Posts Tagged ‘biohacking’
I’m declaring a new class of applications – hostageware.
Apps that you HAVE to use because there is no valid / realistic alternative but which are SO buggy and such crap that they drive you insane.
The Zeo is the archetype.
The Zeo has a myriad of problems which seem too numerous to enumerate in one blog post.
Regardless, I’ll try to name a few.
From a platform perspective, they’ve pushed the concept of the ‘ZQ’ to explain how solid your sleep was from the night before.
However, it’s a JOKE metric.
For example, my Zeo told me I had a ZQ of 61 and that I slept 5:26 minutes.
The previous night my Zeo told me I had a ZQ of 82.
Now I’ve been controlling my sleep TIGHTLY for the last week and I can tell you that LAST NIGHTs sleep was MUCH better than the previous night.
Why? Because I was training the previous day and had a lot of recovery to catch up on. All of my subjective measures (morning, mid, and evening wakefulness and creativity) were high and my performance was exemplary.
Getting LESS sleep and more efficient sleep is a GOOD thing and not a bad thing.
It’s been YEARS since this problem was exposed. This should have been corrected in version 1.1. Have they fixed it yet?
Nope.
Another example. Last night I Slept from 12:08AM until 6:50 AM. As printed on my Zeo and recorded by me before and after I slept.
Guess how many hours the Zeo says I slept. It thinks I only slept 5:26 minutes. Major discrepancy.
I’ve asked Zeo 3-4 times for an explanation here and I keep getting conflicting answers.
The only conclusion I have is that NO ONE within Zeo actually uses their product.
One could come to the conclusion that it’s the sleep version of a lie detector (AKA snake oil) and that I’m just observing placebo effect.
However, in my experience, the deep and REM measurements are somewhat accurate and valuable to my sleep hacking.
Every time the Zeo tells me that my REM and deep numbers are off, I notice correlated mid-day sleep pressure / drowsiness (which impacts my work).
So for now I’m stuck, trapped. Zeo is keeping me a hostage.
I’d drop them in a MINUTE if there was a viable alternative.
Update: Another good example of the use of the Zeo is the ‘time to Z’ which is the amount of time it took you to all asleep. As part of my hacking I have dramatically lowered my time to Z measure. Which is great, but it’s not 1 minute which is what it suggested last night. I was definitely mellow last night but I would say it was more like 5 minutes. It’s just hard for Zeo to be very reliable with one EEG sensor but then again they shouldn’t sell their product as BEING reliable.
The MOTOACTV seems super awesome.
Specs are off the hook. 600MHZ processor. 256MB of RAM, and 8GB of flash storage
And for connectivity it includes GPS, 802.11B/G/N, Bluetooth 4.0, Ant+, FM tuner.
It MAY include some sort of cellular connection but I can’t figure this part out.
It’s been a dream of mine for a while now to have 24/7 sensor data for my biohacking activities.
Heart rate, body temperature, would be two good applications.
I can record the data on my phone and either spool it to the SD card or stream it right to the cloud.
NOT having to ever sync is VERY important.
The one downside is that this data wouldn’t necessarily work with applications like Runkeeper, Fitocracy, etc.
But having a device like this running Linux which is nearly ALMOST part of your body and connected 24/7 is pretty darn cool.
If I can get a good device like this that I can hack that has topomaps I won’t need to by a Garmin GPS for backpacking.
I also think it would be a major leap technologically for me personally.
I would essentially become a practical self-hackable cyborg. Having a Linux device physically attached to me and monitoring my data would have a lot of interesting applications.
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