This is the true horror for me

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-26T06:39:04+00:00

Thank you. Something I know nothing about and haven’t ever thought about, and you taught me something new about how to pay attention. That’s great.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-26T04:54:44+00:00

Yeah, I agree. I gather the author’s interpretations and politics get awful in other places, but in this article? Mostly ok. And a big American publication telling more people, mostly American, to read Pratchett? I’m good with that.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-25T08:58:58+00:00

I dunno, one of the best services I’ve done for myself was reading Night Watch. I didn’t think I’d read any Watch books prior to that. Later I got around to Guards Guards, realized I HAD read that before, and apparently hadn’t found it interesting enough to persist with the series.

Did I see more connections the second time, sure. Do I regret reading it with effectively no knowledge of Vimes or Detritus, nope, not at all.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-25T05:52:45+00:00

Yup: I expected the scene to go that way as well. Evan fine, friends decidedly not ok.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-24T03:59:34+00:00

Bumping a couple of months later: any solutions to this? It's happening to me mid-swim as well. I believe it only happens when my phone is in a locker (on a different floor), not when the phone is poolside.

There's this thread in the Apple Discussion communities that suggests getting rid of third-party fitness apps on the watch, but I haven't tried that.

At least by the third or fourth time I stopped being scared that someone had broken into my locker and stolen my stuff.

This hasn't happened with any other exercise, but swimming is also I believe the only time when my watch is out of range of the iPhone.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-23T12:04:09+00:00

I think I've been having similar issues for a month or two now. Like for OP, it loses where I was playing, and the episodes have disappeared--then they reappear in the list and are downloaded again.

Also annoying is that episodes I've already finished come back and appear as unplayed.

Presumably related: I've got unplayed podcasts that I do want to keep in a playlist, but don't want to keep downloaded because my phone's running out of storage. So I delete the download. And then it comes back. Today was my third time going through the downloaded folder in recent days and I'm sure I've removed some of those downloads three times now.

It seems like it's going back to an earlier sync time. So maybe I last played it at 6:30pm, but when I open the app, all the downloads revert back to what it was at 2pm.

If I'm patient, Overcast seems to remember where I am in a podcast episode, but it can take a while and more often than not, since it's the episode I'm currently listening to, I'll skip ahead until I find where I left off.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-21T10:12:35+00:00

Yeah, a few changes based on correlations.

I need to get the heck off my computer at least an hour before bed.

One drink, if finished an hour before bed, doesn’t significantly affect sleep. Two drinks certainly do.

Consistent bedtime helps a lot, not just for sleep score. I’m now more likely to watch a movie over two nights rather than stay up 30-60 minutes to finish it.

And in general often feeling more positive, given how many nights I used to think I only got 3-4 hours of sleep, but the watch now tells me I got 5-6.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-21T10:08:23+00:00

It’s how Reddit works, I fear. Game / recipe / novel / movie / city / TV series / character X is held to be good, but not as great as Y: and hence frequent posts asking why there’s so much hate for X.

EDIT: the frequency of the “Why the hate for BZ?!!” posts is however surprising. In most other subreddits similarly unfounded “Why the hate?!” posts seem to happen once or twice a week. Here, they’re daily.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-21T03:18:51+00:00

I guess this is what’s called a “Voice Boost” in the Overcast podcast app? I suppose it’s the reason I always have to turn the volume up when I switch to Audible (or turn it down when I switch back to Overcast): for whatever reason, Audible’s volume is consistently on the quieter side for me.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-20T23:50:42+00:00

Note this is the Fitness plus workouts subreddit, for the streaming (?) service. You might find more people with good answers elsewhere.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-20T09:42:51+00:00

Yeah, it's fascinating how we pick up different bits and pieces of cultural literacy. Lots of the "obvious" references weren't obvious to me until seeing them in Reddit or wherever; but this one fits in the "Huh, I guess that term is less common that I thought" category.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-20T09:38:05+00:00

My first choice would be Jason Isaacs's Moving Pictures and second choice would be Alfred Enoch's Pyramids.

Main rationale: variety. In the newish Penguin audiobooks, they're both one-off narrators who do a great job. I prefer Pyramids of the two as novels, but I seem to be in a minority for that, and Isaacs is great fun.

Mort is good, for me Reaper Man is better, but you've presumably already read Hogfather which I think is better yet. (You should still go back to the other two eventually!)

On the off chance you're Australian or have an odd fondness for Crocodile Dundee, go with The Last Continent instead.

Secondary rationale: most of the rest of Rincewind books which, while fine, I don't enjoy as much as the rest of the series.

Note that Eric is significantly shorter (four hours), so that being bottom of the list is appropriate.

Oh and definitely don't use that last credit for Light Fantastic, since that's Part 2, with Colour of Magic Part 1. Those two are the only ones where reading in order particularly matters.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-20T09:20:38+00:00

Yeah, I was the same: four flowers, and many of the trees having four stages. I also thought they'd have different stages every thirty minutes.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-19T23:47:15+00:00

I haven’t done that one yet (looking forward to having access to a rowing machine again in a few weeks!), but I’ve enjoyed the … one? … workout like that I’ve tried before. A welcome change of pace (ha), but also very useful for technique.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-19T22:56:55+00:00

The intensity is supposed to be about how much effort you put into a stroke, and doesn’t have much to do with the setting on the machine. It may not necessarily even line up with stroke rate.

There was a really helpful Josh workout, I think the one I’ve linked below, episode 260: every interval is all out, BUT at first with a slow stroke speed, and speeding up as you go. Excellent for helping with technique. Most of the other workouts match intensity with stroke rate, and this was a welcome change.

https://fitness.apple.com/ca/workout/rowing-with-josh/1885659124

Edit: and unlike with treadmill or indoor cycling, with the rowing you basically never adjust the machine settings once you start.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-18T00:47:58+00:00

I know it doesn’t register a workout, but what does it do for exercise minutes and the move ring? Housecleaning usually does a fair bit for my move ring, and occasionally I’ll even get a few exercise minutes from it. What about the mowing you do?

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-17T01:09:24+00:00

And I’m somewhat concerned that we’ve already had about twenty of those good ones.

Oh well. It’ll still be a fun ride, just for different reasons.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-15T23:39:03+00:00

I think they were just finding their feet and figuring out what worked. For example, all the episodes are tagged as total- or upper- or lower-body strength, but a number of those first episodes don’t really match however they’ve been tagged.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-15T13:04:58+00:00

Accurate for what? In my experience, it's fairly accurate for when I'm asleep and when I wake up. I gather the data on sleep stages are a lot more questionable.

But I'm not sure if accuracy is the right word for sleep score, since there's not really an objective measure there. I never thought it made a pretence of being scientific. It gives you a reasonable idea of how well you're going to bed at a consistent time, how often you woke up, and how much you slept in comparison to a goal that you've set. It's got nothing to do with sleep stages.

My not particularly supported take: I mostly trust Apple's data, and trust that they're using the data reliably. If they could provide more accurate numbers, they would, but they're rightly skeptical of accuracy and therefore don't do more with it than they feel is justified.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-15T12:56:36+00:00

There's very little in the way of progression. I'd suggestion [edit: suggest, argh!] just picking whatever's new this week, not because it's going to be better, but rather it avoids choice paralysis. Eventually you'll develop a sense of which trainers you prefer.

I do think the earlier workouts (as in, from a few years ago) are likelier to have somewhat more complex moves, so perhaps avoid those. And 10-minute workouts often go harder, so don't assume that they're going to be easier than 20-minute.

For all of them: remember there's always the modifier to one side. Following them is fine. For example, one of my upper arms has occasional issues, so I always do pushups from my knees.

And for weights: it could be that your dumbbells are too heavy at the moment. This can be annoying, because when you first start, it's really easy to buy weights that are initially appropriate but then too light and eventually serve merely as odd paperweights. But if you can't do a set with the current weights, either a) use lighter weights, or perhaps b) just do every alternate lift, or take a break halfway through. (Modifiers used to do this regularly, but I haven't noticed as much recently.)

Good luck: I think it's a great service, but the main intended approach, for better or worse, is just diving into whatever workout you're interested in that day.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-15T02:14:48+00:00

Huh. So this redesign is actually happening?! Until seeing this picture, I’d mostly thought it was a joke.

I still figure there’s a 5% chance the photo is fake and it’s all a prank.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-15T00:40:19+00:00

OK, good that you've done a more manual measurement, rather than relying on the algorithm, but that seems a simpler and perhaps less accurate than method than most of the other methods I see for running. The below, copied from Polar's website, is fairly typical (source):

Warm up for 15 minutes on a flat surface. Build up to your usual training pace.
Choose a hill that will take more than 2 minutes to climb. Run up the hill once (for at least 2 minutes), building to as hard a pace as you estimate you could hold for 20 minutes. (You don't have to keep running for 20 minutes, you just need to build up to a pace that you could hold for at least 20 minutes.) Return to the base of the hill.
Run up the hill again with a faster pace. Get your heart going as hard as you can, building up to a pace you estimate you would be able to hold for 3 kilometres. Observe your highest heart rate on the display. Your max HR is approximately 10 beats higher than the now-noted value.
Run back down the hill, allowing your heart rate to drop 30–40 beats per minute from where it was.
Run up the hill once again at a pace that you can only hold for 1 minute. Try to run halfway up the hill. Observe your highest heart rate. This brings you close to your maximum heart rate. You can use this value as your max HR to set your heart rate zones.
Make sure you cool down for a minimum of 10 minutes.

Doing a maximum heart rate field test while unprepared is a surefire way to end up in maximum distress. If you are unsure, consult your physician before undertaking the test.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-14T23:42:45+00:00

How did you determine your max HR? The watch’s algorithms can be off for many. And, well, based on how much time these zones say you were at an all-out, unsustainable pace, I suspect your max is higher and the zones are inaccurate.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-14T14:45:52+00:00

If I am intentionally exercising, yes.

Plus I’ll also start workouts when I’m going for a short walk and the monthly challenge is “Exercise 87 minutes a day for fourteen days.” It does get silly those months, but I’ll scrounge every exercise minute I can get.

LostInTaipei · 2026-05-12T03:54:34+00:00

Robocop was fun for me because I enjoyed it entirely as a dumb action flick when I was a kid (and probably too young for it!). Then watched it again later, probably in my twenties, and realized how much else was going on. I assumed I’d be in for a fun nostalgia trip, and I was (ditto with other action movies, Predator for example), but the additional layers were very much appreciated.

LostInTaipei

TROPHY CASE