🚴 Updating my indoor bike setup
After over 7,600 km of indoor cycling on a complicated setup, I’m considering purchasing the Zwift Ride for a more convenient and dedicated virtual cycling experience.
Longform
☕️ Consistently tasty coffee
I’ve been a happy AeroPress user for many years now. A few weeks ago, I was gifted the Flow Control Filter Cap. The cap acts as a pressure activated valve that prevents any drip through the filter, until you press on the plunger. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much of a difference it has made to the consistency of my coffee
Before trying the flow control cap, I would not have said the AeroPress was unduly inconsistent. So, this isn’t a complaint about the original design. Rather, I now have fewer errant grounds making it through to the mug, can hold the brewing longer for a more robust flavour, and am less likely to make a mess while brewing. I can also reliably generate a nice foam at the end of the brewing.
🏊♂️ The Mystery of the Shrinking Pool
There’s an odd glitch with my Apple Watch: anytime I finish a swim interval, it claims there are still two meters left. Then after about five seconds, it realizes I’ve stopped, decides I’ve finished a lap after all, and moves to the next interval.
It isn’t the pool, I’ve tried several different ones. Even stranger, it isn’t accumulating by lap. If I finish a 25m sprint: two meters short. A 500m interval: also two meters short. So, it isn’t caused by misestimating the length of the pool.
🏊♂️🚴🏃♂️ Finding the return to fitness sweet spot with RTT
Thanks to a pre-Christmas flu and general busyness over the holidays, my triathlon training took a dive.
This past week, I’ve really tried to get back into it. As a result, my watch and phone have been pointing out that my training load has spiked and are suggesting caution.
At the same time, my readiness to train has been correspondingly increasing. I’ve been using this increase, plus generally feeling good, to keep the training intensity at the right level without overdoing it.
🎧 Reducing “abundance blindness” by deleting my Apple Music library
I lamented recently what a mess my Apple Music library had become. I was tempted to delete the whole thing and start again, only to end up doing nothing. What’s the big deal? It’s just a collection of songs. I search through them, find something I like, and hit play.
Then Jason Burk said in Episode 128 of Hemispheric Views:
I just, I find that I have this, like, abundance blindness where I have an infinite number of songs. So, it kind of wraps back around on itself to be like, who cares about any of it? It’s just way too much.
🎶 Top albums of 2024
According to my listening history, my top three albums of 2024 were:
I’m a bit surprised that Nonkeen snuck in there at #3. It is rather different from the other two.
📚 Year in books for 2024
2024 was another great year for books.
My favourite fiction book was Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Non-fiction was As Gods by Matthew Cobb.
![The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]](https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/300x/https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fcontent%3Fid%3DrffwDwAAQBAJ%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26img%3D1%26zoom%3D5%26source%3Dgbs_api)
Highlights of 2024
As 2024 comes to a close, a few personal highlights:
Welcoming George to our family
🎧 20 album covers that shaped my musical preferences
Last month, I posted a series of album covers for music that shaped my preferences. The gimmick was that there was no context or explanation, just an album cover. Now, I’d like to provide a few notes.
As part of the overall framing, these are influential albums for me. They aren’t all necessarily my favourite albums by these artists or ones that I still listen to frequently. Rather, what I listen to and enjoy now, are strongly connected to these albums.
📺 Thoughts on recent television shows
Some short notes on recent seasons of shows that I’ve watched:
- Outer Range Season 2: Still nicely strange, though not as good as Season 1
- Night Sky: A slow build with a sci-fi mystery. Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons are great. Clearly a second season was planned, but it ends okay for a one season show
- Dark Matter: A decent multiverse show. Really picks up in the last couple of episodes
- Sugar: A fun crossover of detective and sci-fi
- Mr and Mrs Smith: An entertaining show, modelled after the movie, though the last episode was disappointing
- Shogun: A great historical drama with compelling characters and fine attention to detail
- Unchained Season 2: Really makes the Tour de France understandable and exciting. Such an epic event
- The Acolyte: Just fine, though uneven. I didn’t like the ending
Adding The Peripheral to the list with Outer Range and Night Sky makes me reluctant to watch sci-fi shows on Amazon Prime. I enjoyed each of these well made and smart shows, only to have them all cancelled.
🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️ 2024 Muskoka Ironman 70.3
Well that was “fun”! The Muskoka Ironman 70.3 was very well organized with great volunteers and an excited crowd of spectators.
I was within a few minutes of last year which I’m very happy with, considering the interruptions to my training with a trip to Portugal and introduction of a new puppy (neither of which I regret).
🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️ 2024 Milton Sprint Triathlon
My third year in a row for this one and, despite pouring rain for the entire race, it was still fun and well organized.
My times across the three have been within minutes of each other. Although this one was slowest of the three, given the conditions, I’m happy with the overall results and ended up 12th in my age group.
At least in the swim, it didn’t matter that it was raining. I think they had less time between heats though and swimmers really bunched up for the last 200m.
🇵🇹 Lisbon trip
The second half of our Portugal trip was fun too. We stayed in São Vicente, to the east of the historical core. Lisbon is certainly bigger than Porto, so we used the transit system much more extensively and the Lisbon cards came in really handy with their access to transit and attraction discounts
Castelo de São Jorge offered some great views of the city, after a pretty steep hike.
🇵🇹 Porto trip
The Porto half of our Portugal trip was great fun. We stayed on the west side of Bonfim, relatively close to the historic district and walked (seemingly) all over Porto. The one exception was taking the 500 bus out to the ocean for the afternoon.
We also took a day trip out to the Douro Valley for a couple of winery tours and port tastings. Well worth the trip for gorgeous scenery and tasty wine.
🎧 Perfect albums
On Hemispheric Views 110, Jason asked:
Pick in your mind a perfect album. And I think it’s mostly open to interpretation, but I’m kind of thinking an album that you would say you could just start from beginning, let it run all the way through, without skipping songs, without moving around, just front to back and just sit there and do nothing else and just listen to that whole album.
What would that album be?
🏃♂️ Dynamic run training in Training Today
I’ve been using Training Today for a while now to track my readiness to train (RTT). They’ve recently released a new feature that provides dynamic training for running based on RTT which takes into account your current recovery and health to make sure you don’t overtrain.
Generating the workouts is easy. In the iPhone app, you choose the type of run (speed, endurance, recovery, etc) and then the app shows you the structured workout, targeting your current RTT. There are options to adjust the RTT (though that seems like cheating) and to shorten the run, if you’re pressed for time. Once you select “Create Workout”, the run is sent to your Apple Watch.
Trying to avoid Apple’s Journal app 📔
I have 9,698 entries in DayOne across 4,312 days. This is one of my favourite and most consistently used apps. And, yet, somehow I am tempted to switch to Apple’s Journal app. This post is to remind me why that is a bad idea.
So, here’s a list of DayOne features I use that Journal doesn’t have:
- I use DayOne on my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and the web. Journal is only on the iPhone.
- DayOne is my memory archive. I can search for entries with many attributes (like dates), while also organizing with tags and separate journals. Plus, the On This Day feature is great for revisiting old entries. Journal only lets you filter by entry type. There is no search feature.
- There are many ways to get content into DayOne, including via Shortcuts. Journal is much less accommodating and, oddly, has no Shortcuts support. A related feature in DayOne is templates, which I use frequently and Journal lacks.
- Given how valuable (to me) content is in DayOne, I appreciate the broad set of export features. Best I can tell, there’s no way to export from Journal.
Given all of this, why am I drawn to Journal?
Investing in the MacSparky Productivity Field Guide ✅
There is absolutely no shortage of productivity methods and content out there, especially in the “influencer” racket. I’m quite sure that there is no one true way to be productive. In fact, I think there’s some merit to switching up my approach on occasion, just to reinvigorate my interest.
To that end, I’ve really appreciated the MacSparky Productivity Field Guide. I find the roles based approach suits me really well, as I try to juggle multiple parts of my life, while the intentionality it creates helps with prioritizing and staying engaged. This isn’t about any particular tasks app or zettelkasten setup. Rather, the emphasis is on the why and making tough choices about where to focus attention.
🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️ Fitness in 2023
I kept busy in 2023 with triathlon training. As a reference point for next year, here’s a comparison of 2023 with 2022.
My running was surprisingly consistent. Although the totals are almost identical, I do think that my structured workouts were much better in 2023. Each run had a purpose and all were part of a bigger plan.
There was a trade off for cycling between indoors and outdoors. In 2023, I couldn’t quite get aligned with most of the outdoor group rides. So, there was a lot more indoor riding on Zwift. I’d like to switch this around in 2024.
Year in books for 2023
I read some great books in 2023.
My favourite fiction book was The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. Non-fiction was Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson.
Even more defaults
As a follow up to my Duel of the Defaults post, I’ve made a few changes. These are all based on further adopting app defaults to simplify things.
- 📰 RSS: I’ve swapped out Feedbin for iCloud as the backend for NetNewsWire. Although I really like the Feedbin service, my primary use of it is to access my feeds via a web browser at work. In an attempt to limit my feed reading to just once in the morning and once in the evening, switching to iCloud means that only my personal iPhone has access.
- 👓 Read It Later: Switching to Safari’s Reading List for this. The feature is well integrated into the system and more than sufficient for my needs.
- 🎧 Podcasts: After some back and forth and back again, over to Apple Podcasts.
These choices are largely motivated by an attempt to limit the number of inputs and potential for distractions. That said, these default apps are still powerful and effective.
Non-default apps
As a follow up to my list of default apps, I have a few non-default apps that weren’t on the original list from Hemispheric Views.
- 🏃♂️Fitness: As I wrote about recently, I use HealthFit (mostly) instead of Apple Fitness
- 🧘 Meditation: Waking Up, instead of Mindfulness
- 📓 Journal: Doesn’t count yet, since Apple hasn’t released their journalling app. Soon, though, DayOne instead of the default
- 📚 Books: Libby instead of Apple Books, mostly because of the public library integration
- 🎸 Listen later: MusicBox instead of the Apple Music library
Duel of the Defaults: My List
Episode 097 of the Hemispheric Views podcast held a fun Duel of the Defaults! competition.
Here’s my list. I’ve really shifted to defaults over the past year. I’m conflicted about this: I really like a good indie app, yet find my needs don’t justify the complexity of using non-defaults.
- ✉️ Mail Client: Apple Mail
- 📨 Mail Server: iCloud Custom Email Domain
- 📝 Notes: Apple Notes
- ✅ To-Do: Reminders
- 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app
- 📚 Photo Management: Photos.app
- 🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app
- 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud
- 📰 RSS: NetNewsWire connected to Feedbin
- 📇 Contacts: Contacts.app
- 🕸️ Browser: Safari
- 💬 Chat: iMessage, WhatsApp
- 🔖 Bookmarks: Micro.blog
- 👓 Read It Later: Micro.blog
- 📜 Word Processing: Pages
- 📊 Spreadsheets: Numbers
- 🛝 Presentations: Keynote
- 🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders
- 🧑🍳 Meal Planning: None
- 💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: ScotiaBank app
- 🗞️ News: The Economist
- 🎶 Music: Apple Music
- 🎧 Podcasts: Overcast (though testing Podcasts.app again)
- 🔐 Password Management: 1Password (likely changing to iCloud Keychain)
Choosing a portfolio of fitness apps 🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️
There’s a bewildering array of fitness apps out there. Here’s an attempt to document what I’m currently using.
I have some criteria when considering a fitness app:
- Available on the Apple Watch, ideally as a first class app, rather than just presenting data from the phone
- Suitable for multisport. I’ll consider a highly specialized app, though prefer one that covers at least running, cycling, and swimming
- Consolidated and local data. I prefer one location for all of the data and certainly not locked into a web service
With these in mind, my current portfolio of fitness apps is:
🚂 Importance of Transportation Funding: Framing the Issues
Discussions about transit often end up about funding. To help make these discussions productive, I was pleased to co-author a paper through the Transportation Association of Canada titled Importance of Transportation Funding: Framing the Issues.
Working on this with David Kriger, Nick Lovett, Yonghai Xiao, Vahid Ayan, Andrew Devlin, Tamim Raad, and Haytham Sadeq was delightful.
Here’s the abstract:
Transportation funding is becoming an important topic of discussion at all levels of Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) councils and committees, reflecting discussions that are taking place throughout the Canadian transportation community. The fundamental needs are to maintain and upgrade the country’s aging transportation system while adding new infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing population and economy. These needs are evolving in the face of new challenges, notably changing funding sources and priorities, climate change impacts on infrastructure resiliency, changes to how the system is used, and accommodating new transportation and communications technologies. These challenges have become sharper with the COVID-19 pandemic-induced disruptions in how people and goods move and in shifts in revenues and funding priorities. These needs and challenges cover a broad range. They vary across the country, by mode, ownership, responsibility and more. All told, these complexities mean that the needs and challenges are not fully understood. This briefing describes and categorizes these key challenges and opportunities and provides an initial, high-level assessment of the broader range of potential funding sources, approaches and needs. From this review, the briefing identifies knowledge gaps and potential research directions for consideration by the TAC Transportation Finance Committee and other committees and councils to address these gaps.
Switching podcast apps, again 🎧
As predicted, after a couple of months with the Apple Podcasts app, I’m back to Overcast.
I think that Apple’s Podcasts app is great for anyone new to podcasts, given it has a strong focus on discovering new shows. I’m looking for a podcast app that simply plays my carefully curated, short list of podcasts. With Apple Podcasts, I kept finding new episodes of shows I didn’t intend to subscribe to in my queue.
Photos of a dog at a cottage
Lucy enjoyed her time at the cottage
Huntsville 70.3 Ironman notes 🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️
After a few weeks of recovery, here are a few notes on the Huntsville 70.3 Ironman.
The short version (given there’s lots of details below) is that the course was fantastic, though very hilly, and I managed to shave 15 minutes from my last 70.3.
Pre-race
No surprises here. There were scheduled times for registration and all we needed was the receipt from our online payment. With that, they handed over a wristband, timing chip, stickers for my bike and helmet, a hot-pink swim cap for my age group, t-shirt, and a morning gear bag for transferring clothing from the swim start to the run finish.
Simplifying my personal iPhone
Now that I’ve separated my work and personal iPhones, I’m taking some time to simplify my personal device.
The biggest change is that for work, I’m now fully into the Office 365 product. So, email in Outlook, tasks in To Do, and notes in OneNote. Although I really liked using MindNode as my project and task manager and Apple Notes for my notes, I have to admit that this just works so much better for work tasks and with my office Windows PC. This has significantly reduced the demands on my personal phone, which was part of the point.
Milton Sprint Triathlon 🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️
That was fun! Really well organized, friendly racers, and great weather. There were 466 racers, though other than the parking lot, it didn’t seem crowded.
Swim
Mass start by age group for the swim. Temperature was quite nice. Other than an elbow to the nose coming around the last buoy, a pleasant swim 😀.
Bike
The course confronts you almost right away with a steep 320m climb up the escarpment that really tests the legs. After that, some nice rolling hills, until you come back down the escarpment, hanging on for dear life, as you hit about 70 km/hr. Terrifying and exhilarating end to the ride.