The iPhone 6 does pretty well counting steps and tracking walk or run. Checking the Health app shows number of steps and distances without the aid of a third-party app. Cycling, however, is missing and instead shows as steps and walking + running distance. Any cycling data added creates duplicate data for the same time frame. As of iOS 8.1.2, cycling is not recorded in Health without input from the user or a third-party app. If you’d like to keep track of total steps for the day and you bicycle frequently, you’re out of luck until a fix comes our way.

During the iPhone 6 reveal, Phil Schiller stated that the motion sensors within the iPhone 6 can tell the difference between cycling and running. I became very interested in how their sensors work, because detecting the difference between running, cycling, and riding a motorcycle isn’t trivial without the aid of a GPS. A “step” on a bicycle generally covers more distance than a walk or run step. Once a fix arrives, it will be interesting to see how accurate the data is.

Using Cyclemeter, I track my rides and jogs which are sent to Health app. Selecting run activity in Cyclemeter doesn’t produce duplicate data in Health, but when cycling, I still see large peaks in walk/run chart as seen below. My 27-mile bike ride looks like a 5.6-mile run, and I somehow performed both activities simutaneously.

In the week view above, that first peak in walk/run is an 8.6-mile jog. The other two peaks are 27-mile bike rides as seen in the cycle chart.

Other cyclist have complained. See this Apple Support forum thread and this thread on Reddit.

Until a fix arrives, the recommendation is to use a third-party app to record cycling, running, and walking. Ignore that data in Health.

Update 4/9/2015: iOS 8.2 update improved results, but not so much for riding in hilly areas. See my follow-up post

Dee Count 2.1 adds QR code generation for location title for sharing or printing. The image includes guides to help with sizing for print. Guides printed at full width of 4x6-inch paper produces an acceptable code size, or go smaller. Print and paste to your location for scanning using the Dee Count location search option.

Following up on my November Projects, I’m happy to report I made progress on my novel reaching the midpoint of the story. I don’t normally pay attention to my word counts, but since November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) with a goal of writing 50,000 words towards a novel, I’ll share my numbers. I had started writing my Draco Torre novel on November 1st on my iPad, and reached around 30,000 words by mid-month. After that I worked primarily on other projects. I also wrote more episodes for Kandy Fangs to be posted in December.

• Draco Torre novel (part 1): 41160 words (about half)
• Kandy Fangs: Venom: 2074 words

Keep in mind I tend to cut out substantial number of words during editing, so final published word counts for the same story material will be smaller. For writing on my iPad, I use a wireless keyboard so I can type comfortably at full speed.

This novel is actually a restart I originally began writing a decade ago. I’ve restarted once before several years ago, and after more thought, I’ve decided on the perspective. In a previous draft, I switched perspectives between the main characters in third-person. After reading the draft several times, I realized this story works better with limited perspective of a single character. Since this is my third restart, and I know this story better than my life, I’ve made good progress. I’ll keep at it, and perhaps I’ll finish the draft for this first part within the next few months.

In November of 2012, I went ahead with part 2 (book 2) before tackling the part 1 rewrite. Looking at my draft recently, I realized I nearly completed it at 92,000 words. It’s possible I’ll have both parts finished in the near future as one book or two.

December Dee Count Discount: 60% off until end of 2014.

Divide your area into locations, such as a shelf or wall rack, and count inventory with your iPad or iPhone by scanning bar codes with the device’s camera or a wireless bar code scanner. View total counts or totals by category. Requires iOS 8+. See the Dee Count page for more details and tips.

Jeff Atwood of stackoverflow.com (a forum for engineers posting questions and answers) shares his ideas on encouraging more reading instead of pushing for conversations in a thoughtful post, “Because Reading is Fundamental” on his blog. His observation is that many blog comments reveal ignorance of the post or wander off-topic. Too many blogs and forums encourage high post counts or push conversations.

I find that the value of conversations has little to do with how much people are talking. I find that too much talking has a negative effect on conversations. Nobody has time to listen to the resulting massive stream of conversation, they end up just waiting for their turn to pile on and talk, too. The best conversations are with people who spend most of their time listening.

This has been my view of conversations for years, the participants primarily talk (sometimes as if only to make noise) rather than discuss. It gets worse, though, as I see it in the workplace as well. I can’t count how many times I get an email asking a simple question that had been documented or covered in the previous email. I’m certain some employees never read beyond the second sentence. At my previous employment, I built sneaky crawlers to capture all your conversations on the web for analysis. The bulk post comments consist of random chat, flaming, off-topic, arguments where it’s obvious the participants aren’t listening to each other; stuff hardly worth reading. It’s noise.

Discussions are rare gems.

Atwood makes a case that a luker reading every article, posting a handful of comments, is far more valuable to a community than a frequent poster. I must agree. Reading adds to knowledge, and thoughtful response takes time and consideration. I made a similar point as part of my decision to remove comments from this site in that I’d rather read your email or blog post in response. The comment box is great for an immediate response in brief, but isn’t designed well for thoughtful discourse or lengthy conversations.

A couple of ideas Atwood shares captured my interest. His #3 idea is to reward reading, perhaps by raising trust levels of community members by how much or often the member reads. Are there other ways to reward reading? How about using a quiz question as a captcha to comment? In #4, Atwood suggests real-time conversations “preserving the back and forth, real time dynamic of an actual conversation.” Of course, Atwood has done more than offer ideas, he created Discourse comment system in pursuit of some of his strategies.

Comments Still Closed

Besides slow loading time, a big reason I hesitantly decided to disable my comments was due to lack of discussions. I continue to get responses via Twitter, G+, or email, all of them good. What I don’t see anymore are the thanks-for-visiting-my-blog and please-visit-my-blog comments, which were somewhat pointless anyway (shoot me a tweet to say hello). I read posts I’m interested in.

Will I turn comments back on? Perhaps. I may try a moderation strategy that encourages discussion.

Feedback is great, but please, come to read. Feel free not to comment, or share your thoughts if you have something to say.

You may reach me on Twitter, @dracotorre, Google+, or Gmail dracotorre.

Notes for technical types: Disqus works with Octopress, for Discourse check this post on Rails on Maui