Since 2014 I am participating in a local 5km mass-run (with over 15k participants). My time is between nothing special and fairly good. I will run this year as well.

Previously, I did not train systematically. I would start only when it was comfortably warm (mid-late April), running 4-6km 1-3 times a week.
I would also stop training very soon after the run, and definitely stop if it was getting colder (early October).
After every winter, it actually felt like I am starting my training from scratch.

Eventually, I have adopted an 18-session training regimen, which I found to be very easy for me, and also very efficient.
I had also tried to keep training for longer after the run (which is in summer).

This year, thanks to highly-enthusiastic co-workers, we started light jogging already in January.
One of my co-workers has a nearly-full set of gadgets, including a heart-rate monitor, and was keeping his pulse under a certain threshold.
I have only used a very basic Xiaomi Mi Band fitness/sleep tracker before, and got interested in a more quantified self.
After some reading, I have decided to buy a heart-rate monitor.

Here are my requirements for a heart-rate monitor:

• should measure heart-rate well; based on some reading, I’d prefer to have a chest strap: optical pulse measuring is a tad less precise, it may work worse with hairy (man’s) hands, and (for now) I only plan measuring my heart rate when I’m actually running/bicycling, not all day long;
• should be convenient to use – a wrist display is fine, but carrying a smartphone during a run isn’t;
• should not be expensive: I do not know yet how useful it will be to me, so I do not want to spend more than 150 EUR on it, so the likes of Polar V800 are, unfortunately, outside the scope of my comparison…

I have come across four popular models: Beurer PM 25 (30 EUR), Sigma PC 25.10 (40 EUR), Polar FT60F (70 EUR), and Polar M400 (150 EUR).
These devices differ quite significantly in their class/functionality/price (although all are relatively affordable), and with this blog post I’ll be trying to figure out which one makes the most sense for me – and for any other casual/amateur jogger/runner.

Both Beurer PM 25 and Sigma PC 25.10 (does that 25 mean the same in both models? no idea…) come with a chest strap included, and they both are simple heart-rate monitor watches: you start them before the run, they show your pulse during the run, and some statistics after the run.
For the next run, you need to either reset the data, or the new run will influence your averages from the previous run – so, effectively, both have memory for 1 run.
Both use replaceable CR2032 batteries – one for the watch and one more for the strap, and it should last many months before requiring replacement.
There are no Bluetooth/cable connectivity options.
Both are actual watches (show time/date).
See a table below for a brief comparison of features.
Oh, they also look different – see above

Beurer PM 25 vs Sigma PC 25.10: simple heart-rate watches

Of these two, I’d probably go with Sigma, mostly because of less interference-sensitive coded radio link, and also some rudimentary training history functionality.
Going from Sigma to Polar FT60F does not feel like a major upgrade: for almost double the price, you get

• individual training program,
• HR-based fitness test, and
• memory for 50 runs instead of just 1.

You also get the ability to use additional GPS and running sensors with the watch, but FT60F only has rudimentary support for those sensors – so no rich data.
Also, it appears that getting data off the watch will need yet another additional device – it is getting complicated enough to still prefer the Sigma model over FT60F.

Strictly speaking, PC 25.10 satisfies all the requirements for an HR monitor that I’ve formulated above.
But the GPS-enabled M400 is much more advanced (attractive?), and still has an acceptable price.

Polar FT60F vs Polar M400

Polar M400 costs 150 EUR (almost 4 times the Sigma model price), but comes with an H7 chest strap (which is sold separately for 60+ EUR), and is the most feature-rich gadget in this round-up.
The most significant additions are a built-in GPS module and an easy data sync with Polar’s phone app and online service.

GPS allows figuring out where you had actually run when you got lost, which did happen a few times to our running group
In fact, M400 has a feature to backtrack your route back to the starting point!
(Although it will likely simply tell you a straight-line azimuth and maybe distance to the starting point…)
GPS feature could also be useful for bicycle days, for tracking routes taken, although 6-8 hours of GPS+HR operation might become a limiting factor here.
This can be augmented with a battery pack, to recharge during breaks.
Which, in turn, can be harmful for the device, as charging it while the USB port is damp causes quick corrosion of the said port.
GPS also tracks your speed and distance, so you can see how your speed improves while HR stays the same.

Easy sync enables retrospective performance analysis and nice visualizations of your training achievements.
Using the Flow, Polar’s online service, you can also configure multiple types of activity and upload up to 20 of them to the watch.
This makes M400 a fairly versatile tracking tool.

Speaking of daily activity tracking, it is probably nice, but absence of a smart alarm significantly undermines the activity tracking aspect of M400.

Finally, recent firmware update to M400 added some smartwatch functionality, like messages and notifications being sent to the watch, and being able to mute or pick up incoming calls – but that’s it.

So, Sigma PC 25.10 or Polar M400?…
This was a very hard decision to make.
I like the M400 a lot – this is a great sports watch!
But it’s daily activity tracking feels like a gimmick – I will not wear a chest strap all day long,
and without it my old Mi Band does the same tracking (plus has a “smart” vibration alarm).
I would love to have a heart-rate-enabled activity tracker – especially if it can also double as a precise running HR monitor.
But M400 is not quite there yet, and it’s great GPS and sync/history features are not strictly a necessity for any of my activities –
I just want to know if I’m running/bicycling hard enough, but not too hard

So I have decided to go with a simpler Sigma this time…
But I’ll also keep tracking the brand-new vivoactive HR, coming to markets in April;
based on some previews (and also vivoactive reviews), it is going to be a great all-round (smart-)watch/activity-tracker/sports-watch with a built-in optical HRM.

Feel free to share your experiences and thoughts on the subject.

Ah, and the promised 18 easy training sessions:

Easy 18-session 30-minute / 5 km run training program

1. 1 minute running, 1 minute walking; total 20 minutes (this includes the last minute of walking, the same below)
2. 1m running, 1m walking, 2m running; 1m walking, total 25m
3. 2m running, 1m walking; total 30m
4. 5x (3 minutes running, 1 minute walking); total 20 minutes
5. 4x (3 running, 1 walking, 2 running, 1 walking); total 28 minutes
6. 5x (4 running, 1 walking); total 25 minutes
7. 8x (3 running, 1 walking); total 32 minutes
8. 5x (5 running, 1 walking); total 30 minutes
9. 2x (5 running, 1 walking, 8 running, 1 walking); total 30
10. 3x (8 running, 1 waking); total 27
11. 8m run, 1m walk, 10m run, 1m walk, 8m run, 1m walk (total 29)
12. 3x (10 running, 1 walking); total 33
13. 10m running, 1m walking, 15m running, 1m walking, 10m running, 1m walking; total 38
14. 5m running, 1m walking, 20m running, 1m walking, 10m running, 1m walking; total 38
15. 10m running, 1m walking, 20m running, 1m walking; total 32
16. 5m running, 1m walking, 25m running, 1m walking, 5m running, 1m walking; total 38
17. 10m running, 1m walking, 20m running, 1m walking, 10m running, 1m walking; total 43
18. 30 minutes running completes this preparatory course
19. add at least some more (5+) timed 5km runs

Fortunately, I haven’t lost anything valuable, and don’t plan to. However, I did come to realize that false leads may and actually do obscure some simple happiness bits we fail to notice in our everyday life. Especially when that happiness comes from someone close, someone you literally got used to as to something inseparable from your life – but still fail to give value to.

Take care of your happiness and inner peace – do stop sometimes to thank and praise and value the oh-so-inseparable people around you.

Copyrights note: this is not my image, and I do not know who is the proper copyrights holder. It is used here for illustrative non-profit purposes, with a proper disclaimer. Contact me if you own the copyright and wish this image removed.

an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety.

DIYbio also has a google group, where a wide range of questions – from bio-patents to DIY gel electrophoresis shopping list and model organisms is dicussed. There is also a DIYbio/biohacking FAQ.

Today for me is the day of discoveries. I learned about the International Open Space Initiative (to give robotics enthusiasts a way to send their tele-controlled and/or intelligent robots to the Moon and Mars), about the DIYbio and biohackers, about OpenManufacturing (which doesn’t seem to have produced enough content to link to), Open Source Medicine (ouch!), BioBrick Assembly Kit (with an assembly manual), OpenWetWare, and a whole bunch of other awesome and inspiring community efforts, which do not belong here.

Do you feel the wind of change?

The Crisis of Credit Visualized by Jonathan Jarvis.

On Sunday, the 10th of December, 2006, the grandmother of my wife died – almost three days after she had a cardiac infarction.

She was a kind, calm, warm-hearted old woman. She was just a little bit over 79 years old.

What did she leave behind?

She had brought up and educated her children and grandchildren to be People. None of her offspring went the way of crimes, or even disrespect towards others. The likes of her children could form a quasi-ideal ethical society, with no exaggeration – given she would be able to teach and bring up all of them.

She served the society well, working as a psychotherapist at a hospital. She helped people regain peace of mind, she cured mental diseases in the best way she could. She happened to meet her old-time patients in the street from time to time, and they expressed gratitude for her help.

She left a memory of a good, reliable, helpful person. This memory lives with all the people who were lucky to know her.

———

Death is the final evaluation for the person’s deeds during life.

What are the measures for this evaluation? What is really important? What matters after death?

First, it appeared to me that human memories are what matters. Memories of good deeds, memories of helping others, memories of being valuable for the society and mankind. “To put the mark on history” and “to be placed on record” are the expressions of the desire to have people remember someone even after death.

However, I have doubts that memories are what is really important. (I cannot explain what I mean with really important at the moment – I’m risking to get into circular argumentation. So let us consider this property to be something metaphysical, which isn’t directly related to the majority of phenomena we come to know during our lives, but which is a constituent component of all the deeds and actions.) Take stage, movie and music stars, for example. “Stars” often have huge numbers of people remembering them for decades and sometimes even centuries. But these are memories of “performers”, of “personal abilities to play well”, of “being able to live a role, not play it”, to “bring enjoyment to the lives of others” etc – these are not important per se. To put it simple, I consider “fame memories” generally not really important.

Thinking of fame memories, I can’t reject the notion of brightest stars and best artists directing the development of culture and pushing “into the masses” the understanding and the measure of the beautiful, the aesthetic side of existence. In my opinion, this is especially true of the Renaissance artists – taking into account the pre-Renaissance notions of culture and beauty, and the drastically different Renaissance art. Note the difference here: it’s not the artists we remember, but their art and the whole period. Of course, the names of Da Vinchi and Michelangelo cannot be forgotten – it’s just that their creations had outgrown the authors. What was done – was a massive change, and change is important. If it were for a single artist, not making the change happen – yes, we would probably still know his name, but that would only be primarily a part of the history book, not mankind’s heritage.

If I do ignore (personal) stage fame, and also drop memories within smaller groups and communities, then memories can be excluded from the list of really important attributes, following one’s life. Not to mention that “fame” also needs lots of manual refinement – e.g. the case of the “famous Herostratus”.

Let’s make an intermediary point: fame is not important, change in society is.

———

Let’s continue the never-ending search for the sense of life.

Evidently, anything valuable/material/physical you earned and spent during your life doesn’t matter – salaries, bonuses, dividends, etc – that was to support your body during life.

Any property you had during your life is not a measure as well. Your property might be inherited by your children, if you have them – but it is not a measure of your deeds. Being a land-owner, an industrialist, or a multi-billionaire is not a thing to write on a grave stone (in my opinion).

A thing to consider is charity. There is an idea that charity is good. Gifting fully-equipped computer-room to your school will likely bring benefits to the quality of education of the quite a number of pupils of that school. Not all charity is beneficial, though: only that is, which does change (improve) the state of things. However, I do not recollect any act of charity, which would exit the bounds of an enclosed society (be it even the whole country) or the time-frame of two generations. What I mean to say is: charity is the way to convert your financial wealth into the well-being of many others, if it makes a change. And the bigger the change, the longer its effect – the more real importance was created.

Another intermediary point: changes are really important for the final evaluation. The larger the scale of the changes you make, the longer the effect of those changes – the more value, the more real importance you create. (Granted, of course, that the changes you make aren’t against the principles of morality, ethics, and well-being.)

———

What do people consider important to do during their lives?

I know a number of people who live “for new impressions”, who want to “try everything” and gain as much as possible of “new experience”. However, these impressions and experience are personal – they die with the person. Thus, they cannot be a measure of one’s final evaluation, one’s “value-added real importance“.

A lot of people consider travelling to be a synonym of self-development. They think that travelling is worth the time. Is it so, when it comes to the death still? Evidently, it’s not – travelling is just one of the types of gaining personal impressions, personal experience. It (mostly) serves the selfish, traveller-centred desire to soak cultures and impressions, and only rarely produces “value-added real importance“.

The importance of self-development and gaining experience becomes evident when it comes to the actual use of one’s knowledge. If the knowledge/experience/impressions just cannot, or will not be used – then it’s a waste of time.

———

There are four points, serving as real importance approximations for me: strive for the changes to the better in whatever you are doing, do the good in your everyday life, pass on your worldview (principles, ideas, the best you could come to during lifetime), and exercise useful self-development (which is necessary to grasp more features of the world, for a more complete and reliable view).

———

This is clearly incomplete. Additions and corrections are due, for a lifetime.

You can download the video from the source page, or use my local copy.

As for the “starting a company” part, which goes closer to the end of the video, Jason recommends focusing on a single thing and excel in it. That is, if you are starting a company to host user blogs – then think on what you can do better than others in the field, instead of adding ontop of your blogs some additional not-that-really-related services.

Jason also foresees great future for the internet advertising, providing as an example iTunes-like shops providing TV shows for download, and – of course – embedding some ads. The same goes for user-generated content providers, which are viewed by the producers and sellers as good platforms to promote and sell their goods.

I am not a millionaire myself, to start with. And yes, I do want to become one. In this essay, I am going to present you some tiny snippets I collected, which would make your own way to financial freedom easier.

I will start with some basic business hints. There is a number of fundamental ever-true points:

• Automation of the business processes is good. It saves money (allows higher profits), and saves time, which is much more important. Automation also helps achieving other points of this hint-list. Automation does not necessarily mean that you have to buy some fortune-worth Japan-made intelligent robots. Automation simply means that your business processes operate without your intrusion, or without the need to [micro]manage them. You will not be able to automate your business to become a “money-making machine”, as there are always changes and the need to resolve issues, but you can lift some mundane tasks off yourself, your companions and/or employees, or even decrease the number of employees you really need. For example, instead of manually processing each order in your internet-shop, you can set up a system, which will automatically accept and verify payments, and will also generate a delivery request for FedEx, UPS, DHL or what other delivery service you use. This type of automation is in the market for quite a time, it should be easy to find or custom-order one.
• The higher the rate/volume of your business, the more profit you make. This point seems evident, but still is important to mention. It goes hand-in-hand with automation – good automation allows to easily increase volumes of goods/services being sold.
• Large-scale business usually allows to minimize operational expenses. This point is not always true – it depends on how efficiently your large-scale business is built. One of the classical approaches to increasing scale and competitiveness is to incorporate as many nodes of your business chain as you can. For example, you could be starting as a reseller of some goods called Beta. Later on, as you learn more about this product, and your vending network grows, you find it useful to start your own large-component assembly of Beta. (In case of desktop computers or notebooks you could start assembling them from separate components.) Later on, as you require customized solutions, you may also start producing some of the components required for the goods you produce. As long as each sub-process in your chain is viable and profitable, you get stronger business network with better failure resistance. If competition grows, you may find some of the chain nodes operating at near-zero profit. In this case, if you have no other means to decrease production costs, you may be pushed out of that specific business sector. The larger your chain is, the higher failure resistance you have, and the less probable is that you will encounter an opponent strong enough to win the market from you.

Whether you already have your own business, or you are just planning to start – it is important to choose “appropriate” sector for your activities. Here “appropriate” means a number of different things. First of all, it reflects your inclination to be dealing with, say, notebooks and not microwave ovens. This factor is much more important than it may seem. In general, this is a completely different topic, so I will only remind, that do if you like something, you are very likely to devote more time to that, and generally do that more thoroughly. Another aspect of “appropriate” is actual economic fitness. Evidently, it is not worth starting to sell notebooks in the city where there are, say, 12 large-component assemblers/producers of notebooks, and you cannot walk more than two blocks without encountering Yet Another Notebook Store – this sample market niche is already [over-]saturated, and it will be plain hard to enter the market here. It is always better to start in the yet under-explored economic niche, or even create your own. This approach gives you more time to develop and more chances to survive. You may still try to enter the saturated segment of business activities, but to do so you will need either special non-business advantages, or have a strong financial backup to be able to gain some portion of the market before your numerous competitors push you out of the field.

Third aspect of the “appropriate” applies to your target audience. As we are stuck with notebooks here, imagine selling them in some purely rural district, as compared to selling in the city. When choosing/creating a niche, keep in mind who exactly will need and consume your goods/services.

You can extend the meaning of “appropriate” (like adding “facilities availability”, “transportation distance and costs”, “shelf life”, “resources availability”) to better suite your needs, but the three mentioned will always matter, if you need your goods or services sold.