May '21 in Review

Happy Memorial Day!

Wow, the month of May (and 2021 in general) has flown by! It’s really hard to believe that tomorrow is already the first day of June.

First of all, website updates! I’ve not taken time to do any major work on my website as of late, but over the past few months I’ve made the following small enhancements and/or changes:

• Updated my Blogroll with a few new blogs I follow
• Added a podcasts section to my Blogroll
• Pulled the Hugo theme I use forward (mostly minor visual enhancements)

My reading time has also been somewhat limited, but in May I also managed to complete the book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Waltar Isaacson, which turned out to be a fascinating look on RNA, CRISPR, and the use of mRNA technologies in SARS-CoV-2 testing and vaccines.

iOS 14.5 with App Tracking Transparency + Apple Watch Unlock

iOS 14.5 was released yesterday (2021/04/26), bringing a whole host of changes that have been heavily covered on all of the major tech news outlets. Two of the changes, App Tracking Transparency and Apple Watch unlock for iPhone, caught my eye.

I’ve read the details on App Tracking Transparency, and I like what Apple is doing, though I’ve not actually experienced any of the changes myself yet. The TL;DR version is that companies are now blocked from tracking you across other apps by default, and you have to explicitly give them permission to do so, whereas before it was enabled by default, and you had to manually disable tracking. I don’t use many apps that this would apply to personally (from what I’ve seen at least), but I think this is a win for privacy-conscious individuals everywhere. For more details of the changes, see Why Apple’s new privacy feature is such a big deal by The Verge.

My Typical Day

I first got the idea for this blog post from Kev Quirk, and have since sought out other examples online to satiate my own curiosity on how people spend their days. While the following shift some, this is my mental plan for each weekday, and (with some minor exceptions) is also how I design my weekends as well. As you can see, I’m definitely a creature of habit, and like my daily routines.

Experimenting with Fitness Tracking

Over the last few years, the general population has become increasingly more interested in fitness tracking, health metrics, and other associated smart wearables. Whereas heart rate monitors were once the realm only of fitness enthusiasts and professional athletes, it is now common to see the average individual tracking their heart rate, blood oxygen, and daily steps.

My Early Experience with Fitness Metrics

I first started counting my steps back when it was added to the iPhone 5s, around 2013, mostly as a curiosity. I didn’t pay attention on a day to day basis, but would occasionally look to see how many steps it estimated I had taken on particularly busy days. I continued to track steps through my switch to Android in 2015 (mostly in the background), and I would occasionally check my heart rate and blood pressure using a wrist cuff at home, but never really paid much attention to the results. I also picked up a smartwatch (Android Wear) in the 2017-2018 timeframe, but again, I never really paid attention to the information it could collect other than to note it when I was bored and looking at health information on my phone.

2021 New Year's Resolutions

January 1st. The first day of the new year. Normally a cool, snowy (or icy) day where I live. And also, the day when people traditionally plan out or begin to implement their New Year’s resolutions.

My Thoughts on New Year’s Resolutions

I have an interesting relationship with New Year’s resolutions. I vaguely recall that, during my childhood, I somewhat embraced the idea of setting goals for myself: things that I would quit doing, start doing, improve, etc over the course of the next year. However, try as I might, rarely did a resolution stick. I would perhaps start out strong, but slowly, over the next few weeks and months, I would eventually give up, and settle back into my normal routine.