I’ve bought myself a fitness tracker – a Fitbit Charge(sponsored link).
My primary reason for buying one was that I needed a new watch strap for my basic Skagen watch. Instead of buying a strap I decided to just get a new watch, as the Fitbit wasn’t much more expensive at the time and it can function as a watch, amongst other things.
There are lots of fitness trackers out there but I went with a Fitbit for a couple of reasons:
Price – I was able to get one for a good price on Amazon at the time
Recommendation – my manager at work has a Fitbit Charge (having previously owned a Fitbit Flex) and she recommended it to me
Third-party integration – Fitbit integrates with Runkeeper, which I use for tracking exercises and walks, and with IFTTT
User reviews – the Amazon reviews of the Fitbit Charge tended to be better then other trackers such as the Jawbone Up or Misfit ranges
I’ve had the Fitbit for 10 days now, which happened to include the time period when we were moving house, and so I clocked up a lot of steps and stair climbs initially. It’s set for five basic daily targets: 10,000 steps, 8.05 kilometres distance walked (that’s five miles in old money), 2,937 calories burned, 30 minutes of activity and 10 floors climbed. I upped the floor climbs to 20 as I was often hitting 10 floors before lunchtime, but I’ve kept the rest at the defaults.
I’ve exceeded 10,000 steps on some days (and 15,000 on a couple) but on other days I’ve missed the target by some way. This is despite my normal daily commute consisting of around 45 minutes of walking, split into four blocks. I was surprised at this, but it’s useful to know that I need to get more exercise during the day. I managed over 80 floors climbed one day as well, although this seems to be because the Fitbit Charge is interpreting some of the steep hill climbs in our area as stairs. Something to bear in mind if you live in a steep-sided valley like I do.
Fitbit app
You can track your progress using the Fitbit mobile phone app, which synchronises with your device via Bluetooth. By default it does this regularly throughout the day but you can turn this down if needed. The all-day sync mode does have an effect on your phone’s battery life, but it’s not too significant, in my experience.
If you have friends with Fitbit devices, then you can also view their progress. The ‘Friends’ view in the app shows the total number of steps taken over 7 days. At the moment, I’m on 54,374 – this is less than the 70,000 that I’m aiming for but puts me fourth out of seven, and only two of my friends have hit this target. You can also take part in challenges – most steps in a day, week or weekend, and also specific goals like stairs climbed. It’s a good motivational tool, although it does result in the app sending notifications when you’re close to overtaking someone, or vice versa, which gets annoying after a while. Thankfully, these can be turned off.
My main reason for purchasing the Fitbit Charge was that it also tells the time. The time doesn’t show on the screen all of the time, but can be illuminated by double-tapping the screen, pressing the button on the side of the screen, or lifting your wrist towards you. It’ll also show your key targets – steps taken, stairs climbed, calories burnt and distance walked, which you can scroll through by pressing the button.
The Fitbit’s battery life is reasonably good – a full charge should last between 7 and 10 days, depending on usage. It charges via a USB cable, but with a custom port on the back of the device. You can’t wear the device whilst it’s charging.
The Fitbit Charge comes in four colours and two sizes. I accidentally bought the small one, which is a bit too small for me but alleviated by an additional strap that I bought separately. Some of the Amazon reviewers had found that their Fitbits fell off easily and so I had bought an extra strap anyway. If you have medium-sized arms, I would recommend the large size though.
Overall, I’m impressed with the Fitbit. It seems to count steps quite accurately, despite being worn on the wrist, and performs well. It’s also good at motivating me to take the stairs rather than lifts, and to get out and walk more to maintain my targets.
Last week, Christine had her 20 week ultrasound scan. Our baby is developing normally, it would seem – everything seems present and correct, and he or she is growing at the correct rate. And the image is much more clear than it was at the first scan at approximately 11 weeks.
We did found out the gender of the baby and have told some people (mainly family), but we’re not making it widely known. This is mainly because the sonographer wasn’t very confident about whether the baby is a boy or a girl, but also because we don’t want to end up with lots of pink or blue clothes in case we have another child later on.
Christine is still due to give birth in early January.
It happened the day before he was due to play the role of the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, so working with the same theatre group on Moby Dick this year brought back a lot of the memories from twelve months ago. Indeed, a page in this year’s programme was dedicated to him, appended with a quote from Terry Pratchett about death. It was rather cruelly ironic that Pratchett himself passed away last week as well.
Whilst I’ve lost friends and family before, Dave’s death affected more than any other. Part of it was its sudden nature; he hadn’t been ill, or been recently rushed to hospital. He was alive and well, then, a few minutes later, he wasn’t. The shock of it meant neither myself, Christine, nor our many mutual friends had any time to prepare for it emotionally like you do when someone is ill before they die.
But also, Dave was someone that I saw at least once every week. There are so many things that I used to do on almost daily basis suddenly had to be done without him. So his passing affected not just me, but many others who knew Dave so well.
Tonight, some of us will be having a few drinks to remember Dave, like we have on several occasions over the past twelve months. Because, for someone like Dave, one memorial just isn’t enough. I still miss him so much.
Well, it’s the start of another year. As well as reviewing the year just gone, as I did yesterday, I usually also write about what is likely to happen in the year ahead.
In 2014, I expected us to buy a house, pass our driving tests and buy a car, go to the gym more, attend two weddings, go to a gig in Manchester and possibly go to Ireland. We did the gig, and we went to two weddings but one of those wasn’t one we were expecting – we were invited to one in the summer but we couldn’t feasibly get there. We didn’t buy a house and whilst we have started driving lessons, it’ll be a little while before we pass our tests and buy a car. But we did go on holiday to Dublin, and also to Bruges last year.
But, those things will hopefully happen in 2015. We still have money for a house deposit, sat in a savings account accruing interest, and hopefully we’ll both be driving by the summer. And whilst I did go to the gym in 2014, I really need to make it a habit, and not something I do for a few weeks and then forget about.
Two weddings are already in the calendar for 2015. One’s a family do, as the last of my four cousins finally ties the knot, and the other wedding is of two good friends.
No concrete plans for a holiday but we may do the ‘mini-cruise’ thing again, this time to Amsterdam instead of Bruges. We have the option of staying the night there so that we can spread it over two days. We’ll be keeping an eye out for cheap deals.
We also only managed one very brief trip to London last year, so we’ll be aiming to go again sometime this year – especially as we have friends living there. And I’d like to squeeze in a weekend in Bristol if possible.
Hopefully 2015 will be a good year. Best wishes to you all for a happy and prosperous new year.
This time every year I do a blog post looking back at the year that has just about finished, and all of the things I did (although normally it’s a few days before New Year’s Eve, not on it). So this year it is the turn of 2014 to be analysed. You can read my previous posts from 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.
January
January is my blogiversary month and 2014 marked 12 years since I started blogging. We started January at a friends’ house with a relatively young kitten, some guinea pigs and plenty of food and alcohol.
At the end of the month I saw Robin Ince again (for the fifth time – and I’d see him again later in the year), along with Josie Long and Grace Petrie who were at the same gig.
On the blog, I started a weekly series of blog posts about the projects I backed on Kickstarter, which ran for three months. I may resurrect this year with some of the projects I’ve backed since, but I’ll have to see. January was also the month when I committed myself to posting a new blog post every day – I managed it for several months straight and overall I managed to write more blog posts this year than in recent years, although recently I haven’t had the inspiration.
February
In February Christine and I went on an impromptu trip to London, which I quite literally booked the night before. And despite it being Valentines’ Day we managed to do it without breaking the bank – our transport was via Megabusplus, and we booked a reasonable cheap hotel in Croydon to stay the night. Whilst there we visited the Museum of London to see their Cheapside Hoard exhibition, had dinner in Chinatown where all of the Chinese New Year decorations were still up, and got cheap tickets for We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre – a show which has now finished its West End run. It was our first Valentines’ Day as a married couple and probably one of the best – even though it was rather manic. Oh, and we called in at the Tate Modern on the Saturday too, before heading home.
March was marred by the sudden and unexpected death of Dave, one of my closest friends. It really affected both Christine and I, and barely a day has gone by since without something reminding me of him. He would have been pleased that so many of his friends took the time to pay their respects at his funeral, and again at a get-together later in the year. He died a day before he was due to play the role of the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, along with Christine and other friends.
It also marked five years since I hit rock bottom – the end of my previous relationship combined with the passing of my grandmother, unemployment and having to move back home with my parents. Thankfully things have improved since and I’m now happily married in a good job that I enjoy.
For the first time I travelled overnight for work, to do a two-day UCAS convention in Bristol. It was my first time visiting the city, although I didn’t really get to see much of it. Christine’s never been so we’ll need to find time to go for a few days to experience it properly.
In April Christine and I had a day out in Hebden Bridge, for the first time in quite a while. I also posted a listicle on Buzzfeed, which didn’t exactly set the world on fire, and we saw two of our favourite bands – Within Temptation and Delain – play in Manchester. There was also live comedy – we went to see Gary Delaney at our local pub, The Works, who run a monthly comedy night with reasonably good acts.
I became officially middle-aged in May when I turned 30. Christine’s present to me was a trip to Dublin in Ireland, where we visited the castle, the Guinness storehouse, the old Jameson distillery, the jail, the Temple Bar district, the zoo, the natural history museum, the post office museum, and fitted some shopping in to a four night stay. And we did it all just with carry-on luggage.
Although it started in May, it wasn’t until June that we started watching Happy Valley on BBC1 – a crime thriller set in our local area. It was a brilliant, gripping series that’s well worth watching if you can – I believe it’s on Netflix in America, or you can buy the DVD from Amazon(sponsored link).
Another work trip came up in June, this time to Gosforth near Newcastle, although it wasn’t an overnight stay this time.
The Bradford Playhouse faced an uncertain future in June, as the building was due to be sold at auction. Thankfully it’s now been saved – a friend of ours who had a fair amount of money from a recent house sale bought the venue and kept the current management team, and now it’s going from strength to strength. I spent quite a bit of time there at various points throughout 2014 and I have no doubt that I’ll be back there in 2015.
The big thing that happened in Yorkshire in July was the Grand Départ of the Tour de France, which I watched on TV over the weekend – even though it passed within a few miles of our apartment. Whilst I wasn’t so interested in the later stages of the race, it was great to see so many people out cheering the riders along and Yorkshire looked fantastic in all of the TV coverage. From 2015 onwards there will be an annual professional cycle race in Yorkshire and hopefully it’ll be just as popular.
In May I started taking lactase enzyme tablets to ease my lactose intolerance symptoms, but it wasn’t until July that I wrote about it. It seems to work, as part of a strategy of also cutting down my dairy consumption and eating lactose-free alternatives instead.
In mid-July Christine and I both started learning to drive again. We’ve both had lessons years ago, and I’ve previously failed my practical test twice, but now we really do need to be able to drive and own a car. The lessons are coming on well – we’ll both be taking our theory tests soon (when we book them) and hopefully at least one of us will be qualified to drive by the summer.
I bought a Roku box – it’s been a great purchase and we’ve used it a lot, to watch programmes on catch-up services or on demand. Christine found it really useful when she was at home on sick leave as it’s really easy to use.
On the blog, the 10,000th comment was posted; there have only been another 40 since as few people bother commenting on blogs these days, it seems.
August
August is always a busy time for people like me who work in university admissions, as it’s the time when A-level results are released and universities try to fill up their leftover places on courses through the Clearing process. As usual this meant working long hours and 13 days straight.
Over the August bank holiday I did manage to get out into the countryside – I met up with friends from university and we did a couple of days walking. On the Saturday we did Whernside, one of the Yorkshire three peaks, and then Brimham Rocks on the Sunday.
September saw me being nominated for the ice bucket challenge, which pretty much ceased to be a thing at the time when I did it. I drank some free beer with friends, and had an iPhone 6 to play with for a few days. Which actually put me off buying it because it was so huge, so I’m sticking with my iPhone 5 for a third year on a cheaper contract.
Work was still busy in September so not much else really happened.
October
By contrast October was rather more eventful. We went on a ‘mini-cruise’ to Bruges in Belgium – I’d been 22 years ago but it was Christine’s first visit. We were only there for a day, but managed to squeeze quite a lot of sightseeing in and enjoyed ourselves. Because we went there by ferry from Hull, on the way back we called in at The Deep.
I had the last week in October off work so I went with some friends on a day trip to Hawes, where I ate and bought lots of cheese.
November
In November Christine and I went to Nottingham for the first time, to meet up with friends who had recently moved to the Midlands. It’s quite a nice city with a newly-renovated railway station, expanding tram system, and a good selection of independent shops in the area around the Lace Market. We’ll have to go again some time, though perhaps not by train as it takes about 3 hours each way – which is as long as it takes us to get to London.
We also went to our first ever comic convention – Thought Bubble in Leeds. It was another opportunity for us to get out our Steampunk outfits and spend lots of money on comics and other related paraphernalia. We’ll almost certainly be back again next year as it was great fun.
On the blog, I wrote a long post about the history of an under-threat bus route, and how I ended up on the ‘chav’ page on Wikipedia. It was also about this time that Google decided that my blog was reasonably important after all and so my older blog posts started appearing more in its search results, leading to an increase in traffic. Which is paying off financially – clicks on the banner ads have doubled and the amount of money I’m making through affiliate links to Amazon and iTunes has increased. Whilst this still means that the site runs at a loss each month, it’s a smaller loss than before.
December
And finally to this month, in which I haven’t blogged much. I was ill for a week recently – it was a cold, but one that really knocked me back. Christine had it before me and it had also been spreading around at work. I ended up taking two days off work, and probably should have taken more had there not been things that I really needed to be in to do.
Speaking of work, in December we moved to a new office. It’s much bigger as we’re sharing it with a couple of other teams that we already work with, and it has brand new furniture and better facilities. It’s on the ground floor, rather than the eighth floor as before, so no more waiting for the lift – although the view out of the window isn’t as nice. We’ve also been moving to Office 365 over the year: email in the summer, which meant that I stopped using Thunderbird after all these years, and we’ll be moving our calendars out of PeopleCube’s Meeting Maker over the Christmas break.
Outside of work, I went on a pub crawl around Skipton, and we saw Mitch Benn in Hebden Bridge – we’d also seen his show, Mitch Benn is the 37th Beatle, in Leeds in June. We spent Christmas with Christine’s mum, and then went to York after Christmas for my Dad’s 70th birthday. No, I can’t believe he’s 70 either – he’s certainly very fit and healthy for his age. But then his father – my grandfather – is still doing well at the age of 94.
We’ll be the ending the year tonight in Blackpool, probably in the same way that we ended 2012. Happy New Year.
Not a big Christmas for us this year – a few small presents, and we only put the tree up yesterday. We’re staying in our flat in Sowerby Bridge due to work commitments.
But I get to spend it with my amazing wife and that’s all that matters. Merry Christmas to everyone.
I can very much not recommend working 10 days straight without a break. Especially if one of those days involves 14 hours at work with almost no breaks.
I was doing fine until today when my brain turned to mush at about 3pm. I was asked to calculate some weighted averages and I just couldn’t handle it. Thankfully there were enough mindless things to keep me going until I finished at 5pm.
And it’s only Tuesday – I still have another three days at work until I get a break. Admittedly Friday will only be a half day. And this weekend is a bank holiday so I’ll be off for three days.
What may surprise you is that I haven’t been resorting to coffee and energy drinks to keep going – I’ve had precisely two coffees in the past ten days and no energy drinks – just the odd diet cola or Irn Bru here and there. And plenty of early nights.
On the plus side, I’ve got plenty of work done during a really critical time for us and have accrued plenty of time off in lieu of overtime – around five days’ worth. So I’ll be able to take a well-earned rest when everything calms down.
Last year, some sports scientists found that it was possible to do just seven minutes of high intensity exercise, on a regular basis, and still achieve fitness levels normally requiring lengthy runs or cycles. By doing 12 activities, for 30 seconds at a time with just 10 seconds in between, you can get your daily exercise requirements out of the way in a short space of time. Plus, no special equipment is required – you just need a chair and some clear floor space.
Whilst I’m trying to go to the gym two or three times each week, I thought I’d try the so-called ‘seven minute workout’ to see if it would be worth doing on the days when I don’t have time to go to the gym. I downloaded an app to my iPhone, which I’ll review tomorrow, and made a start.
Firstly, the ‘seven minute workout’ takes longer than seven minutes. It’s actually nearly eight minutes, if you allow ten seconds between each activity. Secondly, you need to be aware that this is a ‘high intensity’ workout. On the discomfort scale, from 1 to 10 where 1 is easy and 10 is ‘why am I doing this to myself?’, it’s about an 8.
In other words, you should already be reasonably fit before trying this workout. And as you will know from yesterday’s blog post, I’m not particularly fit right now. I got part way through exercise number 11, which is push-ups with rotations, and basically collapsed in a heap on the floor. I barely attempted the last one, which is side planking. It took me a long time to get my breath back afterwards and some assistance from my asthma inhaler was necessary.
I’m sure the seven minute workout is great if you’re a busy person wanting to maintain fitness, rather than someone like me who needs to get fitter in the first place. Maybe in a few weeks’ time I’ll be able to do it without nearly giving myself an asthma attack. But right now it’s a bit too extreme for me.
As well as re-starting driving lessons, I’ve also started going back to the gym regularly. It’s been a long time since I last did regular exercise – certainly longer than I’m willing to admit – and it was showing. My fitness levels had dropped significantly, so on the odd occasion when I’ve been late and had to run for my morning train I’ve ended up seriously out of breath. And I’d been getting podgier around my waist.
One change I made with the staff at the gym was that I would have two different workouts available for me. One is a shorter 45 minute workout, to be done once or twice a week, with around 30 minutes of cardio. Then there’s a longer 75 minute workout for when I have more time, like the weekends, with 30 minutes of cardio and more resistance training, to be done weekly. The shorter workout means that I can be in and out of the gym more quickly on weekdays when I get back from work, and so I should be able to go more frequently.
Going back to the gym after so long away has been difficult. I’m fine on some machines, such as the cross-trainer, as I still walk for at least half an hour a day, but others have been a challenge. I’m supposed to be able to run at 8 km/h (5mph) on the treadmill for 10 minutes, but lately this has been running for 6-7 minutes with a walking break in the middle. My upper body strength is nothing like what it was when I last went regularly so some of the resistance machines are really hard work, even with light weights.
That being said, I’d forgotten how good it feels when you’re able to relax after an intensive workout. And I’m sure the exercises will get easier as my fitness improves again. But I’m mostly looking forward to my clothes fitting better.
