cuff around your wrist and then set it’s timer going, remembering to press stop when you awake. I find it a bit tedious & inconvenient especially when sleeping with Sally 🙂 However, it is excellent at picking up my nocturnal rambles. Here is last night:-
Fitbit sleep chart
Whilst messing about with my Withings dashboard (another story) I discovered the Zeo sleep monitor, which rather amazingly could be purchased from Amazon, and even better arrived just before I returned home from Les Gets. Sally refused to allow me to use it over the weekend (even though I know she will be eager to use it). So last night was its inauguration.
After answering endless questions I finally got my Zeo account setup. I finally worked out how to to connect the headband. When it’s on it looks more like a headtorch than a sleep device! But I’m never one to be worried about aesthetics and it’s very comfortable 🙂
The Zeo transmits data to the iPhone app via bluetooth which is one of my pet hates as a communication means. After 30 minutes (Yep Fitbit recorded it) of fiddling I finally got it to pair with the iPhone, on my head and ready to press start! It was still in the same place on my forehead when I awoke, pressing stop then produced this rather colourful chart of my sleep:-
First night with the Zeo Headset
Pretty impressive I thought. Although it didn’t really detect my toilet break at 3.30am like the Fitbit did. So obviously I was still very sleepy (obviously why I fell down the stairs 6 weeks ago). It will be interesting to see if my deep sleep goes above 17% in future nights or if Les Gets death by cheese raclettes & fondues really does affect your sleep. The Zeo comes with pretty comprehensive guide to how to sleep better etc. and can even be programmed to silently awake you near your alarm time 🙂 All to be tried in the future! Maybe Zeo can measure sound levels and add them to the chart as well 🙂
Nope, I’m not talking about borrowing money to pay of credit card debts.
I’m talking about The Fitbit 🙂 and balancing the amount of calories you eat against the calories you burn through exercise.
The Fitbit rates your exercise levels into 4 levels, sedentary, lightly, fairly & very active. Very active is shown as red and is typically (for me) above 7 cals/min.
You can also log a daily food diary, when you eat more calories than you have burnt the calorie zone changes from green to red.
Hence to get out of the red eating zone you need to exercise more in the red zone.
Here is an example from today. (I fear the lunch time chips rather clashed with Sally’s delicious vegetable crumble).
As you can see a brisk walk around Les Gets corrected today’s gluttony 🙂
In the green eating zone.
In the red eating zone
Loading Comments...
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.
After last night’s epic (by Cambridge standards) 4″ of snow. The Cambridge Rambling Club A group walk around Histon was cancelled so Sally & I met up with Jill at the usual starting place in Harvey Road and concocted our own walk up to Coton (where we bumped into the B group) then across to Grantchester for a scone and cuppa at The Orchard with a ramble back along the river to Cambridge.
