Track your life–a step at a time

Sorry for the lack of consistency in posting, guys! 😦 As you know, life gets busy. However…I do intend on creating Techy Tuesdays for you all and totally posting every Tuesday. That’s the plan, at least. Maybe I’ll reward myself candy for every week I post on time…I think that just might be motivation enough. 🙂

Anyways! I never really considered myself to be the type of person to “track my life.” I’m a very much live-in-the-moment-with-no-regrets type of person andddddd awesome people like that don’t need tracking. However, I still decided to download this app Argus. Yeah, I don’t know what’s up with the name either.

Just kidding, since I have eternal access to the Internet Room (and I guess, just the right amount of curiosity), I googled it. Argus was this mythological dude with 100 eyes, essentially “all-seeing.” I guess that makes enough sense. If Argus is watching over you and tracking your life and what not.

Alright, well, I’m back from that tangent! So, Argus keeps track of a lot of things for you…mostly health-related. Who am I kidding. Allll health-related. But that’s something I guess I need in my life so whatever. 😦

Argus’s main feature (or one of the automatic ones) is the pedometer. Just keep your phone on you at all times (which totally wasn’t a problem for me) and it tracks how many steps you take throughout the day. You can set goals if you want, but the default goal is 8,000 steps; that’s hard enough for me to achieve. I think the only times I get close to that is when I go shopping at Tyson’s Corner.

Aside from the pedometer, Argus tells you the weather and how many glasses of water you’ve had/need. So one cool thing about Argus is that it’s made by a company that makes bunches of individual apps and it integrates well with all of them. You can use it to track your workouts or runs, what you’re eating, how much you’re sleeping, how you’re sleeping, how much coffee you’re drinking, what your heart rate is, integrate it with a wireless weighing machine to track your weight…all sorts of shenanigans. (Listed here, I believe.) It’s insane!

Most of the things can be done automatically if you install all the partner apps. Problem that I ran into was that, most of the partner apps require muchos dolares. Actually, it’s not that mucho, but I still didn’t want to pay for any of it….so I opted to take the manual-input route, which works well for me. (Although, it does seem as some apps have a free version you can download, but not all of them.)  All of this info that’s collected is then displayed in your “timeline,” which is essentially just this hexagonal coolness screen that has all your info.  I like how the water level moves depending on how you’re holding your phone 😀

One thing that I found handy (although some might find annoying) is that I have a habit of not hydrating enough throughout the day. Argus sends me cute little notifications and alerts me if I haven’t had a glass of water in over 3 hours. That’s been keeping me on track!

In the settings, you can set your goals, check out your food timeline, notice any trends you’ve been consistently following since you’ve started tracking your life.

Oh! Another thing that I’d find realllllly cool if I ran is the Run Detection. Apparently, it’s a feature that uses GPS to record paths and see how far you ran and how long it took you and tracks burnt calories and what not.  Almost makes me wish I ran……LOL JK. Yeah, right. Not even candy can motivate me to run.

Anyways, so in general, this is a pretty sweet app. So, if you have an iPhone….download it and track yourself! Might be kinda cool to see how you live every day of your life!

[Now the title should make sense….since it’s a pedometer app and what not :D]

Be brighter than your screen at night. Get f.lux.

Back when I was in college, I was infamous amongst my friends for being the nocturnal one…Seriously, who am I kidding? That hasn’t changed a bit.  My “sleep schedule” is still a constant mystery to anyone that knows me.

So here I was, browsing the interwebs late at night and what is this I see?? Well, honestly—the only thing I could see then was the glare of my super-bright laptop that clearly had some sort of personal vengeance against my vision with the way it was trying to blind me.

That’s where f.lux comes in play.  It’s a quickly downloadable software (eh, I wouldn’t really even call it a software since it’s so lite. Maybe a plugin. For your computer.) Anyways! It literally took me about 30 seconds to download and as soon as it opened itself up and placed itself in my taskbar, the soothing process began.

Essentially f.lux warms the coloring of your laptop or monitor screen to “match the sunlight.”  Depending on your location and the time of when the sun sets and rises and the type of lighting you tell it you have, the glare of the monitor will adapt to put less strain on your eyes.

I tried to take screenshots, but since it’s only the coloring of your screen changing, I couldn’t quite capture it 😦

Looks like the only solution is for you to try it!  Have fun, night owls!

Oh. Bonus: it’s available for Mac, PC, Linux, and iPhones and iPads at www.justgetflux.com.