I’ve been using the Fitbit One for just over two months now, so I think it’s finally time for a review.

My initial reaction when unboxing it was just how tiny the device is. I carry it in that little change pocket that pants have, and very occasionally use the clip if that pocket isn’t available (for example, some kinds of shorts). The marketing material says you can put it anywhere, and it’s probably true, but it just works out to have it near my hip. The carrying clip is a stiff rubber with a metal clip that feels very secure when attached to a belt or pocket edge. Both the material’s grip and it’s tight clamp combined with a ribbed texture on the end make for a fit that’s secure when in place but easy enough to take on and off when you want to. The fit of the One inside the clip is the same way: easy enough to put in and out but I trust it entirely when walking / running / biking. Considering it’s likely going to be bouncing and bobbing around, this is very good.

There’s just one button on the entire thing which is used to cycle through the various stats which include time, steps, flights of stairs climbed, distance, calories burned and a flower that indicates how much activity you’ve recently done, with the idea being you want to keep the flower in bloom across the day (it’ll slowly recede if you’re sedentary). It has a stopwatch, I think, if you hold it but honestly, I’ve never used that since I don’t run with any particular time goal or schedule.

Using your phone, tablet or computer (with the help of a tiny USB dongle) you can Bluetooth from the device to the app / browser and it’ll show you a more comprehensive dashboard of your data. This is where the device really shines and where I as a graph nerd really find it useful. Not only can I quantify my laziness, I can chart it!

You’ll see where I’m not even using the full functionality. I don’t log my food (which is a thing that works fairly well in my limited testing) so my calories in are nil and, to be fair, my calories out aren’t very accurate because I don’t log my bike commute every day either. It captures the motion of my legs still, but it counts the effort as if I were walking / running. I happen to know roughly how many calories extra the biking is worth (since I did log it a few times) and just mentally add it in rough. This brings me to my first gripe: there doesn’t appear to be a way to make an activity repeat. I know I’m going to bike to work using the same route and do it in roughly the same time every day (it seems to calculate calories using the distance you enter and your time doing it, mixed with the altitude data) – I wish I could just say “Monday -> friday, these activities (bike there, bike back) get added. Repeat weekly.” Since I’d have to manually enter every ride I quickly gave up and stopped caring that those numbers were in the official data. It should be noted that adding an activity overwrites the walking data for that time block, so it doesn’t get counted twice. Technically then, I am getting some points for biking.

You’ll also notice that I’ve given up on the sleep tracker. Except for those random, bizarre spikes (which don’t make sense since the device is likely on the bathroom countertop sitting undisturbed) it’s empty. The Fitbit One comes with a very soft wristband with a pocket for the tracker and I did track for the first month or so. It told me what I already knew: I sleep like a rock and with solid patterns for going to bed / waking up. That’s also why I stopped using the alarm clock function, which basically vibrates (very similar to a cellphone) on your wrist until you shut it off. This would be nice, I’m told, for people who sleep with other people. Since I am not one of those people, my waking routine involves significantly more sobbing and existential depression. Speaking of which, the device is water resistant and although never really stress-tested, I can imagine it would be. It’s a small, sealed unit with one small rubber button.

Also ignored: there’s a wireless scale that can sync up to the dashboard via WIFI and provide weight info. I don’t have a regular scale, so I couldn’t even input my weight manually, but it would keep track of that too if you wanted. You can also input water consumption and keep a journal of your mood, heart rate and blood pressure, glucose levels and, as mentioned above, food and non-walking activities. Food is always tricky and I’m not sure how they could have made it any better. There’s a big library of foods and you can add by searching and then telling it how much you had, in basically any measurement you can imagine. It’s pretty intelligent with knowing that one granola bar is different than one cup of granola bar etc. Unfortunately, there’s simply too many things out there. How do you log that sandwich you had at the neighborhood deli? It has sandwiches from, say, Subway or common foods from Safeway, but once you start making your own stuff and buying from non-chain stores the accuracy gets sketchy. Understandable, though. It does it’s best.

Battery life is amazing. It’s a small screen that’s rarely on, so it makes sense, but still. I haven’t really paid attention to when it gets charged, but it’d have to be every fortnight or so. Week and a half at least. The charging cable is USB and the device just clicks into it’s rubber embrace. It makes sense that the charging cable and the Bluetooth dongle are different USB devices, but it also means more clutter to have and plug in and out. The Bluetooth syncing is really cool because you never have to think about it. If you sit down at your computer, it’ll do a little sync and anytime you access your data, it’ll be there and roughly up-to-date. It’s that sort of thing that I appreciate in technology. I never have to think or worry about it, it’s never a chore or annoying. Other than having to charge it every so often, I really could just keep it in my pocket all the time and never think about the device itself again.

So after 71 days of more-or-less accurate testing (you can see in the graph I forgot to wear the tracker a few times) I’ve traveled 509 980 steps, which works out to just over 7 000 per day. You’re recommended to walk 10 000, which is alarming. I’m a fairly active person, I walk a fair bit and bike commute 30km a day. I’m usually at my desk, true, but I would have guessed I was higher. Summer’s just getting started, so I imagine hiking will bring up my average some. It’s good to know these things, and it’s a motivation to do more, but it’s equally disappointing to learn just how bad you are.

Verdict: It’s $100. I’d buy it again, easy. It’s robust and well designed in both hard and software. Does what it promises and without complaint, which makes for a boring review but is exactly why you should buy something. It’s invisible design. I might look into the new bracelet version that just came out but from what I’ve seen it’s basically the same thing with a coloured rubber band. The ability to wear the One without drawing attention to it could be useful, perhaps.

If you want to click a button and have a fully printed map shipped to your front door, there’s still the Society6 option. However! If you want to do a little legwork and go down to your favorite print shop to have one made for you, you could save some money.

Introducing my new sale:

Simply go here and exchange Bitcoins for the ability to download the file. The coins go to me (0.14 BTC), the high resolution lossless .jpg (2′ x 3′ @ 300 DPI) goes to you. Throw that on a flashdrive and have it printed however you want. Easy!

Now, I’m trusting you with this one. I’m giving you the printing resolution file itself and technically you have the ability to pirate it to the rest of the world, it’s true. I’m assuming you aren’t going to spit in the face of some kid who spent a lot of time making a map because, let’s face it, those are the sorts of kids who don’t have many friends. So. Don’t be a dick, and I’ll give you the ability to make derivative works for your personal printing (maybe you want it in a different colour or something? Go for it!) but tell you that it’s not cool to further sell or share it. Cool? Cool. Thank you.

Enjoy!

OBLIVION GFX Montage from GMUNK on Vimeo.

I’ll keep this short, it’s less a review and more about what the movie is.

I had a chance to see the movie last week and was really impressed. The visuals are led by a director with a background in architecture and design and it shows. Like Tron, the movie is as much about it’s style and it’s world as anything else. I went into it with no real expectations and left pleasantly surprised but it’s depth and the little details that usually derail these sorts of movies. I really appreciated that they built the sets and the vehicles – the fact that they shot the cloudscapes and projected them just seems so caring to me. There was a video about Akira that talked about the sheer level of detail they put into it, that there’s a scene that’s only a few seconds long, but they matte painted an entire cityscape to parallax through the buildings behind them. That’s the sort of obsessive vision that I really appreciate. Even if the movie is terrible – and Oblivion isn’t – I appreciate the people who made it so much more.

The soundtrack is M83 and unlike Tron’s Daft Punk score, was actually pretty generic. Save for the credit song and a few of the ambient bits it was the traditional cinematic style found everywhere. It wasn’t bad, it’s just that I wish M83 had more reign to do something awesome.

So. Go see it. Notice that there’s dirt on the pedals of the flying machine from adventures previous. Notice that it feels lived in instead of being a greenscreen soundstage.

A new poster! Finally

Super busy over here, and I’ve taken to writing things that aren’t posted immediately, namely: both a three act comic and an entirely unrelated novel. But, of course, LTKMN gets short fiction posts every so often.

But, if you’d like to buy the above poster from our good friends at Society6, you should do so here. The usual formats are there (posters, art prints, stretched canvases, etc) but it’s also available – and I think quite fashionably – as an iPhone back. Take this simple philosophy wherever you go!

Note, the printed poster version doesn’t have the Acrylo logo in the corner. Other than the obviously branded stuff, I try to keep things clean for you.

Until next time!

Q: Which of your photos is your absolute favorite?

A: A tricky one, for sure. I think this photo is the one that taught me the most about life, and for that reason I’ll always appreciate it and hold it special.

The story: I was driving home from hanging out with some friends and this gorgeous sunset happened just after a storm. The whole thing is at an angle because I literally took this photo while driving and while in the middle of the intersection because that’s the only place that there weren’t buildings. I used to have my camera everywhere and it sat beside me, so other than scrambling for the zipper, it was always close at hand.

By the time I had gotten home to take a better version, it was already gone. This temporary image burned in my mind, even more spectacular than this mere frame would suggest.

The lesson I took away, and ultimately what started my getting out of photography is that everything is temporary and you can decide to try and take the picture or simply enjoy the moment for real.

So I certainly wouldn’t call it my best shot, but it might just be my favorite.

If anyone ever asks you what industrial design is – and they will – just show them this.

It’s sort of the epitome of our process, isn’t it? From drawing to prototyping to testing to building the final car or toaster or spoon or whatever. We build things. If we find something we can’t build, we invent a technology that can.

Shame about the livery though, the matte black air test model was gorgeous.

Since I gave you a perfect isometric Blender setup, go forth and make cool things like Timothy J. Reynolds.

Bigger shots here, but tons more on his Dribbble.

Love that low poly style. I predict with the return of flat UI design, we’re going to start seeing more of it.

I made this years ago and am just now sharing it. Sorry for the wait you never knew you were waiting for.

There’s two different ways to do isometric projection when using a computer screen:

True, exactly like isometric grid paper and the angles are 30° from horizontal as shown on the Wiki

Super easy to do in blender, just use the provided angles.

which gives you this:

…and digital, which for the benefit of smooth lines and consistent video game sprites uses a slightly off angle.

Habbo Hotel:

When zoomed in we see a pattern with lines using two pixels over and one pixel row up. You can do the trig yourself, but this is not perfectly 30°. It is, however, much easier to make by hand (as old games often were) and easier to calculate grid position (and thus, the imaginary 3D space the sprites occupy in “depth”).

A bit harder to do in Blender. I wish I could say I slaved over a hot calculator and furious pumped through calculations but honestly? I just played until it worked.

Some things to note:

Orthographic camera. As opposed to a perspective camera, orthographic means all of your lines are parallel. Since our isometric grid is an orthographic grid, we’ll be needing this. It’s in the camera settings of Blender.

Now, since we want that fixed viewpoint angle, we can’t rotate the camera or move it to look at things. We can, however, use the Shift X and Y to look around our scene and scale to zoom in and out. The physical camera should never change once we’ve set it’s proper location.

Setting up the 3D space. We’ll need two things, one or both you probably already have: a camera and a cube (or empty).

The cube can sit at 0,0,0 (X,Y,Z) and the camera should be moved to (pressing N and inputting the numbers at the top right) 12.05713, -12.05713, 9.84465 (X,Y,Z). Go ahead and lock those numbers if you’d like, to avoid accidentally moving something in the future. Now, the important part. Add a Track To constraint to the camera and target the cube. Play with those axis until it’s back to right side up (for me, -Z and world up is Y).

Pressing 0 on the numpad to see the camera’s view, you should be seeing your cube in isometric. F12 to render. Good? Good. If you want that old school Habbo / Roller Coaster Tycoon look, turn off AA in the render panel and make your resolution 640 x 480. You should notice your render is following that 2×1 line pattern we described above.

Of course, this works just as well with an empty, if you don’t want to see the cube in the render (for building scenes around it, etc.)

Fun fact, this is how to make a geometrically perfect Acrylo logo: Make cube. Join all four top verts into central point, making a pyramid. Move point up two units, so whole thing is four tall and the base 2×2. Smile and clap in delight.

If the instructions aren’t working out for you, or you’re a lazy bum you can download the .blend file here

Enjoy!

The above is the first time I’ve ever tried to do that hard surface style. I think it came out well. Then I was busy with car stuff for a while and bought this:

She’s an ’06 Mini Cooper S with basically everything and front rally lights (which I then discovered weren’t legal to turn on in town…)

It coincides with my birthday, so although I wasn’t planning on it for that reason it worked out to be a self-birthday present. It’s been a week and a day since I drove her off the lot and Calgary’s endured basically the entire gamut of weather in that time so I’m excited for spring and dry roads.

Meanwhile, my evenings were spent between a few freelance gigs, so I was MIA on the blogging front.

Then I drew this:

Which would be my… fourth? try at that style. There’s a few in between and after but they aren’t nearly as coherent and one is ridiculous (by request: Ke$ha riding a robot-ized Nyan Cat with a lightsaber).

This weekend will be bloated with posts because I have lots of ideas and for once, the time to get them out.

That’s a strange photo for a blog post to be written around, but I’ll try my best to describe it’s importance. It’s a still taken from an unreleased video I made the summer before last which is just me longboarding around my hometown and visiting old places of interest and nostalgia. It really wasn’t very good, but I’ve always enjoyed filming the footage more than actually making something out of it.

But it was a common sight that summer, looking over the passenger seat and seeing a faithful piece of bamboo reflect the warm sun around the dark grey interior. This shot in it’s video form shows the shadows of leaves in the trees lining old streets as they stream in, gently waving. The sound is sort of like a waterful or TV static. That white noise of wind. I sat in my car listening to bands I hadn’t heard since high school and staring out the window. It’s an understated activity, really. People see people staring out of windows and describe them as ‘doing nothing’ but it’s hardly a fair observation of what’s actually happening; in that moment I was simply being. I was parked across the street from a perpendicular road (think a large T that I was at the top intersection of) that has a perfect hill for cruising. Just steep enough that you can get some good speed and work into deeper carving, but not so steep that you fear for your ability to stop or bail. It’s a road that is lined with large, old trees and is in the general area of a small indoor pool we used to take swimming lessons at as kids. Beyond it is my elementary school where we were sometimes picked up in the very car I was sitting in then.

Cars as an interior space are an interesting thing because all of my memories come from the same viewpoint: my driver’s seat. With exception to a few from when I was a kid sitting in the back, most of what I know in that car is from the exact same vantage. The result of that is sort of a timelapse, where the time can be sped up to show the surroundings without confusion, because of the fixed angle. Most other spaces – interiors of buildings, for example – would speed up like a movie would, with cuts and scenes that happen all over. They’re all in the same space, but they can’t be compressed or played back in the same way.

And not that my nostalgia would be interesting to anyone but me, but it’s weird to think about all the people who’ve sat in that other seat. Or things, like the longboard or cameras or pizza. The handful of chairs I’ve managed to stuff into the tiny car and bring home. Lumber that’s stretched from the very front of the dash to the very back of the hatch (exactly 8′). My computer tower, seatbelted in and surrounded by blankets and pillows that time I came home for Christmas month school break. Guys and girls, conversations both heavy and giggled. The awkward silence of giving someone you don’t know very well a ride home. The acceleration-challenged rides with four guys crammed in and dancing to some ridiculous song on the radio. The hours spent parked in usual spots just talking and watching the sun set. The time spent alone, or talking to the car herself. Space exists in relation to the people occupying it, and in a lot of ways the car interior is the ultimate space for holding memories, simply because it’s there in so many contexts.

I bought a new car. I’m deeply excited, of course, but there’s a lot of me that’s bitter-sweet about giving up what amounts to one of my longest standing loves. It’s not to say I don’t have good friends but these past years have been filled with new cities, new people and new places – the physical thread that’s always been there has been this one car.