DIY Charging Station

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No doubt you have guessed I love my gadgets. The downside is they seem to breed, taking up more and more power points along with migrating to new habitat - beside the bed, beside the TV and the kitchen bench. While in a local home wares store on the weekend I noticed a faux leather desk organiser. With a power drill and some wood-boring drill bit, the pics show the result.

Now my Pebble watch, my Fitbit Flex, my iPhone, my iPad mini, iPod Nano, Bluetooth headphones, and battery packs along with their cables have a home. nice and tidy. I can even fit my 11in Macbook Air in the rear 2 spots.

 

So for around 20 bucks it is all neat and tidy.

Run run as fast as you can !!!

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This week had been a big week for me in the fitness / jogging side. Every night this week I have been out walking and jogging in Darwin - how could you not. The whether has been sublime. I usually run at night. Later the better. Averaging 6-8kms. The nights here don't drop below 22 degrees C.

My fitbit flex has really changed the way I view activity. It's right there on my wrist. It's blinking lights shaming me into activity. The more lights the more active you have been. It has 5 lights that break your goal into 5ths. My daily goal is currently 10,000 steps ( roughly 5kms) so each light is 2000 steps. The nature of my current role at work means that I am largely sedentary (desk bound) during the day - I would be lucky to pass 2000 steps at work. But by bed time I am usually clocking up between 12000 & 16000. My walking partner who can walk to work recently scored 24kms in a single day with only a normal day activity with a night walk.

Weight wise I am still hovering between 76-78kgs. But body fat as a percentage is dropping from 26% to as low as 24% this morning.

How far do you usually run per day?

Quantifying self - Fitness / life tracking

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I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 program about Life tracking ( they had a fancy title, Quantifying self). While listening I was thinking HOLY CRAP, thats me.. my whole life is recorded - whether pictorially through Facebook or Instagram, textually through here or tumblr and fitness wise I will go into below. I recently have been trying to shift some KGs after hitting my highest weight without much effort! (mid 80kgs)

As you are probably aware, I am a gadget man, the first item that grabbed my eye was the new Fitbit Flex.

Basically its a Bluetooth Enabled Pedometer which doubles as a sleep tracker.

The wrist based device 'gameifies' the process of basically moving your body. In default setting of 10000 steps as a goal per day the device shows one single light per 2000 steps, providing vibration feedback when the 10000 is reached. The crowning glory of the divide in my opinion is back end - the app tracking and recording.

More recently I have added the Aria - the wifi enabled scale that perfectly couples with the Flex and the Fitbit app, not just measuring KGs but also lean body mass.

For the record - am now in the 70kg range.

Fitbit Flex:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/viZsv2kMZeo]

Fitbit Aria:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Pap8wqbKqIM]

Adding runkeeper to my arsonal has really helped to, I am finding I am racing my own personal best minutes per KM rate.
Runkeeper
I have recently found a new service that claims to link / sync everything together - I am still testing this:
Sync Metrics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02mfzrw