My year end tech rant

So, 2022 is coming to a close. I have bought myself some tech gadgets this year. Nothing crazy.

Firstly, the device on which I am typing this is a Windows 11 based Lenovo P1G4. Fantastic laptop. When I bought it last year, the goal was to dual boot Linux, but then I don’t do any serious development, and WSL is pretty neat. So, no Linux for now.

I upgraded my phone earlier this year. I upgraded from an LG G7 to a Samsung Galaxy S22. The LG phone worked perfectly fine, and I wanted to go another year with it, but LG stopped updating devices, and then left the smartphone business, so the device was definitely getting stale. Google does it’s best to update the underlying Services, whereby the phone remains somewhat fresh, but still. As far as the phone upgrade goes, I still think if price is not a concern, then the latest iPhones still remain the phone champs for many reasons. That said, I prefer Android for many reasons 🙂

I had badly wanted the Pixel 6/6 pro, except for me a large phone doesn’t make sense. I care more about the ‘mobile’ part of the phone, than the phone part. Both Pixel phones were too large for my liking.

The Galaxy S22 has worked out quite well. It does have Samsung bloat, but you can pretty much ignore all of those apps. The form factor is pretty much nailed down! The cameras work well, the speakers work well, wireless connectivity and 5G and everything works well. The screen is stellar. The haptics are pretty great too. Overall a great phone and Android 13 is looking pretty good. A lot of what I do is split between my laptop and my phone. For anything that is keyboard intensive, I use my laptop, and for other things, I use my phone or laptop.

Samsung phones are interesting in that they support DeX. I have a Thinkvision 14T monitor that works well with the Dex setup. So, between the phone, a Bluetooth Logitech keyboard and the monitor, I actually have a pretty decent desktop setup. Well, the phone does overheat, and DeX does have limitations, but overall, I’d say, it’s pretty solid. You can even use the phones screen as a mouse! Crazy!

I also use the Thinkvision M14T with my laptop, when I want a touch-screen. This is generally only ever used when I want to read PDF documents, annotate on them. Or take some notes on OneNote. Not the most ideal setup, but definitely better than having a stupid Surface device that does nothing well. (I’m still scarred by an old Surface 3 that just stutters.)

So, finally onto my third main device, I ended up getting myself an iPad Pro 12.9. Now, I tried this tablet last year, and absolutely loved it. The miniLED 120Hz display is great. The buttery smooth response is amazing! Also, apple pencil works pretty well. Now, I have had two bad experiences with Tablets. The first one was a Nook tablet, which absolutely sucked! I only wanted to read magazines and comics and such on it, and I believe the chip had some memory leak issue whereby, after using it for a few days, the device would get cripplingly slow. So, then I said, ok I am going to spend more money the second time around, and spring for a Surface 3. I think the surface 3 works ok for a Tablet. i.e., it was definitely more responsive than the Nook tablet. But for desktop/laptop mode, it absolutely sucked! The Atom core was terrible, and you couldn’t do anything well with it.

So for my third go around, I decided to get the most performant device in the hope that it stays responsive for a few years. I already have some workflows setup on the iPad and it works great. I am not trying to replace a laptop with it, but it looks like it could also work as a make shift laptop replacement when paired with an external keyboard.

I am excited to see what apple does with iPadOS in the future.

Now, if I had either bought an Android tablet, or bought all Apple devices, I’m sure they would have worked better across devices. But I actually like it this way. You get to experience the best of everything. I still have access to a work Macbook Pro, so I think I’ve covered all the important bases.

Here’s to a productive 2023.

How have laptops evolved ?

So I recently bought myself a new personal laptop. The very one on which I am typing this.

I got my first personal laptop back in 2009. Some 13 years back. It was a Dell Studio XPS 16″ and it is less than a foot away from me right now 🙂 I haven’t booted it in ages, and the last time I booted it, it swapped memory just listening to music over youtube on one chrome tab and trying to browse on the other.

I’d have to boot into the old laptop and check it’s specs, but here’s what I remember.

• Cost – $1099 before taxes.
• 320GB spinning hard disk. 7200rpm.
• ATI Radeon graphics HD3670 ? (512MB RAM)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz) [Looks like a 45nm chip, with 25W TDPP]
• Memory: 4GB – 2DIMM DDR3
• Display – Not sure if it was 1080p or 720p. But a fairly decent quality display.

Now, I think this processor will not even match up to Atoms from today, and considering Apple’s M1 is on 5nm, one can imagine the performance gap.

However, if I remember correctly, I did the same things on this old laptop that I do today on my new laptop. Maybe not as much music or video streaming. But other than that, pretty much all the same things.

I have had a couple of other personal laptops in the interim, and several work laptops.

The current day model is a Lenovo P1 G4,

• Cost: Let’s just say between $1000 and $1500.
• 1TB NVMe PCIE G4 SSD.
• 32GB RAM (2×16 3200MHz)
• Nvidia RTX A2000. (4GB RAM)
• Processor: 11th Gen 11800H. (10nm)
• Display: 4k 16:10, 100% Adobe RGB.

Now, on paper the newer laptop is quite stellar. 8x the RAM of the original laptop, 8x GPU RAM, and I’m pretty sure that by benchmarks they are probably 8x faster both in CPU and GPU workloads. A quick glance shows 6x-12x CPU performance improvement. Of course, the number of cores went up from 2 to 8. In terms of usage, it is mostly the same. Software has basically eaten all the 8x performance gains we got.

For the improvement we have seen, the slight increase in price is definitely justified. Actually, I typically buy laptops right around the $1100 mark – which tends to be slightly entry level workstations – i.e., I would have had to settle for 16GB RAM, a T1200 GPU and 256GB NVMe disk. The last two personal laptops I have purchased, prior to the latest one have cost me in that ballpark.

The optical disk drive of the original laptop is no more to be found anywhere, but it isn’t needed either. I now have an external optical drive in the off chance that I need to read something off of an old CD. The newer laptop is lighter, slimmer and packs more performance. Not to mention Thinkpad keyboards are stellar, and the trackpoint and trackpad are pretty good too. The Dell keyboard was pretty good too and the trackpad also worked well for its day.

Another interesting tidbit is, the new laptop has Windows Hello – and offers both facial recognition and finger print recognition. For the facial recognition, it uses an IR projector for illumination I think. I mentioned interesting, because the Dell Studio XPS laptop could also do facial unlock. It was terrible at it though. My elder brother who doesn’t look that identical to me was able to unlock it back in the day. Also, interestingly, it had an IR port that could be used for remotes and such – also worked for data transfer I think.

Now, I think the new P1G4 has immensely loud speakers, although no Subwoofer still. But, I remember the Studio XPS as having good audio quality too. This was back in the day of winamp, windows media player and songbird. 🙂

You know the one area in which we have seen literally no improvement ? Battery Life. In the quest to make laptops more performant, and since batteries don’t improve at the same rate that processors do, we are still dealing with 4-8 battery life. Of course, Apple shattered that with the M1 Macs, and this is where improvement for the next several years is going to come from – all day battery life for laptops as well. Imagine what 24 hours of going without a charge would be like. Amazing!

What other changes might we see in the next 10 years ? Cameras are getting better. Displays are going mini LED and OLED. Some displays are going > 60Hz refresh. None of these are ground-breaking changes though.

The hidden revolution that has happened in the meantime is the smartphone – we all use it for most things that we used to need laptops for, from banking to stocks, to social media, music and sometimes even video streaming. In fact, in many areas Phones and Tablets are ahead of laptops. Biometric authentication on websites is still not consistent or good in 2022. I can’t use the fingerprint reader to log-into anything meaningful. Even on gaming and such, an iPad with M1 is as good as anything other than maybe Gaming and high end workstation laptops.

In my opinion touch on laptop screens has been completely useless.

It will be a while before we have folding phones that can also act as a laptop. (1 crease is hard enough.)

The other somewhat silent transformation that is happening is, since more and more of what we do on a laptop happens on a browser anyway, Chromebooks are becoming immensely popular. I think if you bought some of the higher end workstations today, and had some way of installing chromeOS on it, you might not need to upgrade your hardware for 10 years. 🙂 But this is also good, in that it distills the laptop to the most common use cases that people use it for, and reduces the price of the laptops as a result. It is possible that in the next 10 years, we will only be left with mostly underpowered devices like the chromebook, since most of what we do might no longer be on a laptop. But, only time can tell.

P.S: this weekend, I shall boot up my 13 year old laptop and see what it sounds like, types like and such,. 🙂 The battery and the replacement battery are long gone, but hey, it at least boots up when plugged in.

What does Google do with the Pixel 7 ?

Google just released the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 pro. I already have both on order, and expect to keep one and return one. I currently have a 3 1/2 year old phone, and while I don’t need to upgrade it immediately from a hardware perspective, LG stopped updating the phone last March. i.e., March 2020. So, I don’t even get security updates. Also, I’m stuck on android 9. Google has updated it’s apps and manages to add features like ‘Nearby Share’ to my phone just through play store updates. Which is insanely amazing.

I obviously would like to be on the Android ecosystem, but the iPhone is an excellent phone. I fully recognize this. No hate for iPhone 🙂

So, with the Pixel 6, the hardware has seen a lot of updates. Android 12 is also a massive upgrade. There are numerous great reviews out there on both. But I did want to try and see what they might do in the next generation. If you throw so many features in one generation, how do you make an “improved” product next gen ?

Here are some of my thoughts

• Tensor SOC – this will see a lot of updates.
  • The current CPU cores are in all likelihood, not custom cores. i.e., they just took ARM cores, and put them in. The made decisions about what configuration to use, what frequency to run them at …etc. The CPU can go custom – this is a slow process, and ARM is also upgrading their cores all the time. I am not sure how much better the second gen CPU’s will be (i.e., first gen custom CPU’s), but I would hope they can put in decent performance upgrades and decent power efficiency improvements.
  • The GPU cores. I don’t know if they will go semi-custom on this. GPU’s are a little bit of a niche, and it might take longer to make custom CPU chips. You need to build out teams.
  • The TPU – will assuredly improve. This is Google’s forte. And this will not just be a spec bump. Google knows what it needs the TPU’s to do, so while it might not show up in benchmarks.
  • The ISP – I have no idea how important this is for Pixel in the image pipeline, considering they also use the TPU, but Apple’s advantages on video processing and such comes from building their own ISP’s
  • Others ? You might get the next gen security chip
  • Tech node and foundry – Intel might open up their foundry, so that will be interesting. i don’t know how Samsung 5 compares to TSMC 5, but assuming there is volume on Pixel 6, even if TSMC costs a little more than Samsung, they could possibly use them,
  • The MODEM – this will definitely see an upgrade.

• Now, if the chip is power efficient, then you can shrink the battery size, and with that the size of the whole phone. You can definitely make it slimmer, or if people voice their opinion that they want a smaller phone, then you could also go with a smaller form factor. (assuming you can fit in the cameras and such.)

• Although it might not happen on Pixel 7, I think 4 cameras are coming in the future. If they go with a higher zoom, they will need a 4th lens. you cannot jump from x to 10x for instance. you’ll need something in between. (say 3x)
  • Coming to the cameras, will next year see any changes ? I think the ultrawide could go slightly wider.
  • Macro mode. This might not be too hard to do, and is definitely needed to compete with iPhone
  • Will they manage to make the lenses wider aperture ? I’m not sure. I think they might sit with this setup for a gen or two. The sensor on the Ulrawide might change though.
  • LIDAR ? Not sure if Google will go Apple’s route and throw in a LIDAR. They may feel confident they can do stereo imaging with the multiple cameras without the need for LIDAR. {This is Tesla’s approach to self driving cars after all 🙂 }
  • Better lens elements ? To avoid flaring.
  • Sensor shift stabilization ? – not sure if this will make it, but if it does, it will be neat. Might be better than just OIS + pixel’s software.

• Displays
  • Displays on both might change. On the P6, the display might be upped to an LTPO ?
  • On both the 6 and 6Pro, they may improve the brightness of the screens.
  • They may also decrease the bezel size on both.

• Other sensors
  • Will soli make a comeback ? I’m not sure. It will need to be miniaturized even more, and take up less power. The touchless gestures are nice, but they are not super useful. (not too many use cases)
  • Will faceID make a comeback ? It most certainly could. The trick is, how do you get edge to edge display without the notch ?

• Others ?
  • I would like to see really good speakers on it. I don’t know how good the P6 is, but they should strive to make this better and better.
  • I personally don’t care about the charging speeds, and wireless charging speeds, but they could certainly improve those.

That’s all I can think of now. I’m sure I have overlooked a bunch of things. 🙂 (Which is why I am not a hardware product manager)

Multisport/Tri Watch

I have been researching getting a multisport watch for about 8 years now. I somehow never ended up buying one. * Well sort of.

I started running, cycling and hiking recreationally back in 2013. I ran my first half marathon in 2014, and ran five more half marathons (if my math checks out.) and half walked-half ran a full marathon. I had registered for a half back in 2018, but the SF half stopped letting you run on the Golden-Gate bridge, and so, I withdrew. (more out of spite for them running out of water the first time I ran there.) 2020 has pretty much meant no events.

I’ve in the past had issues with my knees when I up my running mileage – maybe not enough stretching, not enough strength training, or just bad form, but either way, I was getting my knees a little whacked. So, I decided to bike a lot more, and take it easy on the running.

I hike from time to time, time permitting. I am no elite hiker, but manage to do some challenging hiked. I have a hike to Mt. Whitney coming up soon.

I also aspire to take part in a half ironman some time, and to that end I recently started taking swimming lessons.

So, that’s a background of my physical activities, and what I will look for in a watch.

Now, for what I absolutely don’t need in a watch. I don’t need almost any smart-watch functionality. Calls – nope. Messages – nope. Notifications from social media apps – nope, nope, nope. Meeting notifications – maybe ? (I’ve actually found that one thing alone a little useful.)

A couple of things I wouldn’t mind having, but don’t really need:

• Music. I would like the option to not carry my phone with me, but still have access to music.
• Payments. Sometimes, you forget your card or something, and in the absence of a phone, this is a nice to have.
• Maps/Tracks/Navigation: I’m not fully convinced I will use this really. I mean, when I am out in the wilderness, I travel with a phone, with some sort of maps on it. And I just recently bought an inreach mini. So, I think I am covered on the super emergency front at least when solo hiking in wilderness.
• Sp02 sensor: And whatever goodness it can provide – especially as it relates to blood oxygen saturation at elevation.

Some things I definitely need:

• Run tracking. The more run metrics it has, the better, especially as it relates to running form.
• Bike rides – and ability to pair with speed/cadence sensors and power meters. Well, the bike use case is low on the list, because I have a Wahoo elemnt which does everything I need it to. So, I can’t imagine using this device except maybe in the case of a triathlon.
• Swim – this is new, and something I definitely want to track. Especially open water capability. Some of the lower end Garmin FR watches which are aimed at runners don’t have open water swim features. I think you need to get a 745 to get open water swim.
• It’s a plus if the screen has enough real estate to show your metrics, and yet the watch is not some monster. Some of the hiking watches are crazy big.
• Sleep tracking without it being overly intrusive. I am super picky when it comes to sleeping with something strapped to my wrist, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. So, I ideally want something super low profile, and light weight to wear to bed.
• Activity tracking – i kind of like to get a feel for how active I am between workouts. i.e., if I go for a 4 mile run in the morning, then not accounting for that, how many steps did I walk that day ?

I like the features watches are putting in in terms of training plans, recovery and such. This is a great feature add. It’s nice when your watch can tell you to take it easy.

With all of that, here’s my experience with wearables so far.

I had the original Jawbone up – the one you had to connect to your headphone port. I quite liked it – I only needed it for step tracking. I was using a phone to run and cycle anyway. It also did sleep tracking reasonably, and was quite unobtrusive. So, good. I think their longevity was not great, and even after a few replacement devices, I finally gave up. Of course, the company went under at some point, so no more Jawbone.

I briefly tried an Apple Watch (original), but didn’t really like it. I mean, you needed a phone with you anyway. This is where I found calendar invites useful. I could sync work calendar, and not miss meetings like I was used to missing.

I still have a casio watch (paid like $30 for it) which was in principle supposed to do everything I wanted at that point from a wrist based screen. Connect to phone, and display metrics from phone – except it never worked well. 🙂

Fitbit Charge 3. When fitbit announced this with Sp02, I thought this had all the features I was looking for. The default band is trash, and I haven’t worn it even once. I bought the perforated band instead and that has worked well. The fitbit works well for activity and steps climbed tracking. (thanks to it’s barometric altimeter). However, they basically never delivered on their promise of sp02 data, and while they claim they are using it for sleep tracking, I think you need to subscribe to their service to take full advantage of it – which I find to be garbage. Actually, for this reason, I held out from buying a Fitbit charge 4. I continue using the charge 3, but these days, I don’t use it for sleep tracking. I have used it in the past, but never consistently. And even with the fitbit, I find it obtrusive on my wrist when sleeping. I don’t know I look at the heart rate data on it either.

Beyond activity tracking, I don’t use it for anything. else. I don’t use it to track runs, hikes, bike rides …etc. I mean, it has no gps, and I haven’t been inside a gym since the pandemic last year. So, yes, I don’t use most of it’s features. I don’t even care about it asking me to walk every hour and so. So, maybe I’m not getting the best use of it. I tried tracking a swim the other day, and have no idea what it did with the data. 🙂

So, with my Tri goal, I finally decided it was time to upgrade to a Tri watch. Lot of interesting options. I am fairly open to Suunto, Polar …etc. But, one would have to agree, the Garmin forerunners have kinda become the gold standard. So, I was looking at the 945 LTE and the 745. Both really good watches. Both expensive. Even with some discounts I have access to, the 745 still cost > $400. Might be reasonable for someone who is a dedicated triathlete, which I am not. The 945 LTE absolutely nails the implementation of how watches should use LTE. I would buy this watch in a heart-beat except for the price. I don’t think it’s unreasonably priced, but it has way too many features for me, I think. Plus, you need a watch to upgrade to later.

So, with all the research I did, and all of the above taken into account, I finally settled on a Coros Pace 2. Paid $170 for it as the store had a 15% discount. Not that much more expensive than a fitbit charge4 special edition. ($164 with taxes) This watch is super light – 29 grams apparently. Possibly lighter than the Fitbit charge 3. (or around the same weight) It has no Sp02 sensor, and no maps and navigation – something I can definitely live with. It does have open water swim tracking. It has no music – obviously at this price point. But then, when you actually do a tri, you cannot use headphones anyway. And when you train for a tri, you can carry a phone – so… Other than that, for it’s price, it looks solid. I can even pair it to my wahoo sensors. (HR, cadence, speed …etc.) I’ll take it out on a spin and see how it goes.

Spring cleaning digital stuff

I started this project a while back, but I am hoping I can continue on them, and complete my sorting soon.

The problem with hard disks and memory cards crashing, and moving multiple laptops, and different operating systems …etc, is that it is almost impossible to sort all your files well.

I am going to take the same approach to cleaning and sorting digital files that I have taken to the physical stuff. Throw away anything that you don’t need. Even though digital files are much easier to hoard, I think I should take the approach of deleting stuff with impugnity.

Let’s see how the project goes.

Minimalism-Update 01

About 5 days after I started my project, I have managed to throw away many things – nothing substantial yet. But a lot of boxes and such – which were taking up space.

I also managed to organize things into existing spaces, clearing room in other places.

I also managed to set aside a lot of things that I am ready to get rid of. Some of these were listed on sale, and while a lot of them haven’t sold yet, I am hopeful I can get rid of them soon.

Now, the first major goal I have is to list a lot of items that have some value for sale. I have made some steady progress on this. But a lot of things are yet to be identified, and still more things are yet to be listed.

The second major goal I have is to clear out a large Ikea Hemnes book shelf and get rid of the shelf. I have two small bookcases in my living room – which had miscellaneous items, such as display items, then boxes filled with things like bike parts, stationary, manuals, hardware tools …etc. The larger case which looks like the one below has books and files. I have begun the process of consolidating what was in the smaller book cases in the living room, and moving the books to the living room shelves. I’m almost there on this project, and hopefully by the weekend or so, I will be done with this.

A miscellaneous slightly low priority goal is to get rid of some of the books too.

The third goal would be to get rid of clothes that are either in bad condition, or are too large or too small. I’ll have to come up with a goal on how much I want to retain – I guess, maybe one check-in suitcase worth of stuff is acceptable. We’ll see how this goes.

The fourth major goal is to get rid of old/work off footwear. I have one too many running shoes, since I used to run quite a bit, but don’t any longer.

Once I am done with the 4 large goals mentioned above, one other miscellaneous goal would be to sell my current couch. I have a stacking bed from Ikea, than can essentially be used as a couch in the living room.

Other miscellaneous goals include selling a kitchen cart and a small shelf I have in my closet. We’ll see how far I get.

Edit 04-14

I listed the kitchen cart and the small shelf for sale. I hope they get picked up soon. The microwave went back in the kitchen from the kitchen cart in the dining room. Also, a lot of clothes got moved from the small shelf to the wardrobe directly.

I also emptied out my clothes from suitcases – and they are all in the wardrobe now where I can see them. So, I have a good idea how much I have. Actually, it’s not as bad as I feared it would be. Also, a lot of the clothes are really old – so I could clear away a considerable number of them by donating or recycling them.

I also threw away some more boxes and such, which I had actually wanted to hold on to. Well, they’re gone, and I think this sets the standard for what can and cannot be thrown away in future.

The selling is not going as well as I had hoped – a lot of people have expressed interest on things, but I have managed to sell only one item so far. Hopefully, this will pick up a bit more.

Minimalism

Several times in the past few years, I have watched documentaries, read articles, and generally pondered about minimalism. There is a whole movement. People live in tiny homes and such.

While I am and never have been a shopaholic, the number of possessions I own have very steadily gone up over time. To the point where I go months on end without using some of the stuff that I own. More importantly, the more stuff you own, the more of your time it takes to keep track of things, attend to them. If you had two cars instead of one, you might end up driving the same, but now have to make sure you keep track of two service schedules, keep them clean, worry about small nicks and dents on two cars. 🙂 I could personally use not worrying about too many things. (note – I don’t own two cars. I did own a motorcycle and a car at some point, but even that was a bit much. 🙂 )

Now, how much stuff do I actually own ? I live in a one bedroom apartment, and have had my parents come live with me for a few months. So, I did need to get the bare minimum so they would be comfortable. A double bed, side tables, dining table, a couch, TV, a TV table …etc. Other than this, I have a stackable bed for myself, a small writing table, a couple of shelves. Then there is the WFH kit from office – a larger work desk, and a chair. That is essentially all the big stuff.

Most of everything else I own, traveled with me in a sedan cross country just a year back. Pretty much everything I own – including my clothes, kitchen items – including toasters, nutribullet, a rice cooker, camping gear – including hiking poles, an ice axe, 4 sleeping bags, 2 tents, 4 sleeping pads, 2 pillows, sports equipment – including a tennis racquet, a couple of badminton racquets, disc golf set, a guitar, a Thule bike bag, a computer monitor, most footwear, cutlery, ..etc, all fit in my sedan. Other than things that fit in the sedan, I had my books mailed to me in a few small boxes. I also had a couple of bicycles mailed to me.

I have of course bought a small number of miscellaneous items such as pedestal fans, a humidifier, a microwave, a vacuum cleaner, some cutlery …etc after moving to my new apartment. But still, the number of items I have is somewhat essential, and not very frivolous.

I am more tired of the small knick-knacks. The hundred micro-USB cables. Old clothes. Small items I thought I would use, but don’t really use very often. I have a small number of souvenirs, and collectables, but again, nothing crazy, and this is stuff I can part with anytime.

I would however like to considerably reduce purchases of things like body washes, cleaning supplies …etc. These take up room, and with the limited bathroom counter space I have , I sometimes forget what I have and end up buying it again. Now, I am once again not crazy when it comes to cleaning supplies and personal effects – I don’t have 10 different body washes lying around. I generally don’t even experiment with them.

I also want to reduce what I stock in the kitchen. This is again, nothing crazy as of today, but I want it to be minimal, and stock only things I use on a weekly basis. The focus should be on getting fresh groceries and cook more regularly rather than storing a bunch of ready to eat and frozen stuff. Now, things like pulses, and grains, you do end up storing, but even that, I want to reduce the quantity I buy at a time. I don’t want my 10 lb rice bag to lay around for months. (well, it is stored in an airtight container – so there is no risk of weevils and such, but still.)

I would like to reduce the number of clothes that I have. I think I should give myself till mid year to get in shape, and then get rid of everything that no longer fits at that point.

I should also get rid of torn footwear. I am used to wearing torn footwear until it completely gives out 🙂 or the sole looses all tread.

I am already in the process of throwing boxes of things. But these generally take up a lot of space, and are quite unnecessary.

I also have a small number of a particular thing that one shouldn’t really need more than one of. I definitely need to sell a whole bunch of these. 😀

Let’s call this spring cleaning – I shall update the status of this effort in a couple of months to see how much I have accomplished.

I used to focus on having storage for all the things, and organizing things in it’s own place- you know, everything looks tidy, and you know exactly where to find stuff. I have changed my opinion on this – if you have too much storage – you know those under the bed boxes, and loads and loads of shelves, then it is very easy to start hoarding things. So, I have come to the conclusion that while you need adequate storage, there is something such as too much storage.

EDIT 1: (April-07)

I just listed a bunch of stuff I have had lying around for sale. I already feel better. I also started throwing away some stuff which I wanted to hold on forever. Once you throw a few things, you realize, oh if I threw x, then I see no reason I can’t throw y.

Next goal is to start going through clothes and start donating stuff.

Another thing is, the next time I consider buying something, I will think really really hard if I need that, and if I have the room to house it.

I guess another thing I want to focus on is using services more often. For instance if I just used the local bike shop to maintain my bikes, I wouldn’t have to stock a whole bunch of tools, and spend as much time as I do fiddling with them. Maybe rent a kayak instead of buying one, maybe rent a tent instead of stocking two at home.

The world in it’s infinite complexity

So, you go through your formal education. Fourteen years of schooling. Then you follow that up with a Bachelor’s degree for four more years. Roughly twenty one years of your life – gone. You then pursue a Master’s degree for two more years. All this while you’ve been learning Math and Physics, and Engineering. You have some competence in very specific fields. You go out and work a few years. Real life experience has got to count for something. All this while, you keep your eyes and ears open. You read newspapers and magazines.

You’re then suddenly interested in how the world works. You read books, watch documentaries, and listen to podcasts. But there’s so much you don’t know. Even the information that you have gleaned, you don’t know that it is the absolute truth.

You want to shape the world in some way – feel like you contributed in some meaningful way. But it’s overwhelming – there’s so much you don’t know. You don’t know what the real issues are – which issues should be prioritized, and which ones are illusions at best.

Now most people go through life never having such thoughts, either because it is a luxury they cannot afford working their job to put food on the table, or they are so gluttonously rich that they can barely stay sober between the booze, drugs and the high life.

The best among us, with all the resources at their disposal can barely put a dent in things.

Nostalgic about Phones

I was considering a new phone, and with the release of the new Pixel 5, and iPhone 12 line, I was looking back at my phones through the years.

Technically speaking, my first phone was a Nokia 1100, which I don’t count because my dad paid for it, and I lost it in college. I also briefly used a motorola feature phone similar to the 1100, after losing the 1100. Again, this was a phone my dad paid for. The good thing though is, this phone is still at home somewhere.

My first phone was a Sony Ericsson K810i. It had a 3.2 Megapixel camera, which for it’s day was quite amazing. I used this phone from 2008 to 2011. I don’t remember if I considered other phones back then – the W810i was just as popular, but I remember wanting a better camera, than a better music phone. I might have looked at some other phones from Nokia, which were all the rage back in the day, and I’m sure some combination of price, and features made me land on this phone. I may have considered some expressMusic phones in this time frame. Now, this was before the touchscreen phones started coming out.

I also had a Zune around 2008, and an iPod touch a little later – the ipod touch let me experience iOS and the app store and such. I also had access to an office iPhone 3GS at the time.

In mid 2011, I moved to the US and my sister walked me to a RadioShack, where I was to get a phone alone with a ‘line’. This was back when phones were bundled with a 2 year contract. I was enamored by the first of HTC’s android phones, and even before that HTC was an aspirational brand in India. So, when I landed in the US, and saw that the HTC Inspire 4G was available for a low down-payment, I decided to go for it. I’ve always had an anti Samsung sentiment, since I did consider them ripping off Apple blatantly.

In mid 2013, my contract was up, and I was eligible for an upgrade. The HTC One M7 was all the rage, and I liked HTC, so I stuck to it. In hindsight, the camera was not great, and although the phone has held up and still boots to this day, when the phone was fully loaded with apps, there were definitely app stability issues which really frustrated me. This may have been the only phone I didn’t end up using for 2 years.

In late 2014/early 2015, my job kind-of required me to use an iPhone to be able to use corporate email/calendar …etc on the phone. Also, there was an incredible discount to be had to buy the phone. So, I jumped on it, and decided to buy the iPhone 6. I’ll ne honest – I’m not the biggest fan of iOS and the iPhone, but back when I got it, the iPhone 6 was an amazing phone. I think Apple gets the execution really well – may not have all the fancy bells and whistles, but the phone was solid overall. I did develop an issue with the earpiece not working, but the phone was replaced for free. I then broke the glass on the phone, close to two years later by dropping it inside my house, and had the front glass replaced. The phone still boots and works today, and in terms of it’s size and weight, I love it!

When my contract with AT&T ended in mid 2015, I switched providers to Virgin Mobile. They had some insane $1 a month program, and although the network wasn’t great, hey for $1 a month, I was sold. So, I moved providers.

In early 2017, I considered upgrading to the iPhone 7 when it came out, (for a reason I can’t mention here :)) and I did. I bought a black colored phone which was excellent, and transferred all my content to it from my iPhone6. I used it for about a week, and felt like it wasn’t enough of an upgrade over the iPhone6, plus the iPhone 6 was working perfectly. Why upgrade ? So, I decided to return the phone, and went back to the iPhone 6.

In early-mid 2017, water from my window AC at home in India dripped overnight onto the iPhone6 which was placed on the floor, and the phone wouldn’t wake up. I did everything to dry the phone, put it in rice …etc 🙂 but to no avail. Then, magically it started working, but the camera and the flash stopped working. Now, I’m not one for selfies, and much Instagram photos and such, but a phone camera is really indispensable. At this point, I considered the HTC 10 – it looked like a solid phone. I somehow decide to punt on this phone.

Later in 2017, while on a high altitude hike, the camera on my iPhone 6 started working, although the flash circuitry was probably toast. Incredible! I decided to hold out for the iPhone 8/iPhone X and not upgrade till those came out.

I did upgrade to an iPhone 8Plus in late 2017/early 2018. I went for the bigger phone for the additional camera. However, I found it utterly unusable – the width of the phone was insane. I’m not a small person, and yet I couldn’t comfortably use this phone. I decided to take the phone back to the Apple Store, and exchange it for an iPhone 8. The iPhone 8 was great too – worked very well. For some reason, I decided not to wait for the iPhone X. The phone was somewhat identical to the iPhone 6 – in terms of form factor, screen size …etc. The speakers were considerably better than the iPhone6, so were many other featured. However, by this point, my Virgin Mobile offer was running out, and I was going to be charged the regular fee of $50+ something per month.

In July 2018, after having used the phone for about 6 months, I realized GoogleFi was the way to go. I didn’t use data much, and was willing to pay for data when I was traveling and such. However, Google Fi supported only very few phones, and I grabbed an LG G7 for $750, with a $300 service credit. Pretty reasonable I guess, paying $450 (+taxes) for a phone. So, I upgraded to this phone. At this point, I had been following the LG G series for a while, and liked their phones as well, so it wasn’t a tough choice. The phone is narrow, and completely usable. It is still a large phone though, and quite heavy, and thick. Only when I hold my iPhone6 side by side I realize, how much more pleasant that phone is to use. The LG phone however is slippery as an eel – without a case, I can literally not hold the phone without dropping it – I only try it on my bed, so it’s held up ok so far. I don’t think the cameras are particularly stellar, but the audio quality of the phone is excellent. It also had an SD card slot, which is quite good. Overall a pretty solid phone that seems to be going strong 2 years and 3 months in. The only gripe I have is with LG’s upgrades. I did get Android 9, but Android 10 is still awaited, while the Pixel 5 ships with Android 11. This is somewhat insane. Granted, the phone probably does everything I want it to, and the Os updates aren’t as substantial as they once were, but still getting upgrades would be nice.

After considering the Pixel 5 (and 4a, 4a 5G), I’m thinking I’ll let the current phone go on for a bit longer, wait for the Android10 upgrade, and wait on next year’s phones. If the phone lasts me till july of 2017. this will be the third phone that’s lasted me ~3 years. So, there’s that.

I am a huge fan of the Pixel series, and will likely spring for an expensive Pixel phone next, but I really hope they come out with something awesome! Currently, the iPhone 12 Pro phones seem like the phones to get if money is not an issue. But I will likely not go back to iOS from Android. Sadly, (because I hate the brand) that means the best phones right now, are some of Samsung’s offerings – the galaxy S20, and S20 FE are quite good. If I could get Samsung’s hardware with Pixel software, I would jump on that phone – a testament to why the iPhone does so well I think. I’ve looked at LG’s new offerings, and they are pretty much played out I think. The OnePlus are alright, but come with trade-off’s.

Riding from SF to LA- prep – 01

So, since I mentally planned this out, the goal was to first get back on the saddle. Having just moved cross-country, and spending the last few weeks packing and moving, I hadn’t ridden for about two months solid.

Getting back on the saddle

So, March went reasonably well. I rode ~200 miles over the month. Could have been slightly more, but for the first month back on the saddle after a break, that ought to do. I managed to do a couple of 30+ mile rides, while most others ranged from 7 miles to 20 miles. The way I’m thinking of this, I’ll end up doing ~60 miles a day. If you split that into 4 sub-rides a day,

early morning, pre-coffee, pre-lunch, evening pre-coffee and post coffee rides,

That’s really four 15 mile rides. Even if you rode continuously before and after lunch, if would only be 30 miles each ride. Now, as long as you take in nutrition, stay hydrated and rest up between segments a little, it’s reasonable to do 60 miles. Now, elevation will play a part, and that is where, increased fitness will help.

When

I was thinking of doing the ride ending around July-04. That will give me 3 months to train for the ride – which should be sufficient, and the weather in July should be warm enough near the coast. Also, with July 03rd (Fri) being a day off, I’ll only need to use up 4 days of vacation.

However, some people who have previously done this ride warn that that’s when traffic is at it’s worst along CA-1. They seem to suggest April (fairly no way that is happening), or September (which might be ok, but will mean 2 more months of delay.)

Prep

Miles

The goal for this month is to be able to do 50 mile rides once a week over the weekends. (up from the 32 mile rides I’ve been doing so far.) I’ve ridden 50 miles in the past, and possibly ridden close to 100kms on a few occasions as well. (single ride, no break) However, that was a few years back. Also, towards the end of April, I should be able to do 20-30 mile rides on 8 consecutive days. Long distance single rides are important, but also important to be able to ride continuously on x days.

Weight

Not that weight loss is a goal, and especially not so for this ride. However, it’s far easier to lug yourself up your climbs and such, if you shed a few pounds. So, that might not be a bad idea. 🙂 We try and pinch weight from our bikes all the time. I think at 10 lbs lighter, I might climb better 😀 (Watts/kg goes up)

Nerding out with Numbers

I have a power meter on my bike, so I am definitely looking at looking at the elevation profile of the ride, calculating how much watts I’d have to put out for my given weight to be climbing at a very reasonable – don’t-fall-off-the-bike speeds – say 6-7mph, and then making sure I’m able to sustain said watts for said duration. Does that make sense ? 😀

Say for e.g., at 100lbs (not my weight), and a 10% grade, you need X watts to stay at 7mph. And the 10% grade goes on for 20 mins.

Then, as long as you’re able to keep X watts for 20 mins, (at a much higher speed on a different elevation profile – specifically lower), you should be able to do the climb. Now, sure the muscle groups you will use are different and such. So, yes, a good idea to do actual climbs on your rides as well.

Accommodations

I had made up my mind that I did not want to stay in campgrounds, and wanted to stay in hotels instead. For a couple of reasons, i. don’t have to lug around camping equipment. ii. a nice bed and shower everyday is refreshing. iii. you can leave the bike in your room, and then take an Uber or something to the city, or other attractions in the area.

I’ll have to re-think this. I have backpacking/bikepacking equipment that’s fairly lightweight. I can always avoid cooking in the campground too. Also, looks like some campgrounds might be a lot of fun. I guess, if I decide to do a mix of campgrounds and hotels, I will take (i) big agnes ul tent, (ii) thermarest sleeping pad, (iii) sleeping bag (< 2lbs)

Equipment

I have a couple of road bikes – one slightly lighter than the other. (Carbon frame + ultegra vs aluminum frame + 105). I’m leaning towards the Aluminum bike. I definitely plan on carrying at least 2 spare tubes, tire levers, a spare pump, and possibly even spare tires. (maybe just one folding tire) A multi-tool, tire patches, tire boots, some duct tape, a first aid kit (needs to be replenished) and some dollar bills will also sit in my bike bag.

I have a Garmin Varia radar + a Wahoo Elemnt. I think the Varia radar should be helpful to spot cars behind me. (on CA-1)

Route

There’s obviously more planning required. So more posts will follow.