NC_2024_09_01
We discuss using the Elgato teleprompter and its software, repurposing old Macs, the lifesaving Pulse Point app, MyNetDiary health tracker, Happy Scale, and Life Cycle, which is an automatic journaling app.
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Long Summary
In this episode, Jill takes the reins of the Nocilla Cast podcast while Allison is on vacation, and she dives deep into the intersection of technology, wellness, and the value of our aging devices. Exploring themes of health and sustainability, Jill emphasizes how technology can enhance our well-being while also extending the life of our old Mac computers.
Jill recounts her experience setting up a YouTube channel, highlighting the need for a teleprompter to maintain eye contact with the camera. She shares the benefits of the Elgato Promptr, a sleek, modern solution that enables her to read scripts while looking directly at the camera. This innovation has significantly enhanced the engagement and professionalism of her video content, allowing Jill to feel more connected to her audience.
In discussing broadcast technology, Jill reflects on the value of repurposing legacy Macs. Drawing from George's insights on the longevity of older devices, she examines how these machines can maintain utility even when they no longer receive software support. By keeping them operational, users can still access essential programs and documents, demonstrating that older technology doesn't have to end up as e-waste.
The conversation soon shifts to life-saving technology, focusing on the PulsePoint app, which connects trained individuals with emergency incidents in their vicinity. Jill explains how the app works, allowing people to be alerted to nearby cardiac arrests and empowering everyday citizens to assist in emergencies. She paints a picture of community spirit facilitated by technology, highlighting the importance of CPR training and readiness among the public.
Jill also reflects on her own journey with health technology, introducing My Net Diary, an app that simplifies food and exercise tracking. She emphasizes the importance of tracking nutrition not only in terms of weight management but also for overall health, especially as diabetes becomes a concern for many. My Net Diary’s extensive food database, ability to create custom recipes, and valuable tracking of macronutrients and calories make it a standout tool for individuals aiming for better health.
Switching gears, Jill examines the Happy Scale app, which helps users visualize their weight loss journey. It offers a dynamic approach to tracking weight, smoothing out the fluctuations that can derail motivation. The app allows users to set smaller, incremental goals, making the larger weight loss objective seem less daunting and more achievable.
The episode rounds out with Jill reflecting on her experience with the Lifecycle app, which automatically tracks her movements and activities. This app provides insights into her lifestyle patterns, further aiding her in understanding and improving her habits. By documenting where she spends her time, Jill gains valuable information about her routines that can lead to positive changes in her daily life.
In closing, Jill reinforces how integrating technology into our health and lifestyle choices can lead to improved well-being while simultaneously addressing environmental concerns by making the most of our tech investments. She expresses gratitude for the community aspect of the show and invites listeners to engage with her and share their own experiences with technology and health. The episode not only celebrates technological advancements but also encourages thoughtful conversations about sustainable practices regarding older devices.
Jill recounts her experience setting up a YouTube channel, highlighting the need for a teleprompter to maintain eye contact with the camera. She shares the benefits of the Elgato Promptr, a sleek, modern solution that enables her to read scripts while looking directly at the camera. This innovation has significantly enhanced the engagement and professionalism of her video content, allowing Jill to feel more connected to her audience.
In discussing broadcast technology, Jill reflects on the value of repurposing legacy Macs. Drawing from George's insights on the longevity of older devices, she examines how these machines can maintain utility even when they no longer receive software support. By keeping them operational, users can still access essential programs and documents, demonstrating that older technology doesn't have to end up as e-waste.
The conversation soon shifts to life-saving technology, focusing on the PulsePoint app, which connects trained individuals with emergency incidents in their vicinity. Jill explains how the app works, allowing people to be alerted to nearby cardiac arrests and empowering everyday citizens to assist in emergencies. She paints a picture of community spirit facilitated by technology, highlighting the importance of CPR training and readiness among the public.
Jill also reflects on her own journey with health technology, introducing My Net Diary, an app that simplifies food and exercise tracking. She emphasizes the importance of tracking nutrition not only in terms of weight management but also for overall health, especially as diabetes becomes a concern for many. My Net Diary’s extensive food database, ability to create custom recipes, and valuable tracking of macronutrients and calories make it a standout tool for individuals aiming for better health.
Switching gears, Jill examines the Happy Scale app, which helps users visualize their weight loss journey. It offers a dynamic approach to tracking weight, smoothing out the fluctuations that can derail motivation. The app allows users to set smaller, incremental goals, making the larger weight loss objective seem less daunting and more achievable.
The episode rounds out with Jill reflecting on her experience with the Lifecycle app, which automatically tracks her movements and activities. This app provides insights into her lifestyle patterns, further aiding her in understanding and improving her habits. By documenting where she spends her time, Jill gains valuable information about her routines that can lead to positive changes in her daily life.
In closing, Jill reinforces how integrating technology into our health and lifestyle choices can lead to improved well-being while simultaneously addressing environmental concerns by making the most of our tech investments. She expresses gratitude for the community aspect of the show and invites listeners to engage with her and share their own experiences with technology and health. The episode not only celebrates technological advancements but also encourages thoughtful conversations about sustainable practices regarding older devices.
Brief Summary
In this episode, I explore the intersection of technology and wellness while highlighting the sustainability of aging devices. I share insights from launching my YouTube channel, including the benefits of the Elgato Promptr for enhancing audience engagement.
I discuss the repurposing of legacy Macs, the life-saving PulsePoint app that connects people to emergencies, and My Net Diary for tracking health and nutrition. Additionally, I cover the Happy Scale app for visualizing weight loss and the Lifecycle app for tracking daily movements.
I emphasize the importance of leveraging technology for improved health while advocating for sustainable tech practices and invite listeners to engage with their own experiences.
I discuss the repurposing of legacy Macs, the life-saving PulsePoint app that connects people to emergencies, and My Net Diary for tracking health and nutrition. Additionally, I cover the Happy Scale app for visualizing weight loss and the Lifecycle app for tracking daily movements.
I emphasize the importance of leveraging technology for improved health while advocating for sustainable tech practices and invite listeners to engage with their own experiences.
Tags
technology
wellness
sustainability
aging devices
YouTube
Elgato Promptr
audience engagement
PulsePoint app
My Net Diary
Happy Scale
Lifecycle app
health
nutrition
sustainable tech practices
Transcript
[0:00]
Intro
[0:01]Hi, this is Jill from the Northwoods of the Nocilicast podcast, hosted at podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, September 1st, and this is show number 1008. I'm here because Allison's on vacation, getting a well-deserved break. I just hope next time she remembers to pack me in her luggage. And as advertised, she left us fantastic documentation of every step of the process to get these episodes recorded and published. You know what? They're so detailed, I haven't had one stitch of insomnia since she left. The theme of this episode is going to be taking technology, making ourselves healthier, happier, maybe even saving a life, or saving the life of our old Macs and giving them new purpose.
[0:52]
Elgato Prompter Review
[0:52]You might have heard that on Alison's August 8th episode, I set up a whole video system so that I could start a YouTube channel and get good at it. One of the pieces she wanted me to do a bit of a deeper dive on was the Elgato prompter and the software that goes with it. I said in my other interview, I was having trouble looking at the camera. I was always looking at my notes. I was always reviewing what I would say, and my eyes were not focused on the camera. That's fine for podcasting, but for videos, it was a real problem. It made unappealing video. I couldn't remember the whole thing I was going to say. I usually keep an outline, but I don't read word for word. And then it came across to me too. I have four podcasts. I create a lot of content every week. With all this content I already have, transcripts already written for them, I could break them all up into smaller videos. I started researching teleprompters. They usually have some kind of app that control them. They're big pieces of hardware and they can be expensive. Or there are iPad teleprompters, which are just an app, but most of them have subscriptions. If this thing's going to be on my desk, if I'm going to spend money doing it, isn't there anything else I could do with this item? And as I was doing some research, I found out that Elgato had just come out with a new device they called Promptr.
[2:13]As I mentioned in Allison's review, there's a flat panel that goes horizontal to the bottom of the screen. This is the true monitor that hooks up to my computer. It reflects up into a 45-degree double-sided mirror glass, which to me shows the image I want to see right side up in the right direction. I can read text. I can see everything in there. But where the magic comes in is that the camera is shooting out the backside of this whole device. It can't see the text on the screen because the focal length is far beyond that. When I am looking at my notes in this teleprompter, I'm actually looking right at the camera. With many of these teleprompter devices or iPad apps, you're still looking at a screen and the camera is somewhere else. This is that perfect blending of having the camera shoot right through the teleprompter. And so my eyes are always targeted on the right thing. And in the end, it produced videos that were more engaging, more entertaining, they felt like they were more professional, and I'm actually looking at the people I'm talking to. I'm a corporate trainer, and I know one of the most important things is to always look people eyeball on the eyeball when you're talking to them. This prompter by Elgato helps me do that.
[3:30]Most interesting thing about the prompter in general is, of course, I can put text on it and scroll through the text and read it. That's the fundamental purpose of a teleprompter. But this also acts as a tiny monitor. So 99% of the time when I'm not recording videos for YouTube, it just acts like a tiny monitor. I put Telegram or email or something very small in there that I can just look up and refer to every once in a while. That's something I don't want to look at all the time because it is pretty small. But that makes it handy and gives me something useful to do with it when I'm not recording. Big hit. The other nice thing is that whenever I'm on a Zoom call, I can put the Zoom meeting inside of the teleprompter. And so if I'm talking to Allison, I can look at her eyeball to eyeball while still looking at the camera. This gives me a chance to be more personal with whoever I'm having a Zoom meeting with. Or if I'm on some kind of a multi-person panel, see people's faces, see the reactions. It's really nice and I feel like I'm doing a better job with video now that I have this Elgato prompter.
[4:35]I won't go over all the stats because I talked about them in that August 8th interview, but in general, it's a 9-inch display.
[4:43]It's a 1024 by 600 pixel monitor. If you've met your maximum amount of monitors you can get on a Mac, you'll need to use DisplayLink to bring it out and have it be an additional monitor. The real power of all of this has to do with the software app itself. It connects to something called Elgato Camera Hub. This is the same app you use if you bought FaceCam Mark II or FaceCam Pro. They're camera devices from Elgato that uses that same app. You control the camera and all the settings for it. App initially gives you a tab for those cameras. But now, if you have the Elgato prompter, it gives you a third tab. And that allows you to control your prompter. The first thing I can do is very simple. I can turn on and off the power of the prompter. I noticed that when I turn the prompter off, there's still a little dull glow of the lower monitor. I think it's off, but it's not really off-off. Well, whatever. I can also adjust the brightness of the prompter. Some people say that when they have very white backgrounds in this teleprompter, maybe a chat channel or their notes, it can reflect into people's glasses or their eyeballs. So people will sometimes dim the brightness of this monitor so it doesn't quite reflect so much. I can also decide I want this prompter to be a third display for me, or I want to see text. And if I want to see text, it has a new area that I can put in what is called scripts.
[6:10]This is just what I'm going to talk about. I can copy and paste my text into this app, into a brand new script, and that will put it on the teleprompter. A lot of people wish that they could hook it up to some kind of a document or some kind of document management system instead of just putting it directly into the app.
[6:32]I can see their point of view. I really haven't had much problem with it because I'm not retaining a lot of scripts. I will read a script, I'll delete it, and then I'll put the next script in. But I understand their point. Not much formatting that you can do with the text once you put it into the software. You can add emojis, but some people want to have more formatting in there. You know, maybe like a highlighter to emphasize something they were trying to say or some kind of a paragraph system. It's very simple, which is another problem I haven't had much trouble with but I can see where they're coming from. At this point, if I put text into the Elgato Camera Hub app on the tab for the prompter I can now either set it up to auto scroll which means that it'll just scroll at a particular speed and keep going or I can set it up with my Stream Deck Plus which has knobs on it and that way I can rotate the knobs and control the speed of the text and that's what I decided to do because sometimes I get a little off track. I say more than I intended to say. I go off into another direction. And so I want to stop the text from scrolling until I get back to the point where I'm going to read from the prepared text. And then I can just start scrolling again. And by using the rotating knobs in the Stream Deck Plus, it doesn't show on the video. You can't tell that I'm doing anything, nor does it make any kind of clicking noise. So it works perfectly.
[7:56]If I'm in a full screen of the text I'm planning on reading in the app, I can hit escape and it'll take me back out into the main app settings again. The one thing that I've read in criticism of Promptr is that this software that comes with it came out very simple. And many of the people who use this wish there were some kind of an AI feature that would listen to you talk and then scroll as you say the sentences in the Promptr text. There are iPad apps out there that will do just that. I've tried them, and they work pretty well. For me, I would much rather control the speed and the location of my text with the Stream Deck Plus buttons, but everyone's a little bit different. I think that would be a great new feature. There's a lot of room to grow, so I suspect that we're going to see a lot of new features coming out of the Elgato Camera Hub in support of Prompter. In fact, I've seen some come out already. In the app itself, I can adjust the font size, the font style, the margin side to side. I can change the line squishing and maybe squish it up a bit together or have it be more spread out. I can also decide that I want the text to be one color and the background to be a different color.
[9:08]It has a setting for opacity. And I thought this was interesting. I played with this quite a bit. You can actually put text on the screen, but have it be somewhat see-through. That means I could still put the Zoom meeting behind the text, still look at Allison eyeball to eyeball, but then see my outline, my prepared notes in front of her. It does make it rather busy. That is a really great setup for when I'm talking to someone, but I also want to see what my notes say. It might just be the best of all worlds. There's also experimental features, and this one in particular I have not used. If you record on Twitch, you can embed the Twitch chat channel directly into the screen.
[9:55]And that makes it handy if you're using this Twitch feature. Twitch is going to be a live streaming, primarily for gamers, but other people have adopted it. So imagine I'm creating a video game video and I'm showing it to people who are paying to see my video work. If they ask me questions or leave comments, I can see those comments and questions right away and answer them live. It gives me more of an interaction with my audience, showing people what it is I'm doing. That's kind of handy, but I also could use Promptr as a third monitor and still see the chat that's going on behind the scenes too. do. Either way, works great. To get back to the settings, you can have an auto scroll. You can decide what kind of speed you want to have. You can also decide if you want it to auto loop, which means when it's done, it's going to go back to the top again and start all over again. Maybe if you're doing some kind of an advertisement and you want to do a bunch of different takes on this advertisement, or you want to try again and make it better the second time, you can do that very easily.
[11:01]It also has a setting for something called Line Marker, which means that as that line has passed, it fades out just a little bit, giving you a darker text where you have not yet read. Some people find this very handy. It takes your eyes away from the information that's already passed and you don't want to see it anymore. And that is something I do use and I do like quite a bit.
[11:25]One of the new features, as I mentioned, that they come out with has to do with what they call overlay. An overlay is an indication of where the dead center of the camera is located. Some people use a regular DSLR or mirrorless cameras or their iPhone in this teleprompter. For me, I'm using the Facecam Pro, but those different cameras are going to position the lens in a little bit different space. face. So I put this overlay in the dead center of my camera. So when I'm looking at this red square box, I know I'm looking directly at the camera, which is exactly what I wanted in the first place. What's hilarious is when I got done with my review with Allison, I was playing with the software and I moved that square box away. And so the next time I created a video, I noticed my eyes were just ever so slightly not looking directly at the camera, and it was pretty disturbing. So having that set properly is great, and it's a good new feature for this software. People were very excited to see it come out.
[12:30]So in the end, the Elgato hardware is very good, solidly built, works just like you would expect it to. I haven't run across any Elgato hardware that didn't work like I wanted it to. It allows me to use it as another monitor or teleprompter, which was the whole reason I bought it in the first place. I have a lot of flexibility. I saw the problem of not looking at the camera when recording videos by myself or doing some kind of a YouTube Zoom meeting panel. Now I see people. I think it makes me more personable. It has really changed the whole nature of my YouTube channel and how personal I can be when I chat. People feel like I'm looking at them instead of below, above, or to the side of them. I'm a big fan of this teleprompter, and so if you need something like this, I think this is a great choice.
[13:21]This has quickly become one of my favorite Elgato purchases. If you're interested, it is $279. When I bought it, it was brand new, and so there were no sales on it. But now it's a year later, and so Elgato as a company typically does do sales on their products. So as this device gets a little bit older and not quite so new, you might see some sales on it. I hope this helps you in understanding a little bit more about the Elgato prompter.
[13:52]
George from Tulsa - Old Macs
[13:51]Up next, we have a donation from George from Tulsa, and he gave us two of them. They're going to play back-to-back. Hi, George from Tulsa here, responding to Allison's request for content while she and Steve safari off to Africa. In June 2024, Mac security company Intego published a blog article, When Does an Old Mac Become Unsafe to Use? In Tego's answer, if your Mac cannot run the latest version of macOS, it won't get all the security updates it needs. Going further, the company writes, Apple regularly updates the current version of macOS to patch vulnerabilities. But in our research, we have found that Apple frequently does not fix some known vulnerabilities in previous versions of its operating systems, even the one just prior to the current version. So while you may still get security updates from Apple, they may in reality be only partial patches that only address a portion of known vulnerabilities.
[15:11]Well, Intego provides a link to their research. They really only needed to look up Apple's own 2022 support document that warns, not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions of macOS and iOS. Referring specifically to the current macOS 14 Sonoma, Apple notes that even though Mac OS 13 Ventura does receive security updates, it will be left with known, untouched vulnerabilities, as will the even older Mac OS 12 Monterey and iOS 16.
[15:59]That's actually kind of scary Because it was my practice for years To defer Mac version upgrades, First, it always seemed there were bugs That took until at least the .3 release to fix, Then there's the question of whether a new version Will force changes in established workflows There are a lot of reasons to skip OS 10.7 Lion and one of the worst was Apple removing Save As. And, finally, worst of all is whether the upgrade might kill essential software or valuable peripherals. I reasoned that since Apple was actively patching our older version, we were as safe as if we were running the newest. Turns out that's simply wrong. Last week, I inventoried the dead and orphaned max I own and manage. There's twenty-seven. Three have hardware issues that could be fixed but aren't worth the time or money. Twenty work perfectly but have been orphaned since, at the latest, Mac OS X 14 Mojave went end-of-life July 22, 2019.
[17:24]There's four 2014 minis purchased new in 2018. Those are technically still supported and received what is likely their last update to macOS 12.7.6 Monterey on July 29, 2024. 24. But at my work, those minis are orphaned on Mojave because that's the last version which supports 32-bit applications. Like Quicken 2007, we need to access nearly 20 years of Mac accounting records. Just because an old computer isn't safe to connect to the internet doesn't mean it's useless. I'm hanging onto that fleet of old Macs because every one runs Quicken 2007.
[18:20]Sure, they'll all eventually die, but that could be a long, long time. I have a 1992 compact laptop running Windows 95. I'm able to boot, connect to zip drives, and pull up Quicken files from long before we shifted to Mac. On that basis, those old Macs have a longer life expectancy than I do. Thirteen of the IMAX on my list were donated to a small-town public library in 2011.
[18:56]They worked flawlessly until the library went to a phone-in, drive-by operation during the pandemic. When patron access was restored in 2021 i had them shelved since their last update was high sierra 10.13.6 on july 9th 2018 i did wipe mac os off one and installed a direct boot of linux mint it worked fine but where the pharonix deep freeze program offers a way to protect Macs from local hacking, my level of geekery isn't sufficient to implement a similar safe-boot method on Linux.
[19:44]Tired of being pushed off the cliff by Apple's policy of abandoning old Macs, in 2015, I decided to try switching from Mac to Linux. That effort was mostly successful. I converted two of my three co-workers to Linux using Intel NUCs, though all of us had a 2014 Mini running Quicken. I extensively tested Linux alternatives to Quicken, including GNU Cache, PayMyMoney, Scrooge, and the proprietary MoneyDance. None measured up to Quicken 2007. For that matter, neither do the 2024 Mac or Windows versions of Quicken, now sold by subscription.
[20:38]Had I been willing to convert to the browser-based QuickBooks online accounting system, we'd have been good with Linux. But I really, really don't want to move our data online into a proprietary service that makes it all but impossible to escape. When Mojave went EOL and I had to buy a new online replacement system for our longest tenured and cherished co-worker who works at an office 50 miles away, she said it was Mac for her or retirement. Thus, I let a new M1 Mini in the door and had to buy another one so I could talk knowledgeably with her about her new computer and its operating system. Since then, it's been back to the Mac for all of us. I'm the only one now running Linux, but it's the second setup next to my M2 Mini. In the next installment of this saga, I'll report on peripherals and software I'm using to improve my Mini M2 experience.
[21:51]And I promise not to rant about the new MacQuicken Classic Business and Personal Edition. By coincidence, my daughter and her family are moving from a house they've owned 16 years. While emptying the attic, they found two old iMacs, including a Pixelant G4 they'd stuffed away and completely forgotten. No one wants to turn an old Mac that worked into a boat anchor.
[22:29]George from Tulsa, back again. Allison emailed me after my recent discussion of the 27 dead and orphaned Macs I'm keeping around, but offline. Today, I'm just here to answer Allison's question. I'm paraphrasing. Why did all four of you go back to the Mac when three were using Linux? The answer is software. There's lots of great free open source software for Linux, but almost none that's specialized and proprietary. Want to use a standard program to prepare your income taxes on your local Linux system. You'll have to install Windows in a virtual machine. And if all goes well, you may be able to successfully run TurboTax.
[23:26]Given my less-than-stellar experience running Parallels on a Mac and VirtualBox on Linux, it would likely be less hassle to just buy a cheap Windows box and not worry about the complexities added by a virtual machine. Then there's my co-workers. They just want to get their work done and go home, not try to cope with keeping virtual machines running, updating, printing, and saving files where they need to be saved. Fortunately, there's a Mac version of every software we need at work, so it was just easier to set Linux aside and go back to Mac.
[24:12]Doing that reduced my support burden, as we're all now using M-series Macs, running the same version of macOS and the same software. Though I do need to mention our old friends, those 2014 minis on Mojave, we keep offline so we can continue to use Quicken 2007. Thankfully, they're so familiar, no support is required. wire.
[24:46]
Support the Show
[24:46]Thanks, George. That is diligent work for sure. And just like George donated a clip so that we could play it and have a new perspective on this podcast, you could do the same thing. Or you can donate to all the hard work that Allison does on this podcast. I did one episode of it, and I can tell you it is a lot of work. She puts a lot of detail into every episode. So if you look Look in the show notes. There are links to how you can donate to the podcast in monetary ways so the podcast doesn't cost her money except for all the great time she puts into it. I know she would appreciate it and I appreciate it too.
[25:22]
PulsePoint - See What's Happening and Save A Life
[25:21]You know, at times you see an emergency and perhaps you just want to know what's going on around you. There are some apps out there like Citizen that will show you videos or people reporting what's happening. I traveled to Los Angeles quite a bit for work a few years ago. And I didn't have much to do when the day was done, so I would hang out at the La Brea Tar Pits every night. And once in a while, there'd be an incident going on there. I was able to use the Citizen app to decide whether or not I still wanted to go to the La Brea Tar Pits or should I avoid it. Was something dangerous happening?
[25:55]There's another app that will tell you more than just what's happening around you, but maybe you could be someone that could help someone. This app tries to save lives in an area where someone needs help. This app is called PulsePoint. It's a 501c3 organization, non-profit, and it has a foundation behind it. It was made by a fellow named Richard Price, who was the captain of a fire department in California. He said that one day he was going to lunch and he heard a bunch of sirens and he saw one of his own engines pull -up to a restaurant. Turned out someone was having a cardiac arrest inside the restaurant. He was right there.
[26:36]He realized, quote, I was never sent to this restaurant because there was no way of connecting me where I am with whatever incident is going on. He said he's CPR trained. He has an AED or defibrillator device in his car. He could help. So in 2010, he came up with the idea for this app. And the next year he won the Webby Award for the application. Great job, Richard Bryce. How it works is it uses location-based technology and connects people who are trained in emergencies. For those who are not, they can just look and see what's happening around them. Maybe they know someone who could help. So when I look at the app, I see fires, car accidents, medical emergencies in a map. I can also see what agencies have responded. But let's imagine someone's having a cardiac event. The ambulance is over on that side of town, and boy, the traffic's bad right now. Every minute it takes for an emergency vehicle to go somewhere where there's an incident, the less that person will have a chance to recover. I'm as of the essence.
[27:47]And so what this will allow you to do is to say that you want to be alerted in case of CPR events because you are CPR certified. But then if a cardiac event does happen, you'll be alerted. You may be able to run there. The idea is to notify people within a certain walking distance of this event. The municipalities themselves can determine how far that notification range should be. Now, for me, I used to be a lifeguard, but it was when I was pretty young. And I was CPR trained and certified several times. That was a long time ago. They have been providing CPR training for people so they can be first responders. I am a firm believer that we as people are the very first responders, not just the police, fire, and medical people.
[28:37]So if someone's having a cardiac event and I'm right there, I could be notified and be able to help. I was watching some videos of this in action, and it's really heartwarming what happens to people in real life. There was a story about an event on the web. Some fellow was on a fun run, and he started having a cardiac event. The person who was right there was CPR trained. A little bit like me. He had training years ago, but he started doing CPR right away, the best he could. But immediately, Immediately, a lifeguard was notified, and he was nearby. He comes running, takes over the CPR from the guy because he knew a little bit more. He knew how to do it properly.
[29:20]Someone else saw this event and knew that every county park had an AED device. She was able to grab the defibrillator and run to the place that was marked on the map. This man recovered. covered. This was an important life-saving situation and time was of the essence. They all were able to save this person's life because this app connected everyone who could help. In the end, where the true power of connected devices shine is that combination of an iPhone, location information, and people who say they should be notified in case of an emergency. In 2019, the app went beyond just recording defibrillators and CPR registrations, and they started including Narcan, bleeding kits, epinephrine, and EpiPens for those who are having allergic reactions. To sign up to be a CPR person, you just have to indicate you want to receive CPR notifications.
[30:23]That is something you manage yourself. But there are officially registered professionals. That is managed by your local government, agency, professional responders, fire, police, medical staff, stuff like that. They can manage their own list of who has certain kinds of training. There's also a map as well, so you can see what the traffic looks like. I know where the hospital is, and I can tell, boy, the traffic is really bad between me and the hospital. By using the device's notification system for an emergency, it's a great way of getting the right people to an incident. As I hinted, the municipalities can keep their own list of professional responders. But that also means that your community, county, city, something like that, has to agree to be a part of this program. I noticed on many official county city websites, they will indicate they are part of the PulsePoint system. They will give instructions on how it works, and they'll show you how to set it up so that you can be a part of the system and be someone who could be a CPR first responder. Or if your municipality, like mine, doesn't indicate that on the official website, you can just download the app and see if it starts working. Sure enough, I start seeing events happening on there. I know that my area is using this system.
[31:53]They also created now a second PulsePoint app called AED. This shows on a map all the locations of the AEDs, the defibrillators, in that area. I noticed, for example, my church has one of these devices, but we never registered. So right from the app itself, you can indicate this building here, they have one. You can just walk right in and get it. Both apps have instructions on how to do CPR and how to use an AED device. That can help each of us become a first responder. Check with your local agencies to see if they're using PulsePoint. Or again, like I said, just download the app and see if it starts populating with events. And if you do, make sure you put on the notifications if you are CPR trained. Let the app know that you want to be part of the list of people who will get notified if there is a CPR event near you. In the end, PulsePoint shows the real power of sophisticated devices and how they can connect people to life-threatening situations.
[32:58]
Empower Your Health Journey With Health Apps
[32:58]Situations. As you might have guessed, if you've heard of any of my past reviews, I like tracking things. I track sleep. I do some journaling. One thing became quite important to me about a decade ago. I decided to start tracking my calories, primarily to lose weight. And then I started running into some health issues, and tracking food became even more important to me. It takes time, primarily, when you're entering food into a tracker. Every food tracker out there will have some kind of a database of food that you'll commonly find in a grocery store or chain restaurants. But when it comes to the databases in some apps that are very small, you don't find the food you're looking for. This can be frustrating and time consuming because now I have to enter in all the nutrition of some food that doesn't exist in this database. There's about 108 nutrients you could record for every food item. That takes a lot of time. You either skip most of the stats, but then you're not getting a full picture of what you're eating, or you spend the time and you add in all the stats. Nobody loves food tracking in the first place, and then making it more time-consuming and more frustrating, boy, that just leads to rebellion.
[34:11]I needed to find something that I could easily track food and not have it take so much time. This is the point that I found something called My Net Diary. This is either an app or a website, mynetdiary.com. And the more I dug around it, it was the perfect thing. It wasn't giving me advice, pretending to be some kind of an AI buddy. Hi there, this is your AI friend. I noticed you haven't exercised today. Don't you think you should? That is kind of the modern thing right now. That's the thing that's going with many of the food apps that are out there. Some people really like that kind of coaching. I found it a little bit annoying, to be honest with you. I just really wanted to know the facts. Then I could run some reports, hand it off to my trainer, or if I'm seeing a nutritionist, then they could look at the food analysis and decide whether I'm doing the right thing. This app is great for that.
[35:07]First of all, it has a database of 1.6 million food items, which is huge. Let's say I want to create my own recipes, add it into the system. This app will allow you to do that too. I can add it to the food diary, type in all the ingredients that go into it. That's a special thing. It's the ingredients. And as I add those in, in the right quantity, and then tell it how many servings of this recipe I created from what I just typed in, it will break it down per serving or whatever amount I want. It could be ounces, it could be serving size, anything. And now I can add it directly into my food diary. It'll even create a cute little food label for my own recipe so I know exactly what's in it. You can decide at that point if you want to make this new item public so anyone could use it. It'll even track exercise in a very basic way. You can first of all indicate that you're going for a bike ride or a run or a walk, and then it will use your internal GPS to calculate how far you went, how fast you were going, and then calculate the calories. Very simple.
[36:16]But it has a very large exercise catalog. I weight lifted with my trainer, and it will give you an estimate in general based on how much exertion you say. I lifted weights and it was a medium effort. That'll give you a little bit of a guideline of what kind of calories you burned. Or let's say you're on an exercise machine and the treadmill says you burned 200 calories. You could just enter that amount and be done with it. That adds to your daily diary. That also can calculate into how many calories you have remaining for the day.
[36:49]So if I was allowed to eat 1,600 calories before and I exercised for 200 calories, I now can eat 1,800 calories. And with the premium account, I could say, no, I don't want my exercise calories to go into my daily calorie intake. Up to you. If you look at calories as a math formula, which it generally is, 3,500 calorie loss is about a pound. If you're looking to lose 50 pounds in a year, that's going to be one pound a week. And it'll calculate how many calories you should be eating in general and then giving you a suggestions of how many calories you should reduce every day so that you can lose a pound a week. That makes it nice and easy for you. It tells you a suggested calories for your day. And then as you track food and your exercise, you can decide exactly what it is you have left to eat and how much you should be eating.
[37:45]Another thing that people will track when they're tracking food, and it's called their macros. And a lot of people do this, and it's very important to many people who track their food to track their macros. And essentially what the macros are is it's referring to how many grams of protein, fats, and carbs you are eating. It will suggest how many grams of protein is a good number for you based on its math. math, but you could also set it to something else if you'd rather.
[38:14]When you start using the app for the first time, it asks you what your weight is, how much weight you want to lose, and then some basic stats about you. And then it analyzes the data and gives you a basic plan for losing weight or maintaining weight, whatever it is you want to do. But it'll calculate and say, this is how many calories you should eat. Now you can just start tracking your food and exercise. And while you're tracking your food, you can also track your water. It'll give you analysis of how you did on your eating. It will give you a grade for the food you took in. Track how much you exercised. It'll say something like, great job. You kept your saturated fats and sugars under this level. Oh, but you ate a little bit more sodium than is really recommended. It doesn't do it in that weird AI way. It just does it as a stat. It'll show you then what food you ate that had the most sodium in it. So maybe you could avoid it or find an alternative to that in the future. And if you don't like that kind of thing, you can just take it off of your dashboard. But every day it's going to give you that summary. You're going to see the scale if you wish to see the scale and you'll see your current nutrition markers increasing as you start eating.
[39:26]The free account will do all sorts of things that I previously mentioned. It will synchronize with the Apple Health Kit or the Google Health Kit. The app will connect to your weight, sleep, steps, and pull it into the system. In the end, this app, it becomes a homepage for your entire health. There's also a community message board where you can talk to other people who are in the same situation you are in or just transfer good ideas. And perhaps you all want to share tips, recipes, meal plans that have been successful to you. In the end, MyNetDiary has been incredibly healthy for me in losing weight. But of course, there is a premium part and the premium costs about $60 a year. They do occasionally have sales. About five years ago, I started heading towards diabetes and I decided I wanted to try to work on it on my own. So I ended up getting a premium account because it has the features I really need in order to do that. First of all, when you get the premium account, it will suddenly give you a breakdown of all 108 nutrients. Not just the calcium, not just the saturated fats. That's a big bonus for me because I also care about how healthy I'm eating. It's not just about getting my macros in, but am I getting in the right kinds of nutrition? nutrition. I can also run a report with the premium account for the entire week or whatever time frame I care to.
[40:53]With the premium account, too, I get more flexibility, more settings, more choices. I can customize my dashboards more thoroughly. I can turn certain things off, like saying I want to add my exercise calories into my daily calorie budget. I don't really want to do that so I can turn it off when I have the premium account.
[41:12]They also have something they call autopilot. And autopilot will start adjusting your calories as you lose weight or if you're bulking up, gaining weight. If you're on a plateau, it will try to help you bust through the plateau. When you lose weight, your metabolic rate starts to go down.
[41:30]This autopilot feature will start shrinking your calories and then also adjusting your various nutrients and macros to go down with it. If I have to eat less calories, I might not be able to get in as much protein as I would when I weighed at the beginning of my weight loss plan than when I weigh at the very end of it. So it'll keep adjusting that for me automatically.
[41:54]And it can even do do something that is called calorie cycling, which is actually something I do, which means that there are some days I have a higher calorie allotment than I do on other days. You also get more sophisticated weight charts. You can see exactly how you're doing over time. You can run reports. You can get charts of your measurements. So I happen to be using a tape measure and every week I enter in my measurements to see how I'm doing. For the free level, I can see those charts. The software, you get daily reports of food, as I mentioned, but my trainer was looking for a weekly summary or whatever timeframe I wanted to use. So with the premium account, I can run those reports. It was nice because today I had my doctor's appointment. First one, since seeing this brand new doctor, he put me on a medication two months ago. And so I was able to run reports for him and show him my progress. And he thought that was funny that I came with all this paper and said, here you go, here's how my health is doing. But with MyNetDiary, that was easy just to pull out and print off. For free, I mentioned I can connect to the Apple iOS HealthKit or Google FitKit, but the premium account will connect to HealthConnect, Samsung Health, Fitbit, Withing, Scales, and Garmin.
[43:16]So you have more ways to engage with your devices with the premium account. One of the features in the premium account that I've really enjoyed recently is something called trackers. And trackers could be a medication. How often are you taking it? What's the dose? You could also track your measurements. Those are a kind of tracker as well. My official A1C and cholesterol tests, trackers. But I can create my own. And this is where I thought it was really interesting. So my doctor gave me two new medications. And I know that for for both of these medications, sometimes people don't feel very well. I wanted to see if the dose was affecting how often I didn't feel well. So I created a tracker to indicate when my stomach was unhappy, and I can see how often it's happening and relate it back to how high was the dose of the drug I was taking.
[44:09]The other two premium features that I just got started with are premium recipes and premium meal planning. The premium recipes are typically healthy. You can find ones to meet certain standards, low sugar for diabetes or high protein or keto, whatever it is you're interested in. You can find recipes for it and you can break it down for breakfast, dinner meals, family meals. Meals, and if you decide that you're going to eat one of these recipes, you can click on it and log it as your breakfast, lunch, or dinner easily, and it goes directly into your food diary. But you can also plan your meals in the future. Say that on Monday I'm planning on eating this, and on Tuesday I'm planning on eating this other set of foods. There are other diaries that you can select as a program for yourself if you have the premium account. Maybe you prefer to go keto or a low carb diet, or maybe you're interested in the Mediterranean diet. The macro numbers, remember fat, carbs, and protein, will readjust to meet these other diary standards, as well as primary nutrients that you're looking for.
[45:22]Here's the part that came in for me, and that was the whole reason I got the premium account. I said before I was having trouble with my blood sugar, and it had been going up for probably the last five years. I went on Amazon and I got a glucose tracker, one of those finger poking types that you can put it in and it'll tell you what your blood sugar is. And I just started testing it throughout the day. With the premium account, you can enable the glucose tracker in the system. And this made a huge difference for me. First of all, there are a series of tags that you can attach to the glucose testing. This was before breakfast. This was fasting. This was after exercise. This was two hours after lunch. And when I tag them, I can now report on them side by side. So today, when I visited my doctor, the report I ran for him was all the fasting blood sugars I had in the system. And he could see it drop over time. It put a smile on his face. And by him having a smile on his face, it put a smile on my face too. do. With this information, I could see what I ate. I could start changing my behaviors. It was teaching me what I could do and what I shouldn't eat.
[46:37]I also have a number of glucose reports that I can run. In fact, like I said, I brought one of those reports to my doctor. With the premium account, it also removes any kind of advertising and, of course, gives you premium support. This app has been very good. I feel it's very secure. They have never spammed me with offers. It's a very serious weight loss app that makes it very easy. So if you don't have very serious issues, you still can use it. But if you do have serious issues, this is the right app for you. It will be able to set your targets, set your macros, set your calorie goals, and then show you how you're doing so that you can have some accountability. This app has made a world of difference to me, helped me see improvements in my own health. Now I'm really looking forward to achieving my goals.
[47:23]I was looking for a better weight loss chart. I like the one in my net diary just fine. But I wondered, is there anything else better out there? For a long time, I've heard about an app called Happy Scale. I heard that it could make stepping on a scale less scary, maybe even make it a little bit more fun. When I'm losing weight, I want to see that big chart showing me a big slope downwards to help me stay motivated and stick to my diet. I looked at a couple of different apps, and there's some good ones out there. But some of them had bad privacy rules and some of them had expensive premium accounts or had a lot of advertisements on them. When I started using this Happy Scale app, which like I said, I heard of for a long time, it soon became my favorite. It's a favorite of a lot of dieters too.
[48:17]MyNet Diary, like I said, has good charts, but Happy Scale is slightly different. One of the things that Happy Scale allows you to do is smooth out your numbers. You know, weight loss is never that slope downwards, like a ski slope, right? Some days you lose weight, some days you go up 0.6, the next day you go down a pound, and it's sort of bumpy. It depends on how many carbs you ate, how much salt you ate, did you drink a lot of water, did you exercise, did you sweat a lot and lose a lot of water. Weight, unfortunately, is one of those math problems that's not exactly quite as mathy as we wish it would be. A lot of things go in to determine what your weight for the day is. And sometimes scales make people unhappy because they see all the ups and downs. I tell you, I've been going through a tough time this last two weeks. I lost a pound and then I I went up 0.6 and then I went down 0.2 and then I went up 0.8 and now I'm down a half a pound for the week, but it has been a rough up and down week.
[49:25]But that's what Happy Scale tries to make it easier for you. It smooths out the bumps with a general slope of the line. So you can see how you're doing. Overall, I'm doing well. I shouldn't get so freaked out about the little ups and downs. One way it works to keep people motivated is it takes your total weight loss goal and breaks it up into 10 smaller steps. I've said this on my podcast, Start With Small Steps, that if you want to have a goal, you don't want it to be so large and overwhelming. You want to break your goal into smaller steps. Instead of saying, I want to lose 100 pounds, can you say, I want to lose 5 pounds, and then just do it over and over again? For me, I really want to lose 110 pounds, and that is intimidating and a really long-term goal. It can make a person demotivated. Some people, it makes them depressed. But this app will automatically break your goals into 10 smaller goals. I just succeeded in accomplishing goal number one. Means that 10% of my goal is already in the bag. With these mini successes, I can take a moment and go, yay, 10% of my goal. Celebrate a moment, give myself a pat on the back, and then start working on that next goal. Boy, that helps make things a little bit better.
[50:45]But of course everything has a premium these days and for this app the premium is $1.99 per month or $11.99 per year I decided to try it for a year this is going to be my big push this year losing weight is the number one focus of my.
[51:04]This app has been very motivational for me. What the premium will allow you to do is, first of all, synchronize with other devices through HealthKit. You can either pull information automatically from HealthKit or manually if you decide that you want to do it on your own. It will also predict the future for you with an estimate of when you'll get to certain weights, benchmarks, or when you're done with your final weight loss. Previous, I lost weight and I got to a level I felt pretty darn good at. And even though it's not my perfect weight and it's certainly not my goal weight, I feel great. So I want to know, by next birding season, am I going to be at that weight? If I keep going the way I'm going right now, the answer is yes. By next March, I will hit that weight. And I'm really looking forward to next year's birding season being at a weight I feel great at.
[51:55]But I can also look even further into the future and see when I'm going to be done with this diet entirely. entirely if I keep going. So it motivates me, first of all, by having the smaller goals, but now it's motivating me by showing me that big picture. If I keep going the way I'm going, by 2026 summer, I'm done. So it's encouraging me to keep going and keep doing those big moves, exercising and eating right, all the things that I should be doing. That is incredibly motivating. It will also synchronize with Dropbox on the premium account or export your data in a CSV. Again, it's not terribly expensive.
[52:35]And the developer has made a place where you can tip money to him if you wish. It's one of those apps that's been good for me, really encouraging. I see other people where the scale actually makes them quite upset. It makes them worry about food. And it's hard for them to look at the scale. and maybe their doctor or their nutritionist or their trainer has asked them to weigh themselves. This app makes it a little bit more appealing. You don't, again, see those ups and downs. But for me, I'm not very scared of the scale, but I find it encouraging to give me those small goals and then the big picture. So to me, for just two years, I'm planning on keeping Happy Scale and seeing if I can motivate even more towards getting my goals.
[53:27]
Tracking Life in LifeCycle
[53:27]In 2018, I started using an app I really enjoy. I call it my automatic journaling app, which is called Lifecycle. Despite liking it quite a bit, I was always a little bit worried it was completely stealing and selling my data. The good news is that Apple came out with a description of how data is used, and it reports that there is no data linked to you, and it only looks at diagnostic and usage data. That gives me a bit of comfort. We'll talk about this app and the data it tracks and why security is so important in this case. But if you really get wigged out about security, for example, maybe you're going someplace you don't want other people to know, you can put a passcode on the app and ensure it is even more secure. The app is created by a company called Northcube, and they have a description of their security policy. And it says, you own your personal data and you're always in control. I said a while ago on this podcast that I use journaling apps, but I'll tell you a deep, dark secret. It's not always that same day an event happened. Sometimes it's a couple days later, maybe within that week, or within the month. So remembering what I do in my life is always helpful.
[54:44]First of all, the app starts by tracking your location. It must run in background mode to even work. But I noticed it does not have battery drain. I never saw it as any big part of my battery usage. passage despite the fact it is always running. And when you're at a location, it will record how long you were at this place. It will ask you about the friendly name for the location and what you were doing. This is the part where you indicate your answers. Maybe you were at a restaurant or at the gym or at your favorite flower shop and perhaps you were shopping, exercising, or eating out.
[55:22]Once you tell it these answers, it will always remember that location and it'll start tagging those events when you go there again. The only action that you need to take is when you go to a brand new location. It also can detect whether or not you're walking, probably by the speed, or you're driving to a location. So I could see how much time I was spending commuting every week.
[55:46]Guess what? By working from home, I save myself 27 minutes a day. When I was in Los Angeles working remotely, I saved hours a day. First of all, when you look at the location, you can see how many unique places you have been. And if I look at a location, I can see how often I go there, how much time I've spent in this particular location. I can look at an all-time chart over the years. I can see how often I go to each birdwatching locations I visit on a regular basis. And I can see a calendar of all the times in the last year I've been there. But at the very bottom, I can see a total list of the times I've gone to this place. When it comes to activity, I can see a chart of how often I've done this activity, the last few times I've done this, an all-time chart year by year, the top locations I do this activity, the averages per day of the week. Guess what? I go bird watching on Saturday more than I do on Tuesdays. That calendar view of the last year of how many times I've gone bird watching, strangely enough, very populated in March, April, May, but not so much in July and August. Did I mention it's really warm outside? And then I can see the top locations that I've done this activity and the total amount of the times I've been there. I've gone to my favorite marsh 259 times. That's not surprising.
[57:12]But again, I can look at a day, and the day will show me what I did today. I can look at a week, month, year basis, and I can see the stats of how I've done this month, this year. Am I birdwatching quite a bit? Do I go hiking a lot? Am I sitting at home way too much? It will remind me of how often I do an event. I went to a restaurant last week, and it suggested that I hadn't eaten out in a long time. It called that a returning habit. But if you're doing something all the time, it will call it a continuing habit. I go to the gym three times a week. Yay me.
[57:49]It creates a nice pie chart. It calls your daily donut. But now I really wish I had a donut. But that pie chart shows me how I'm spending my time. How much time was sleeping? It takes that from HealthKit. How much time was I walking, driving? How much time did I spend at the doctor's today? And how much time did I spend at the gym? If I'm looking at it on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, it will create line charts for me so I can see how much I've done this recently, what are some habits I'm doing still, and what some habits I'm doing again. And at the very bottom of the page, it will show you any location it doesn't know about and is wanting you to sign an activity to. So if I go to a brand new park, I can say, this is Bob's Park, and what do I do there? I go bird watching. Now it will always remember it. At the end, it's not a lot of detail, but it does give me the ability to remember what I do and on what days I do it. I can share data if I wish to do it. There are some methods that I can share this on Facebook, which I don't do. It can also synchronize across all my devices, which makes it nice and handy.
[58:58]It does not have a web page. And it says that if I ever came to the point where I wanted them to delete all the data, I can just email them and they will delete the data.
[59:08]It also asked me if I want to connect this journal to my photo library.
[59:12]Maybe while I'm out birdwatching, I want to show what birds I saw. I saw a scarlet tanager the last time I went. Maybe I want to add that to my journal and not just have it be a memory tracker. Cracker. The app is free and on the iOS store, but its automatic backups is part of the premium account. And it does a great job of this automatic journaling. Like I said, it always runs in the background and it can remind you of when you went to a certain location. A friend and I went to a restaurant a few weeks ago and we said, when was the last time we were here? It's been a while. And it had been a while. So sometimes it's just for fun, but sometimes too, it's more informational.
[59:51]For example, do I usually go to that marsh in April? I could see that this year was the earliest I visited that marsh. I can connect it, like I said, to HealthKit, and it'll bring in my sleeping. And I can export the data into a CSV. But when I get the premium account, what it'll do is automatic backups for me, so in case something happens to my phone. It offers additional graphs and charts, so I can see my trends over time. It allows me to connect to its other app they own called Sleep Cycle. Way back in the day when I did my first review for Allison saying that I thought sleep tracking was awesome, that was the app I was using. I could create tags. I could label my sleep as I was too hot, I was too cold, you know, whatever I wanted to create a tag. This was really helpful to me. But now I can type the sleep cycle to my life cycle app.
[1:00:43]And I found some very interesting pieces of information. My worst night of sleep? Wednesday night. Why would that be? You know why? Because I go to my friend's house on Tuesday night and I stay there pretty much till bedtime. That means I'm probably getting a little too extroverted, winding up my energies a little bit too much, and then I go home and go right to bed and then I have trouble sleeping. But you know what? On the days I go birdwatching, hiking, or I get a lot of exercise, I sleep great. So I've learned some stuff about myself by tying sleep cycle to life cycle. As we learn about our lives, then we can start acting on the information and improving our lives. If you're looking for an automatic diary, life cycle might be the one for you. Maybe you'll finally remember what you did last Saturday or last month, or how often do you go surfing? If those are questions you ask yourself, this might be the right app for you.
[1:01:40]So you see, bringing technology in so that we can get our goals, start a new hobby, save lives, and save old Macs from going into the landfill all comes together when we have the right technology. I appreciate this opportunity to talk to you all. It's been wonderful. And next week, Allison is back, and the live show will be on September 8th once again. Boy, I couldn't do this live. It was hard enough to do not live. So I admire everything she does for all of us.
[1:02:10]Did you know that you could email Allison at podfeet.com anytime you like? And if you have questions or suggestions, just send it on over. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. You can follow her at podfeet.com slash mastodon. If you want to listen to the podcast on YouTube, you can go to podfeet.com slash YouTube. If you want to join the conversation, you can join the Slack community at podfeet.com slash slack, where me and all the Nocilla castaways are. Great conversations and great information sharing. You can tell George from Tulsa how you saved an old Mac and what you did with it. You can support the show at podfeed.com slash Patreon with a one-time donation, or you can go to podfeed.com slash PayPal. If you want to join the fun at the live show, head on over to podfeed.com slash live Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic Nosilla Castaways. I'm one of those. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed.
[1:03:14]Music.