Category Archives: Technology

Health, Reviews, Technology

Alex Wearable Posture Tracker Review

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Alex Wearable Posture Tracker Review

alex posture tracker and app
Picture of the Alex Posture Tracker and mobile app

The Alex wearable tracking device is a wearable tracker I backed on Kickstarter in early 2016. Its promise was to improve posture and help reduce neck pain, especially from poor phone and computer habits. As someone with 5 of 7 bulging discs in my neck as well as a mild case of spinal stenosis, the Alex wearable posture tracker is something I sorely needed. Find out if the Alex works as promised in my review.

Here’s the description from their Kickstarter campaign page:

alex your personal posture coach
alex your personal posture coach

End neck and back pain with ALEX!

ALEX is your wearable posture coach and posture tracker. It’s the first wearable to accurately measure the angle of your neck and the position of your head, so you can put an end to neck pain.

Thoughts on the Alex Wearable Posture Coach

I even backed their latest, second-generation version of the Alex on Kickstarter. It failed to achieve its goal, however, and announced that it does not plan to try again. I was kinda bumbed about it but also kinda glad. I was bumbed because I really wanted a version of the Alex posture coach that actually worked. But I was relieved because that means I won’t have to pay for a product that may or may not work and live up to my expectations. That’s kinda where I’m at with the Alex posture coach. It sorta worked, but not really. At least, not the way you would want a posture coach to work. Calibration was finicky, and to get it to vibrate you basically have to put your chin to your chest and hold it there for a few seconds. Not many people have posture that bad! From my experience, poor posture is usually much more subtle than that, and for this reason, the Alex isn’t a good product for me. I have since backed the Upright Go which I’ll write about in the future and almost backed another project, both related to improving posture. In my opinion, there’s definitely a need for products like these as we continue to chain ourselves to our desks and mobile phones more and more and poor posture becomes more common.

alex posture on a human. with posture tracking stats.
alex posture on a woman. You can see some posture tracking stats.

Alex Wearable Posture Tracker Review Conclusion

Overall, the concept of the Alex is an important one, but the product fails to deliver on the goods. It is simply not sensitive enough to give you fair warning and nudge you when you need it most. While it is lightweight and unobtrusive, it simply isn’t effective or useful. I would not recommend the Alex Wearable Posture Coach. Should you ignore my advice, you can buy it here.

Reviews, Sleep, Technology

The BedJet v2 Review – Reviewing The BedJet v2

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My BedJet Review for v2 of the BedJet

BedJet on Kickstarter

​​The BedJet v2 was another project I backed on Kickstarter.

Their version 1 had great reviews on Amazon and their Kickstarter campaign piqued my interest. As someone who experiments with sleep gadgets and habits a lot and emphasizes the importance of a quality night of sleep, the BedJet v2 seemed like an interesting product.

​BedJet Features

The feature that most interested me was the custom tailored temperature settings that would adjust the temperature throughout the night to keep you at the ideal body temperature for the entire sleep duration.

bedjet review
BedJet body temperature schedule settings

I sleep hot so the cooling feature was also very attractive to me. I even made a BedJet video to win a second BedJet. (Hint: I didn’t win)

They also market the benefits of the dual zone, but I can’t comment on that as you need two BedJets for it to work – one for each side of the bed.

First Impressions for the BedJet

Installation is pretty easy and the BedJet is mostly unnoticeable except for the nozzle at the foot of the bed, which sticks out a bit and can get in the way sometimes.

The app is clunky and difficult to figure out at first, but after a few minutes playing around with it you’ll get the hang of it.

To take full advantage of the BedJet v2 you also need to purchase their air comforter, which is a big bummer. The air comforter is fairly comfortable and has an opening at the foot of the comforter that you insert the nozzle head into. The air comforter works well by allowing the BedJet’s airflow to make it all the way towards your head.

The warm function is UNBELIEVABLE, especially in the winter months or on those cold nights. BedJet also included some aroma therapy strips you can use by adding a couple drops of an aroma therapy oil such as lavender to the strips and then clipping them to the mouth of the nozzle. The aroma therapy stuff seemed to be an afterthought as it is kinda cheap-looking the way they designed it, but combining it with the warm function truly is a wonderful experience. It’s the best part of the BedJet, in my opinion.

Is the BedJet v2 worth it?

The BedJet v2 let’s you set a schedule depending on your temperature throughout the night. The problem is the BedJet isn’t able to measure your temperature so it’s a lot of trial and error. The defaults they gave me for my age and sex and all of that kept waking me up in the middle of the night all sweaty. That’s the biggest issue with the Bedjet. It never gets cool enough, and gets further exasperated by their air comforter. The problem is the air comforter is far too thick. I end up sweating a lot more with air comforter and the BedJet’s cooling function set to the maximum then I do without using either and going with my trust Sheex bedsheets. Unfortunately the BedJet is not compatible with Sheex. And honestly, between Bedjet and Sheex, I choose Sheex all day.

BedJet Review Thoughts & Conclusion

Sadly I’ve stopped using BedJet completely. The air comforter is just far too uncomfortable for me, especially during the hot summer nights. And the fact that the BedJet won’t work with a breathable sheet like the Sheex is a deal-breaker for me. As much as I loveee the warm function during the winter, I can’t justify recommending the BedJet v2 just for that due to the costs, setup, extra accessories like the air comforter, and so forth. So in my opinion unless you sleep really cold throughout the night all year round I think the BedJet v2 is worth skipping.

BedJet Pros

  • Warm function works great
  • Create temperature schedules with the app
  • Aroma therapy strips enhance the experience
  • Easy setup

BedJet Cons

  • Expensive
  • Air comforter needed for maximum airflow
  • Air comforter not included
  • Air comforter too thick
  • BedJet v2 not compatible with breathable sheets like Sheex
  • Nozzle slightly noticeable, can kick it with feet sometimes
  • App is ugly and has a learning curve

Overall, I like the idea of the BedJet. I think where it falls short is on the air comforter and the fact that it can’t get any cooler than simply not using the BedJet and air comforter altogether. I give the BedJet v2 a 2.5 out of 5. We’ll round up to 3 just for kicks. I hope you enjoyed my BedJet review. And I hope it helped you in your decision on whether to purchase a BedJet for your own needs. You can get BedJet here.

Design, Goals, Learning, Programming, Sleep, Technology

Things I would like to (continue to) learn this year

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I like to be continually learning new things. Or at the very least get better at the current things I am doing, or relearning old things I have gotten rusty at. This year is no different, except I am pushing the boundaries of what I am comfortable with a little more than I am used to and also experimenting a lot more with new and ‘cutting edge’ technology. I really feel that this year has a bunch of “game changers” coming out that I am really excited for. The following is a brief list of items I’ll be devoting various degrees of time and focus towards:

Spanish
I’m still sticking to memrise and duolingo, though I am admittedly doing very little duolingo and not as much memrise as I used to. I still practice everyday, but I do see myself sliding on this a little bit. Truthfully though, I am ok with letting this slide a bit as long as I replace it with something else with a high potential gain.

Web Design
Web design is evolving. For many years, to make anything remotely decent it was a complicated beast usually involving Photoshop, followed by a pain in the butt PSD to HTML conversion. If you couldn’t afford Photoshop or a designer you were mostly out of luck. But things are changing, fast. New UI toolkits have popped up offering responsive layouts that work on desktops, mobiles and tablets that don’t look half bad and are easy to use. My favourites are Bootstrap 3 and Semantic UI, which are both immense time savers. And now there are new tools coming out that will automatically turn your designs into HTML and CSS. Webflow is one that lives in the browser, which I spent a week messing around with and was very impressed. Google has a beta one out that was pretty junk when I tried it and have since uninstalled. However, I am most looking forward to the standalone desktop app Macaw which is scheduled for release in the next couple of months.

Web Development
Meteor is amazing and has been a game changer for me (and I believe will be a huge one going forward for many). It makes server and client side coding so much easier on so many fronts that I don’t even know where to begin. They really nailed so much of the framework down that it really makes coding so much faster and more efficient. It hits version 1 in the next couple of months, which means there are breaking changes coming. That’s what I mean by ‘cutting edge’, there are still warts that you have to work around and deal with, but nothing insurmountable and so far it’s easily been worth it.

Noflo looks interesting. It’s a visual drag and drop interface far, far different from the conventional terminal style used in programming for over 50 years. The paradigm shift is huge from traditional programming and could prove to be extremely interesting and even better. A game changer? Perhaps. I would love to give it a fair shot but the learning curve does appear to be quite high and there isn’t much information, demos or documentation out there. I’m definitely keeping my eye on this as their hosted UI recently got successfully funded on Kickstarter and is scheduled to launch sometime this year.

Famo.us rendering engine has got me excited. It promises to make the UI fast and responsive in a way that the browser is not able to do or handle because of limitations within HTML5. We’re talking native application performance but in the browser. I will likely spend considerable time on this when the beta becomes publicly available sometime in the first quarter of this year. Combined with Meteor, I think cross device web and mobile apps will be a treat to build.

Body and Health
I had a fitbit for a while and was never really impressed with the data it provided. But since then, a lot has changed and a ton of new and improved gadgets have surfaced. I would love to find something that provides more useful and accurate information, such as the basis, amiigo, or w/me. There’s a new strength one called Atlas on Indiegogo right now that looks interesting, too. Why? Cause data is good, yo.

I need better sleep. Or just better napping. Or faster time to sleep. Or better quality of sleep. Lucid dreaming would be cool, too. I’m still toying around with sleep because I know for a fact I could do it better and the importance of sleep is greater than anything else I have in this list. I tinker with it a lot. Take napping, for example. I know that if I nap for an hour, the last 15 minutes I’m just lying there wide awake. If I nap for 45 minutes, I wake up groggy. 30 minutes seems to be the sweet spot for me. I know that between 2-5 pm is when I take a dive in energy and that is the optimal time for me to nap. When I do, I wake up refreshed and I am ready to roll. There are a whole new bunch of sleep masks, gadgets and apps that promise to help promote better sleep. I think I’ll wait and see what the verdict is on any of these before I consider purchasing one.

For strength, 531 has been good to me. There’s also grease the groove for pullups that I just started up. As for body composition – I’m just going to try out different nutrient timings and caloric loads. Aesthetics aren’t that important to me, but it’s something I should not neglect for prolong periods of time regardless.
BJJ – Just keep showing up. This has been a huge thorn in my side. I dream about BJJ constantly. Literally multiple times throughout the day and when I close my eyes at night. And yet, every single time I have gotten back onto the mats to train I have been derailed via injury or life altering event. To say it has been frustrating is an understatement. This year, I hope to break that trend. What’s different? I’m stronger, a LOT stronger. And with that, I believe I’ve added more durability, too.

Honestly, that’s a lot and there are a few more floating around in my head (I’d love to play around with the SDKs for the Myo and Oculus Rift). I will likely fail and give up on a number of these. This is expected and part of the process. For example, last year I tried my hand at Dart and Angular, but Meteor came along and just kicked their asses so hard that I didn’t need to go down those routes any longer. It’s the process that matters to me, and the chance at discovering something awesome or getting better at something that excites me that I look forward to the most. The lesson? Try lots of things. Stick with the ones that excite you. And have patience.