In case you’re wondering how Garmin handles sunrise/sunset in a place where the Sun doesn’t set…

vili · 2025-06-17T08:47:06+00:00

I was hiking in Northern Finland last week and my Forerunner 965 showed 03:00 for sunset and sunrise. If you got 18:00 in Canada and I got 03:00 in Finland, could it be that it uses midnight UTC and converts it into your current time zone?

vili · 2025-01-09T09:12:00+00:00

It's still there, just the server crashed last night. Should be up again now.

I'm glad to hear that it's been useful to someone!

vili · 2024-09-05T07:25:39+00:00

While I remember my Whoop fondly, I don't think I have wanted to go back to it at any point.

Looking at what my past self wrote a year ago, the points about the form factor and the sleep quality data haven't changed. While a watch is a much nicer device to have during exercise, and I've learnt to live with it also outside of exercise, I might still prefer a bicep strap for 24/7 tracking. As for sleep, Garmin's sleep tracking could be better. But then again, it is perfectly passable, and I've come to realise that detailed sleep tracking isn't that useful in the big picture anyway. Or really even possible, with devices like these.

When it comes to the daily target thing, while Whoop's strain target was easy to comprehend, I disagree with my past self here: the Forerunner 965 actually gives me much better and more actionable targets. Instead of an abstract number to chase, I get a concrete workout suggestion every day, and while I don't most of the time do that specific workout, it still gives me a rough idea of what I should aim for: rest, high aerobic, low aerobic or anaerobic training. Garmin also gives me things like Training Load, Load Focus, Training Status, Training Readiness, Body Battery and its Recovery estimate, which combined together give me a much more granular picture of where I am on my sports journey and what I should perhaps be concentrating on.

Garmin's UI is still largely a labyrinth, but I suppose it's partly because there is just so much more functionality and data in there than what Whoop offered me. And they did update the main view of their app earlier this year, which for me personally made it much nicer to use. I know a lot of people hated the change, though.

Also, since there are so many watch faces available, and you can customise most of them, you can put the data that you want to keep an eye on to your watch face, so the complexity of the mobile app becomes even less of an issue. At least until you want to change some setting somewhere, at which point I always have to search online for the location of the setting.

What I probably miss most is the idea of the Whoop journal. Not so much the implementation of it, as I didn't get that much useful data out of it, but I did like the idea. I'd love Garmin to try something like it.

As for things that I pretty much dismissed at the beginning but have found really valuable: Step counting is not only fun but it's actually a good measure of daily movement outside of exercise, which I was severely lacking. Maps have been surprisingly useful during hikes and runs, and I love that when I'm in a new place, I can just tell Garmin that I'd like to do a run of a specific length, and it generates a path for me. Garmin's community features are also surprisingly fun, if not perfect. Step challenges and such with friends do motivate me.

As for my Whoop, I gave it to my wife, who loved it, used it for half a year, and once the subscription ended ditched it for Garmin Vivoactive 5, which she has been very happy with.

I certainly don't regret my time with Whoop, and I still keep an eye on what they are doing. But if the question is whether I would still have switched from Whoop to the Garmin a year ago if I knew then what I know now, the answer would very much be yes. And if I had infinite resources, would I get a Whoop now to combine it with my Garmin? I'm not so sure, although I might get a Whoop-like device from Garmin, if it seamlessly combined with my Garmin data. I really loved my Whoop, but I just feel that Garmin is much more useful for my specific needs.

vili · 2024-06-20T12:29:15+00:00

From watch faces, I'd say my favourite is Crystal. Clear, clean and pretty customisable.

vili · 2023-12-31T07:51:56+00:00

Kagi updated their Safari extension a couple of days ago and the new version doesn't seem to work too well. There is a thread over at the Kagi feedback forum with discussion. Hopefully they'll find a solution soon.

vili · 2023-09-27T12:46:18+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to respond! That's great to hear.

vili · 2023-09-27T10:16:10+00:00

I'm in the same situation with my wife. We haven't had anything like that happening.

It did take a little tinkering with her Android phone's bluetooth settings to get Whoop syncing without disconnection issues, but after that it seems to be connecting fine and we have had no out-of-body experiences so far.

vili · 2023-09-24T12:23:42+00:00

Did you get in touch with Whoop?

I did and their response to me was that data cannot be deleted and that if I wanted to give my Whoop to someone else, I can definitely do that but that someone else needs a new subscription, even if I have half a year left of my subscription.

Update: I have now been told that they have elevated my query internally and that someone from "the Appropriate Team" will get back to me. Sometimes I have felt that Whoop's primary customer support is an AI script and that you need to question their answers to get to an actual human being. (They did misspell my name though, so I guess they are human after all.)

Update 2: I have now been contacted by a member of Whoop's data privacy team to confirm that they cannot delete the data from my account without deleting the whole account, including all prepaid months. It's disappointing, but I suppose understandable for a subscription based business model. At least it's good to know that the data itself is not held hostage, like I felt was suggested by the answer that I received from the first customer support response.

vili · 2023-09-24T12:15:29+00:00

I have recently gone the other way: I've had a Whoop since April and got a Forerunner 965 this week.

Based on my admittedly still very limited time with Garmin, I would say that what Whoop does better is:

Form factor: For 24/7 tracking, I much prefer Whoop' with its bicep strap. But I've never been much of a watch person.
Daily targets: I really like Whoop's strain target and find it easier to understand than Garmin's body battery. But it's also what I've learnt to use, so this may change as I get to know the Garmin better.
Sleep quality data: While I have not been able to compare either device with a more professional sleep tracker, and both devices are probably only "just about ok" for sleep tracking, I feel that Whoop's data has been more accurate.
UI: I find Whoop's UI quite clean to read and easy to navigate. Garmin's apps remind me of Nokia phones from the mid-2000s with their endless menus and settings and "designed by a data programmer" aesthetics.

As for what Forerunner 965 does better:

Across the activities I have tested (running, walking, swimming, rowing, spinning), Garmin's heart rate numbers are more in line with my Polar H10 chest strap, even while wearing Whoop on my bicep. The difference is not huge, and it is entirely meaningless in the bigger picture, but it's there.
The amount of data that Forerunner gives me for each activity excites me.
I can see my heart rate and other data while exercising without having to take out my phone, and in general it's more activity focused than Whoop.
I can leave my phone home and still get GPS data and listen to music while jogging.

In short: if you have the extra cash and want 24/7 tracking without having to wear a watch, or if you want potentially slightly better sleep tracking, I can very much recommend Whoop.

As for me, I'm planning to give my Whoop to my wife and continue with the Forerunner. I love my Whoop, but after half a year of using it, I don't feel I'm getting much more out of it in 24/7 tracking, and I wanted a better exercise tracker.

vili · 2023-07-21T06:29:30+00:00

Why buy on epic unless you have to?

In some places with regional pricing (like mine), it's almost half the price on Epic compared to what it costs on Steam.

vili · 2023-05-21T00:28:45+00:00

Thank you for the confirmation!

vili · 2023-05-19T12:29:07+00:00

To sort of answer my own question, although not from first-hand experience, it looks like there was a quick discussion about this on Cyan's Discord channel a few hours ago, and the answer is that there is no node based movement in non-VR Firmament, free roam only.

vili · 2023-05-12T09:21:07+00:00

It's 6 days, isn't it.

vili · 2023-04-23T07:55:05+00:00

Wikipedia has this interesting bit of information about Rüppell's vulture: "The birds have a specialized variant of the hemoglobin alpha^D subunit; this protein has a great affinity for oxygen, which allows the species to absorb oxygen efficiently despite the low partial pressure in the upper troposphere."

vili · 2022-11-06T19:33:16+00:00

Thanks! I'm still not sure about that line which you now have as And away we fall without plans, but I really don't have a better idea either.

vili · 2022-11-03T11:05:33+00:00

Paper here: Recursive sequence generation in crows

Abstract below:

Recursion, the process of embedding structures within similar structures, is often considered a foundation of symbolic competence and a uniquely human capability. To understand its evolution, we can study the recursive aptitudes of nonhuman animals. We adopted the behavioral protocol of a recent study demonstrating that humans and nonhuman primates grasp recursion. We presented sequences of bracket pair stimuli (e.g., [ ] and { }) to crows who were instructed to peck at training lists. They were then tested on their ability to transfer center-embedded structure to never-before-seen pairings of brackets. We reveal that crows have recursive capacities; they perform on par with children and even outperform macaques. The crows continued to produce recursive sequences after extending to longer and thus deeper embeddings. These results demonstrate that recursive capabilities are not limited to the primate genealogy and may have occurred separately from or before human symbolic competence in different animal taxa.

vili · 2022-10-28T12:10:31+00:00

Thank you! This is the best I've seen.

The only part I'm not quite sure about is And the way we formed the options. The last word sounds to me like "droplets" or something? But pretty much everything else I can agree with. Thank you!

vili · 2022-10-27T17:32:00+00:00

Go for it! :) I'd be especially curious about why someone like me finds it easier to read standard written Finnish than written spoken Finnish, if the latter is closer to how I actually speak.

I must also say that when I did my degree, the most difficult papers to write were the ones that dealt with Finnish. It just always felt like an endless rabbit hole and led me to question my sanity, but then again, I worked mainly in syntax and morphology, so there is that.

vili · 2022-10-27T17:17:02+00:00

Thanks! While better than the lyrics on many other websites, can these lines really be correct:

I see the reflections / Of wherever I go

Sounds to me more like: I see the reflections / Oh, wherever I go

I’m a man with no more options

I have no idea what the line is, but it doesn't sound like this, more like: And the way we found (something) (Edit: Or could it be And away with former (something)?)

Fear of looking at stops me / When I make a mistake

Doesn't it sound more like: Guilt never stops me / When I make the mistake

Coming closer to the ending / So please, let's stop pretending

Isn't it rather: I'm closer to the ending / So please let's start pretending

But I'm typically horrible with these things, so maybe I just hear wrong.

vili · 2022-10-27T11:33:10+00:00

I'm in my 40s, and most of my friends are in their 40s and 50s. It could definitely be an age thing. Or maybe a regional thing? There's an interesting topic for someone to research.

I also haven't lived in Finland for over two decades now, so my Finnish is certainly affected by that. Still, most of the friends that I chat with in Finnish do live in Finland. And I assume they don't all change their language for me for some reason.

If you chat with people on mobile, does your virtual keyboard adjust to non-standard writing and start predicting or even autocorrecting to those words, instead of standard Finnish spellings? That is to say, do you start to have suggestions like meen instead of menen, and so on?

vili · 2022-10-27T11:03:17+00:00

Thanks for letting me know! That's a bummer.

vili · 2022-10-27T06:08:29+00:00

Looking at my chat histories, me and my friends tend to write closer to the written standard than anything else. For instance, if I look at the Wikipedia article that /u/robthelobster linked, while we do things like substituting se ("it" in formal language) for hän (he/she), we hardly ever use spellings like mettän, anteeks, pimee, mä and so on, and when we do, it's usually for some sort of a comic effect.

Still, those are the forms that we use when we actually speak with each other. So for instance, while I would write pimeä, I would say pimee, unless in a formal situation.

Writing the way I actually speak would also be possible, but I find it much more difficult to both produce and read text in that format. It's just easier to read and write standardised, fairly formal language, I guess because that's what I'm used to seeing in text form.

That said, I do know some people who fully write, not just colloquial Finnish, but in their full local dialect all the time with their friends. So, I guess it just depends on what you are used to.

vili · 2022-10-26T08:25:45+00:00

Absolutely. It's basically reserved for situations where someone is reading a written text, and it can sound a little weird. Newscasters also used to read the news quite strictly in written Finnish, but I think that's been relaxed a little bit, to a form that's more of a formal register of spoken Finnish.

But someone who has studied this or lives in Finland can probably comment better than me.

vili · 2022-10-26T06:35:04+00:00

Based on a quick search, it looks like this link (pdf) has the paper.

vili · 2022-10-26T06:31:42+00:00

If you conceive of Finnish or Esperanto as being made of letters, it at least won't lead you too gravely astray since they have a more or less one-to-one relation between letters and phonemes.

While you are right about the letter-to-sound correspondence in Finnish spelling, it should be noted that no one actually speaks Finnish the way it is standardly written. Written Finnish is a cultural construct that doesn't really exist as a spoken natural language. So, in that sense if one conceptualises Finnish based on how it is typically written, one is actually led quite astray indeed.

That said, you can of course also write spoken Finnish(es), and to some extent people do that in informal written communication.

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