As has my life, my Runkeeper and Fitbit tracking has been a mess for more than a year. Most of my runs have two or even three copies in Runkeeper. My stats have therefore been useless, not that I’ve had time to look at them anyway.
I had been meaning to sit down and document some issues with the Runkeeper-Fitbit integration before I started tracking many GPS activities in Fitbit. I expected I would track each runs with my Fitbit Ionic and the Runkeeper app on the phone, and then delete one, leaving whichever was best. This hedged against GPS breakdowns, which have happened on any device I’ve ever tested. The first problem was Fitbit did not allow saving notes with the activity, so I would have to copy the notes from the Runkeeper tracked run to the Fitbit imported run on Runkeeper. Upon saving, often the miles would change, perhaps due to some algorithm Runkeeper has to smooth GPS jitter. Whether or not the miles changed, it seemed Runkeeper would then reimport the Fitbit activity since apparently the one resaved with the note was no longer connected to the original.
Read more
After accidentally deleting my Runkeeper activity today, I was able to mostly restore it thanks to Google’s somewhat creepy location history. Perhaps some day Runkeeper will be more user friendly.
Read more
Pictures coming later, but I wanted to write this now before I let it slide for a year like last year!
I expected this marathon to be bad, and it was, but I did finish. I really hope I manage to do a proper training schedule for my next marathon …
Read more
My long running goal of properly training for a marathon will again not be realized this year, but I still feel good. And kind of crappy. If only the San Francisco Marathon were in a few more weeks instead of a few days!
Read more
I just completed migrating my weight and heart rate information to a new Withings account because they are incapable of figuring out why my Wi-Fi Body Scale (WBS01) (new version) can no longer be associated to my original account. Their export and import process does not support temperature data, so I need to continue using my Thermo with the Thermo app signed into my original account, while using my blood pressure monitor with the Withings app is signed into my new account. Additionally, the import process ignores comments, so I needed to manually copy and paste all the comments for each measurement. What a pain!
I thought I had low confidence in Fitbit based on my experience over the years, but man, now I don’t know who I would recommend for smart body devices. I really want to support the pioneers instead of the big companies, but if they keep screwing up, I guess there’s no point.
Read more
I have a new inflamed tastebud, but thankfully the one I got yesterday is mostly better now. I haven’t had any for a while (weeks? months?), but I do remember having three at once sometime this year. I had been getting them somewhat frequently, but they did definitely heal, so I was at least pretty sure it was due to something I did periodically, not every day. Is it spicy food? I’m not sure, but that’s what I tell myself.
Read more
I just realized (in July 2017) I forgot to finish posting this entry last year. That’s a bit of a shame, as it was my best time (3:58:09) and I was now hoping to remember a bit about how I prepared. The photos will have to suffice!
Read more
I started using Runkeeper to track my runs in July 2010, and soon after I started paying $19.99 per year to support the service. The additional features for the money were limited, basically boiling down to some extra charts and a live run feature where others can see your run in real time. This wasn’t as cool as it could be, or even as similar features from competitors. I’ve seen friends using a Nike app, I think, where it would post to Facebook at the start of a run, and the phone would read comments and cheers as friends interacted with the post. As far as I know, Runkeeper never did anything like that. And I’m not sure I would have used it anyway.
Read more
Today I received a newsletter from Mapbox that linked to a tutorial for JavaScript based heatmaps. It looks pretty cool, and I wondered how it might look used to plot runs.
I wrote in November about Runkeeper heatmaps and a method to generate images from run data on a computer …
Read more
Deciding how to fix health care is hard enough. But when huge problems I didn’t even know were problems come to light, it makes me wonder how we can ever hope to change. Then again, every problem is a solution waiting for someone to take charge.
In this case, drug shortages could be studied and solved through smart tracking software run by a national health organization or on a smaller scale within a hospital system.
Read more
A month ago I started reading the book “Biocode: the new age of genomics” Yizhen left with me after heading back to Chicago. I posted some comments about the personal genomics section, but then I got super busy with work. (That will not be happening again with that particular job; more on that in a future post.)
Organizational struggles
Last week I made time to finish the book. First I had to settle on a note taking system, since I knew I would want to remember to some of the people and places and projects mentioned. Lately I’ve been taking notes on paper, especially when listening to audiobooks on planes and places I don’t want to deal with my computer. But clearly I need a digital solution.
Read more
A few weeks ago, my Fitbit Charge HR rather quickly deteriorated from needing charging once a week to needing charging every day and a half. Thankfully it was within the one year warranty, and Fitbit pretty easily sent a replacement after I sent an email inquiry. I suppose had it happened just after the warranty ended, I could have gotten a replacement through my credit card warranty service, but it was nice Fitbit didn’t make it a big hassle.
Read more
I don’t have a lot of knowledge of cooking or motivation to drive the the grocery store and plan meals. I therefore have subscribed to farm boxes from Farm Fresh To You on and off while I’ve lived in San Francisco. They delivery fresh produce from local farms, but I also need to figure out what to do with it. And this time, I received some friends!
Read more
This morning my friend Walter sent me a link to his cycling heat map on Strava, and it was pretty cool. Even cooler than my silly temperature + Fitbit history chart maker app, Weatherbit 
.
Update: Check out an example map from CityStrides.
This morning my friend Walter sent me a link to his cycling heat map on Strava, and it was pretty cool. I figured there must be a web service that creates these based on Runkeeper data, so I Googled "runkeeper heatmap." Apparently there isn't a readymade service, but the top result gave me exactly what I needed to do it myself.
Read more
This week involved not much more than working 56 hours (unusual), though it was at least in the company of my dog, Vera, since her new owner was out of town.
Work has been pretty crazy lately, as two of my large clients are undergoing migrations and redesigns. One of those launched this week, which went pretty smoothly, but just took a lot of time I didn’t have. The other has a lot of work left, but I hopefully finished most of my role and provided enough documentation for others on my team to fill in the gaps. Time will tell, there. As for me, I supposedly have off two days next week in exchange for the overtime this week, and I am already planning to take off the entire following week to get caught up on personal stuff.
I almost forgot to get a new Adderall prescription this week. I am prescribed one 25mg capsule daily, but because amphetamines are Schedule II drugs, it is somewhat inconvenient to actually obtain what I am prescribed. For most drugs, I can get 90 day prescriptions automatically filled by the mail order pharmacy my insurance uses, OptumRx. The two drugs I take, however, aren’t so easy. (Truvada as PrEP is a story for another time.)
Read more
Instead of catching up on my photos today, I’ll start gathering some research here regarding ADHD and medications. This isn’t intended to be a cohesive narrative, but a brainstorming work space. It’s public in case it might be of use to someone.
Literature notes
Read more
Tim shared with me a post from the blog Nao, which comments on the conflict between China’s working class and the state. The post offers English translations of some of Foxconn laborer Xu Lizhi’s poetry and of his obituary in Shenzhen Evening News. That’s right, Xu is dead, having survived 24 years before taking his life. He followed in the steps of many others, and certainly won’t be the last to do so.
Read more
I don't remember exactly how I came up with this idea, but when I was looking at some D3.js powered charts, I decided to make something so I could play with them. Somehow I chose to try pulling my daily step counts through the Fitbit API and graphing it against temperature data. I found a neat weather data API, Forecast.io, and used my Foursquare history to determine which location to use for weather data each day. Once I got this working, I created a web page so others can create their own graphs. And I called it Weatherbit.
Read more
Last Tuesday, Josh made me watch a movie with him, "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead." Apparently he thought it was about steroid abuse for the sake of muscle gain or something, and it turned out to be quite a different movie. But we both loved it nonetheless.
Read more
