Back in 2014 I bought an iRobot Roomba 650 in an attempt to get pet hair out of our carpet without going crazy. It worked really well, and if you don't mind cleaning the brushes every now and again, the little robotic vacuum does a great job around the house.
At the end of 2015 it seemed to have lost all its suction power. I performed all the recommended maintenance tasks and even replaced the brushes with a kit I ordered from iRobot, but it still had very little debris in its container after a cleaning cycle. I asked iRobot whether it was possible to send it in for them to have a look at it. They explained that they only replace robots within the warranty period, and that they sell replacement parts for any robot out of warranty. They also provided me with a long list of troubleshooting instructions. I thought it was quite novel that they were essentially telling me: “You don't need to send it in. You can fix it yourself. You got this.”
Using the troubleshooting instructions I was able to figure out that the brushes were not spinning, indicating a fault with the Cleaning Head Module. As the robot is not under warranty anymore, I opted to open it up myself and clean the module and its gearbox. I was surprised by how easy it was to do this, indicating that the robot was clearly designed for repair by customers – thanks iRobot! After spinning the brushes a couple of times manually, I was able to get them working and everything was fine again.
It was another six months before the Cleaning Head Module stopped working again. This time round I had a look on eBay and bought a replacement Cleaning Head Module for less than £60. It was super easy to install and everything worked again!
Out-of-warranty Roomba wasn't working properly – luckily they're designed to easily repair yourself after buying just the required module. pic.twitter.com/SpP0TZH6Zd
Last year the battery finally started losing its charge very quickly. Again I headed to eBay and picked up a brand new battery for £18 that was literally a drop-in replacement. Since then it had some charging issues, which I fixed by bending out the battery contacts a little bit.
So even though this Roomba goes through a lot of wear and tear on a weekly basis, it's still going strong after almost six years. And all you need to fix it is a screwdriver and the right replacement parts. I wish more things were designed like this.
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I bought an Apple Watch Series 2 in December 2016 and wore it pretty much constantly until March 2020. Having to charge it every night and just not being a lot of fun to use finally got the better of me. It just never faded into the background, and needed a lot of attention.
I went without a watch for about a month, and then got a Garmin vivosmart 4 activity tracker. It also measures heart rate and number of steps, but also pulse oximetry when you're sleeping. It doesn't have a GPS chip, so your location isn't constantly being monitored. And it costs a lot less. Even less than the price that I got for my Apple Watch after selling it on eBay.
Overall I'm enjoying the experience even more than with my Apple Watch. It has a small OLED screen, so just displays the bare essentials in clear black and white. The battery lasts about a week, but since I wear it when I'm sleeping, charging it for about 10 minutes every day while I'm in the shower seems to be more than enough.
It still displays the time and the current weather conditions, and can send message and app notifications if I so choose. It can even control the music on my phone, so I don't really feel like I'm missing anything I was able to do with the Apple Watch.
And it fades into the background really well.
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Last night I was working through the first module in the Make Time course I mentioned on Day 7. One of the activities is to figure out what gives you energy, and what are the things that drain your energy.
Things that give me energy:
Walking around the neighbourhood
Yoga (I've recently started using the Peloton app to do this)
Reading books
Things that drain my energy:
Meetings
I'll be adding to this list over the coming weeks as I think of new things.
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Even though I literally have a Ph.D. in industrial design, I've never felt like much of a designer but more of an engineer. This film does make me feel like everyone should be a designer, and it would do the world some good if we all take Rams's 10 design principles to heart:
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With my family living in South Africa, and my wife's family living in the Netherlands, we're pretty used to using video calls to stay in touch with them. With the Covid-19 pandemic a lot of people are now using videoconferencing apps to stay in touch with their families, and its deficiencies are showing. From the many privacy and security issues with Zoom, to the different ways in which video calls can make us feel drained and anxious, surely there must be better ways to do this?
I've been toying around with WebRTC, trying to figure out how difficult it would be to build peer-to-peer apps that can be used to communicate directly with other people. Maybe not even using video, but just audio and text? Maybe something like an open source Animal Crossing as a decentralised, federated social network?
Today I came across two recent blog posts from Matt Webb:
I think there are some great ideas in there on how to move on from video calls, although I'm not sure telepresence robots are the way to go. E-ink portals and low-bandwidth sensors sound pretty exciting, but the actual implementations, like Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino's Good Night Lamp have not proven super popular.
I know I want to be more connected with my family, but I don't yet know what I would like to build to make it so. What ideas to you think are worth experimenting with? Let me know on Mastodon @gendor@merveilles.town.
I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.
I'm a big fan of the book Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. I feel like it's the one book on productivity that didn't try to make me “more productive”, but to actually help me focus on what I enjoy.
One of the ways it does this, is to have you choose a highlight for the day. It should be a task of around 45 to 90 minutes that you're really excited about, and you then block out the time on your calendar to do that task.
This morning I chose a highlight, put my phone on “do not disturb”, closed all my open browser windows and apps, and just focused on the task at hand. After 90 minutes, something that I haven't been able to get working for ages, was finally working!
I actually just started doing their Highlight course, which has a $50 COVID discount at the moment. (No, I'm not making any money from this, I just really think the ideas in the book works.)
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One of the cool things that comes out of this is that every time I publish a blog post, it gets posted to my feed at @gendor@gerritniezen.com (which exists in the Fediverse, and can be viewed on Mastodon even though it is not hosted on a Mastodon server).
Also, I was able to link to the Fediverse just by typing in the right handles, e.g. @gendor@merveilles.town and Write.as creates the corrects links (and hopefully also notifies the linked accounts).
I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.
Yesterday evening I did something called philosophical meditation, after reading about it on David Cain's blog, Raptitude. There's a 6-minute video about it here:
I started by writing down the things I'm feeling upset and anxious about, and while I was doing that, my new fitness tracker started buzzing. It told me that I may be stressed and asked whether I wanted to do a relaxation exercise.
How about that? It turns out you can sit quietly in a room, and just by thinking about things that make you anxious, you can increase your stress levels so much that the physiological changes can be measured by the cheap sensors in a fitness tracker. In case you're wondering, I recently got the Garmin vivosmart 4, which has a heart rate monitor and pulse oximetry sensor, but links to your phone for GPS.
My mind did feel a little bit quieter after the exercise, so I'll do it again in a couple of days and see if it provides any longer-term benefits.
I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.
I'm currently on Week 5 of a Permaculture course run by Milkwood. This week we're looking at the permaculture principle of using and valuing renewable resources and services.
I've chosen the action of making natural home cleaning products. I'm already using a diluted vinegar solution as a multipurpose cleaner, but I'd like to experiment with replacing some other cleaning products in the house with DIY versions as well.
For example, I'd like to give using washing soda a go in the dishwasher, using vinegar as a rinse aid. I tried making apple scrap vinegar a couple of weeks ago, and I'd like to give that a second try after learning some things the first time round.
How is making your own cleaning products renewable? I can take some lemon rind and a sprig of rosemary I grow in my back garden, add it to the apple scrap vinegar I made with some water, and I have a multipurpose cleaner, where all the ingredients come from renewable sources.
There's a whole list of homemade cleaning products on the Eartheasy website.
I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.
This weekend I spent some time figuring out how the Barcode Detection API in Chrome on Android works, and implemented a basic barcode scanning web app. I hope to integrate with some kind of food database, so that I can easily track what goes in and out of my pantry.
