Finished reading: The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin is a great follow up to A Wizard of Earthsea that adds depth to the world of Earthsea📚
🦎 We have a new houseguest
🏃♂️ Frosty out there on today’s trail run
🎵 Who Can See Forever Soundtrack (Live) - Iron & Wine is a good one
🏃♂️ Another Thursday, so another hill repeat run. Note to self, next time don’t start the repeats at the bottom of a big hill. The cool down run back up the hill wasn’t fun.
Finished reading: I really enjoyed Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Great characters and good story. Although I’m not steeped in gamer culture, you don’t need to be to follow along📚
Although it seems frivolous, my favourite new feature of WatchOS 10 is the Snoopy watch face. I have it set as my weeknight and weekend face, and enjoy its whimsy. A nice break from my serious work watch face, full of calendar events and reminders.
🏃♂️ Felt winter coming on today’s run with temperatures hovering around freezing
Best opening of any grunge album
Perhaps moral philosophers can contribute to public discourse even now—for instance, in thinking about how decisions should be made given the tremendous uncertainty involved, or to insist on the relevance of some neglected considerations. Or perhaps we should confess that we, too, are embarrassed, that we cannot be confident just what to say. Depending on your expectations, this may be disappointing. But unlike many of the other interventions in today’s public discourse, such a response would at least be honest. And probably less harmful as well.
🏃♂️ Hill repeats at a steady, moderate pace for today’s run. I tried to focus on my downhill form: staying loose and keeping ground contact time short
🎵 Find A Way Home by MxPx is a fun punk rock album
Finished reading: American Moonshot by Douglas Brinkley. I’ve read several books about the Apollo missions, all of them focused on the science and engineering. This book is a fascinating look at the politics and JFK’s indispensable leadership. 🚀📚
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)
📺 The Night Manager (2016) - ★★★☆☆
A good show. I binge-watched it over the weekend while recovering from a nasty cold. Hiddleston and Laurie are both great
Finished reading: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson is fun. A nice break from the epic storytelling of the previous series. The Sherlock Holmes meets Western lawman vibe fits in well with the allomancy 📚
Finished reading: Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky continues a great series. Interesting and diverse aliens, cosmic scale mysteries, and against all odds, plucky humans 📚
New running shoe day! After 1,109 kms, I’m replacing the orange ones with another pair of Saucony Kinvara. I definitely don’t recommend waiting so long, just got distracted 🏃♂️
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:
- Apple Health stores all of my data. Not really an app, rather this is the foundational data store that integrates across all sources
- The Apple Workout app records my workouts. Although there are some better, specialized apps, pressing the Action Button on my Ultra and starting a workout is so convenient that I’m sticking with Workout. The onscreen stats on the watch are more than sufficient for my needs
- HealthFit is for viewing workout data and general fitness trends. I prefer HealthFit’s details to Apple Health’s. As the screenshots below demonstrate, HealthFit provides useful overviews of everything I’ve done recently. I also use HealthFit to selectively send completed workouts to Strava
- Strava is for my local community. Seeing what my friends are up to and cheering them on is part of staying motivated for the training. Strava does have a good set of statistics and summaries. Overall, though, I prefer HealthFit’s design and privacy
- Recover sends me targeted mobility and recovery sessions, based on my recent activity. This is the only reason I’m currently paying for a Strava subscription. However, Strava is rather expensive if this is all I’m paying for and Recover breaks principles 1 and 3. So, I don’t think this one will last much longer
- Training Peaks is exclusively for getting workouts from my coach. There’s way more potential with this app. I’m just not using any of it
- Training Today keeps track of my readiness to train. I’ve written about it before and still consult it regularly
- Zwift Companion is well named. I use it to join Zwift events and as a second screen while Zwifting.
That’s currently it for the portfolio. Being able to consolidate all of my data into Apple Health really frees me up to try new apps without worrying about data lock in. Despite this freedom, I’m comfortable with the current set and don’t plan to switch things up anytime soon.