Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike
codaris.github.io
codaris.github.io
Also you get more total workout by just going outside on a 30m walk, not to mention all the benefits of sunlight. Now I just do walks and explicit exercising vs. the fence sitting that is a treadmill walking desk.
And yes, this should be a supplement and not a substitute for outdoor activity, normal cardio and strength training, stretching, etc.
min = minutes
:-)
It sounds absurds. But I think some may do the same.
Same. When I have to seriously think about the code I'm writing - I stop the music. I think that goes against a lot of people who continuously jam music while writing code.
I close the door.
A meeting room or a phone booth generally has a door :-)
Kids may only see these in classic media like the matrix, dr who or the original superman.
At $20, it is the best one I've tried. It is not 'active' (mic filtering & speakers), it just has good foam tech.
(not a ref link) https://www.amazon.com/3M-Peltor-Optime-Earmuff-H10A/dp/B007...
If you get used to the 'weight' (not that much) they are also great for your meditation time.
Only on well-worn commutes do I feel free to blast the radio.
Programming though? Only if I’m doing something I know how to do fairly well I can walk. That’s pretty rare due to how little time I can commit to coding.
In either situation it keeps me more awake and energized, even if I can’t concentrate as well.
It compared the mood of treadmill vs. outside walking.
Outside was perfected by a lot.
(I miss Dr. Edell. I thought someone would replace him, but no.)
I have used a bike desk for more than a decade. I have no difficulty getting into the zone; in fact, I find the rhythmic motion actually helps.
You can get far more exercise while you work than you can in your free time, simply because time spent working > available free time for most people. It all depends on how long and how much you exert yourself. Based on my desk's power meter, I burn about 1200 calories/day while I work.
Lastly, I very much did not want all my workout data locked away in this app.
There are some public policies that need incentives to go against the market, because market forces are not inherently good.
Sometimes there is a need to legally mandate something, or are you also against environmental protection laws? By this logic, f people really care about the environment, would it solve itself then?
Importantly, to pick just one of the reasons, you can't expect users to accurately judge complex technological product, especially when facing marketers who will lie to them. When you're shopping for food or medicine, you're not expected to understand biochemistry or technicalities of randomized control trials - you expect the things you buy to not poison you. Plenty of vendors would be happy to sell you literal poison - and they did, in the past - but we've regulated that possibility away. Similarly, for technology, some of the abuses need to be regulated away, because you can't expect regular people to avoid the traps, and the vendors to not be abusive without external pressure.
And just looking at exercise bikes, it's true that peloton/flywheel/etc are closed. But the products in that space from the established fitness tech players (eg wahoo and tacx) are entirely based around communicating via standard protocols (ant+ fe-c trainer control).
https://www.thisisant.com/developer
There is free open source software like GoldenCheetah which can read those comes so you don't have to depend on proprietary online services.
I have a MagneTrainer, which is made by the same manufacturer as the DeskCycle, and uses the same "trip computer" as the DeskCycle.
When I bought the Magnetrainer years ago, they had some Windows games they could link to using the Aux connection, but the connection kit was overpriced, and the games that were available looked "meh".
The university was big into VR and graphics, and had developed a VR SDK and headgear. Hooking them up was a fun task since I got to work with C internals, connecting things at a lower level. It actually worked quite well.
Today I work on systems that deal with large queries per second, but almost not as fun as getting your hands dirty with low-level bytes.
Potentially you don't even lift your toes up, just raise and lower your heels with some kind of resistance.
Maybe you wouldn't get much exercise this way, but I think getting a whole lot of exercise whilst trying to work at a computer just isn't really doable.
I've also thought a sliding back-and-forth motion might work -more like a skiing thing.
Thanks for the link
The pedal https://www.thomann.de/intl/millenium_pd222_pro_serie_fussma... [english language link] Something to hit (incl. sensor!): https://www.thomann.de/intl/millenium_e_drum_kick_bass_pad.h...
Partially kidding, partially serious. Careful: These aren't noiseless. My former downstairs neighbor wasn't too happy with me so I could only practice when he wasn't at home ;-)
[0] (Slightly NSFW) https://youtu.be/RnxcPeemHSc
(First and foremost, I'm at my computer all day long. If it has trouble syncing, I'm right there and not going anywhere. I hate having to find my phone and try to get the data synced just to see how well fitbit thinks I slept last night. Also, would be nice to access my data from my device without involving the cloud.)
I even looked into if it might be possible to work around the issue. Turns out, the fitbit, which is advertised as having a GPS, actually uses your phone's GPS. It has one of it's own, but it's apparently absolute garbage; it's inaccurate and it drains the battery extremely fast.
I'm still using my barely functionalit fitbit charge 2.
It doesn't _need_ the phone to be able to do that part of it's job. And I don't want the "challenge your friends to a walk-a-thon" junk that does use the app.
Just pointing this out for those in the same boat as you. Personally I hate things on my wrist and so I don't know if it is any good as I won't be using it anyway.
A few of my initial assumptions turned out to be wrong. For example, since I did see some word (16bit) values I assumed all the values would be words. That's probably what I would have done. But that turned out to be incorrect once I started looking at the values (it's a mix of bytes and words).
If I wanted to figure out the fields he doesn't understand I'd rig up some sort of stepper motor/servo to the pedals so I can precisely control the input, and then start changing things. Go from 0 - 120 rpm in .5 rpm increments, with a change every 15 seconds. Then go from 0 - 60 (or 90) rpm, but over many different accelerations.
I used to work for a company that made automotive scan tools and we did this all the time with the automakers official scan tools. Even though the auto makers gave us a lot of documentation, what they did and what the docs say they do is different. (We even had a full time employee who worked at GM's offices with access to GM's source code and rights to pass on the algorithms used: and we still found it valuable to do the above to GM scan tools to work out what they really did)
Not that I personally do that, I'm too used to ctrl mapped to caps lock. If I could go back in time to before I started using emacs though... I would learn emacs with vim bindings.
As a more general recommendation, getting used to both right and left control (whatever it's mapped to) is a huge ergonomic improvement. When you need to use Ctrl with a key in the left side of the keyboard, use right ctrl, and left ctrl when using a key in the right side. This avoid having to crumple your hand to reach, eg., ctrl+a.
Just a note, emacs could be a full desktop experience, supporting reading/writing email, web browsing, document browsing (pdfs, html, etc.), picture viewing, text editing, automation guru, etc etc etc. Some caution against some of these features but I use it mainly for text editing and automation support. It has a very robust keyboard-macro-recording tool, for example.
[0] https://www.emacswiki.org/ [1] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsTutorial [2] https://emacs.stackexchange.com/
Additional reading
[3] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf [4] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs
I don't think that you want to do fine mouse work at the same time as any physical activity.
For instance, sitting down too much is in itself detrimental to ones health (whether pedaling or not). E.g. prostate health, posture, etc.
In contrast, a stationary bike or road bike, the rider can stand up and pedal fast, etc. There's a much broader range of motion which make the activity healthy!
For cardiofitness you need to get your heartrate over a certain threshold. A walk won't do that.
Unfortunately I can't find my sources right now, so take that as just something some guy said on the Internet.
And if that's not enough, you can always speedwalk.
It can if you choose it, for reasonable levels of cardio.
If you are only going to do one thing (not advocating that!) you aren't going to be able to beat walking, especially on varying terrain.
I definitely agree with you that it is no replacement for walking, yoga, or other active forms of exercise. But I have found it a great substitute for just sitting while using a computer.
I say this because I had some prostate bruising (I recovered from that quickly doing yoga), but I attribute it to sitting too long; I don't even want to think what a pedaling motion in my chair would do down there! Granted, I have never pedaled in my chair so I accept that maybe it is fine—I'm just not willing to take the risk.
Personally, I'd go more for a walking desk or something where the motion is natural, but the desired cardio effect is the same.
Flapping your feet around under a desk is not real exercise.
Easy bet just walking the same amount of time is better for you with your own weight providing resistance against muscles.
Why is it so hard even for native speakers to spell the verb "pedal"? I mean it's spelled exactly like the noun, which most people seem to be able to spell properly.
It's a genuine question, I see this all the time, maybe most of the time actually. It's strange because typically people tend to over-generalise, not the other way around.
Often I found more difficult to understand English written by native speakers than by others because of that.
They can also come from autocorrect guessing, though probably not this case.
(FWIW Reading poetry doesn't work for me and I have long assumed it is only a pleasure for people who hear the sound while reading).
How about Oxford poetry? Or Maidenhead?
I can listen to poetry and musical lyrics, and there cadence and phonemic clues help with memory and recognition and can even be playful or fun (as intended!). I've never grokked how one could read that way though clearly many, and perhaps most, people do!