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Charlie Miller (881 KP) rated Fitbit Inspire HR in Tech
Oct 17, 2020
Fitbit changed my life(style)
First of all thanks to @Smashbomb for the great giveaway of a Fitbit Inspire HR
The heading of this review might seem dramatic but it is no exaggeration.
I had a fitbit charge 3 before I won this giveaway. So I am going to repost this review on the charge 3 as well as here. As it is a review on both and I will compare them against each other. I will also post this review for the Fitbit app as both fitness trackers are used in conjunction with the app. I will score them all separately on what they offer.
I was never one to over worry about my appearance so I paid little attention to my weight and in fact have been slightly overweight most of my life. My change started a week or two before I decided to buy a Fitbit. My wife who is one to care about her appearance had recently successfully implemented her own diet and exercise plan using a Fitbit Charge 3 and the Fitbit app to monitor her calorie intake and her daily exercise.
She had recently put on a bit of weight and this had affected her confidence so she decided to change. As I have Lupus an autoimmune disease. I am classed as clinically vulnerable to Covid so we were shielding for 19 weeks. I was advised to go in a little earlier than the rest of the UK nation being locked down. Towards the end of lockdown we started to go for walks on our daily exercise. This was the beginning of the change.
One day I caught site of my reflection in the microwave of all places. It was a side profile of my stomach and my waist and I realised I had let my weight gain go too far.
So I decided to use our daily walks to try and push myself first by slowly increasing the distance walked then to trying to improve the pace and choosing different routes which would push me a bit more. For instance with steep inclines.
I noticed some benefits almost straight away. Being quite goal driven. I set myself a goal of weight loss of 1lb a week. I started using the Fitbit app to monitor my calorie intake alongside my daily exercise.
It has worked wonders. I was 15st 8lb (clinically obese) when I started. I am now 13st 10lb(still overweight) and counting. I walk at least 2 miles, 5 out of 7 days. Most weeks I walk 6 days and some weeks I walk every day.
My wife and I have also allowed ourselves cheat days. This is so we don't feel deprived so that if we really fancy a treat we can say we will have that on Friday or Saturday and it works. Although we have cheat days we always monitor our calorie intake. This is so we can see over a week or month we still have a healthy deficit.
Having the fitness tracker alongside the app has inspired my wife and I to make additional changes. We have implemented new habits due to the tips popping up on the app now and again. I used to drink tea all day. I have changed this to no added sugar dilute juice and now drink my daily recommended amount of water every day.
Another tip that popped up is to eat a high protein breakfast early in the day this gets your metabolism going early and stages of cravings for carbs and sweet things. Of the options recommended my wife and started making overnight fruit and oat jars. This has also worked. I eat much more salad and a lot less carbs and sugar.
The next habit I am going to try and implement is to not eat at least 2 hours before going to bed.
Overall these are great buys. I love the step counter/goal, distance counter/goal, the exercise tracker, the water intake monitor and the calorie intake/outgoing monitor.
It's not often that you can say a purchase actually has a positive effect on your lifestyle.
One gripe about all the products is you have to pay extra for premium content once you have forked out for the trackers.
The scores I have given are: Inspire HR - 7
Fitbit app - 9
Charge 3 - 9
After raving about them you might wonder why not 10's all round. I knocked 1 off the charge 3 and the app for the fact that there is additional content that doesn't come with the purchase of the tech.
The additional knock of a further 2 points is because the HR doesn't offer an altimeter and it doesn't have the advertised battery life of 5 days. It lasts just under that amount of time.
So either one of these would be a good investment for a fitness tracker on a budget. Personally I would fork out the extra £30 for the Charge 3. The altimeter and the extra battery is worth the little bit extra.
The heading of this review might seem dramatic but it is no exaggeration.
I had a fitbit charge 3 before I won this giveaway. So I am going to repost this review on the charge 3 as well as here. As it is a review on both and I will compare them against each other. I will also post this review for the Fitbit app as both fitness trackers are used in conjunction with the app. I will score them all separately on what they offer.
I was never one to over worry about my appearance so I paid little attention to my weight and in fact have been slightly overweight most of my life. My change started a week or two before I decided to buy a Fitbit. My wife who is one to care about her appearance had recently successfully implemented her own diet and exercise plan using a Fitbit Charge 3 and the Fitbit app to monitor her calorie intake and her daily exercise.
She had recently put on a bit of weight and this had affected her confidence so she decided to change. As I have Lupus an autoimmune disease. I am classed as clinically vulnerable to Covid so we were shielding for 19 weeks. I was advised to go in a little earlier than the rest of the UK nation being locked down. Towards the end of lockdown we started to go for walks on our daily exercise. This was the beginning of the change.
One day I caught site of my reflection in the microwave of all places. It was a side profile of my stomach and my waist and I realised I had let my weight gain go too far.
So I decided to use our daily walks to try and push myself first by slowly increasing the distance walked then to trying to improve the pace and choosing different routes which would push me a bit more. For instance with steep inclines.
I noticed some benefits almost straight away. Being quite goal driven. I set myself a goal of weight loss of 1lb a week. I started using the Fitbit app to monitor my calorie intake alongside my daily exercise.
It has worked wonders. I was 15st 8lb (clinically obese) when I started. I am now 13st 10lb(still overweight) and counting. I walk at least 2 miles, 5 out of 7 days. Most weeks I walk 6 days and some weeks I walk every day.
My wife and I have also allowed ourselves cheat days. This is so we don't feel deprived so that if we really fancy a treat we can say we will have that on Friday or Saturday and it works. Although we have cheat days we always monitor our calorie intake. This is so we can see over a week or month we still have a healthy deficit.
Having the fitness tracker alongside the app has inspired my wife and I to make additional changes. We have implemented new habits due to the tips popping up on the app now and again. I used to drink tea all day. I have changed this to no added sugar dilute juice and now drink my daily recommended amount of water every day.
Another tip that popped up is to eat a high protein breakfast early in the day this gets your metabolism going early and stages of cravings for carbs and sweet things. Of the options recommended my wife and started making overnight fruit and oat jars. This has also worked. I eat much more salad and a lot less carbs and sugar.
The next habit I am going to try and implement is to not eat at least 2 hours before going to bed.
Overall these are great buys. I love the step counter/goal, distance counter/goal, the exercise tracker, the water intake monitor and the calorie intake/outgoing monitor.
It's not often that you can say a purchase actually has a positive effect on your lifestyle.
One gripe about all the products is you have to pay extra for premium content once you have forked out for the trackers.
The scores I have given are: Inspire HR - 7
Fitbit app - 9
Charge 3 - 9
After raving about them you might wonder why not 10's all round. I knocked 1 off the charge 3 and the app for the fact that there is additional content that doesn't come with the purchase of the tech.
The additional knock of a further 2 points is because the HR doesn't offer an altimeter and it doesn't have the advertised battery life of 5 days. It lasts just under that amount of time.
So either one of these would be a good investment for a fitness tracker on a budget. Personally I would fork out the extra £30 for the Charge 3. The altimeter and the extra battery is worth the little bit extra.
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Acanthea Grimscythe (300 KP) rated Baby Teeth in Books
Jan 31, 2019
For all the hype that Zoje Stage’s debut novel, Baby Teeth has garnered, I expected this to be a delightful, bone-chilling read. After all, the idea of homicidal children is, on its own, creepy. Unfortunately, it fell disgustingly flat, repetitive and, for the most part, bored me. This is not a novel of horror; it is barely even a thriller. If anything, it’s the story of how a selfish mother, oblivious father, and attention-seeking child live their day-to-day lives.
One of the things that drew me in initially with this book is the fact that the mother, Suzette, suffers from Crohn’s disease. Stage does an amazing job at describing life for someone who suffers from IBD – all the way down to the medications (which I knew by their descriptions exactly what they were from experience). This is great, especially since more attention needs to be drawn to Crohn’s and colitis. However, Suzette’s personality, innermost thoughts, and general disdain give a poor, almost stereotypical visual of the character. Stage makes it seem like Suzette simply doesn’t want to do things, rather than can’t which, as a sufferer of ulcerative colitis, really irks me. In fact, Suzette is utterly unlikable.
Hanna, on the other hand, is a child that acts out horridly in order to garner her father’s attention. Sure, it’s pretty messed up–the things she does to her mother–but overall, she seems more like an undisciplined brat with a hint of something worse wrong with her. And the father? God forbid he man up and play his role as he should; rather, he coddles and feeds into Hanna’s bad behavior. Seriously, there’s nothing to like about the characters here.
Moving on to the plot, Baby Teeth is an absolute snoozefest. Girl attacks mom, mom gets upset, dad doesn’t listen, rinse and repeat for three hundred or so pages. Seriously, the only good thing it has is that things escalate, but even that is extremely slow.
Overall, I’m utterly disappointed in this book. It’s extremely tame (though there is a brief, unnecessary sex scene). I’d like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a copy of this book for the purpose of an unbiased review.
One of the things that drew me in initially with this book is the fact that the mother, Suzette, suffers from Crohn’s disease. Stage does an amazing job at describing life for someone who suffers from IBD – all the way down to the medications (which I knew by their descriptions exactly what they were from experience). This is great, especially since more attention needs to be drawn to Crohn’s and colitis. However, Suzette’s personality, innermost thoughts, and general disdain give a poor, almost stereotypical visual of the character. Stage makes it seem like Suzette simply doesn’t want to do things, rather than can’t which, as a sufferer of ulcerative colitis, really irks me. In fact, Suzette is utterly unlikable.
Hanna, on the other hand, is a child that acts out horridly in order to garner her father’s attention. Sure, it’s pretty messed up–the things she does to her mother–but overall, she seems more like an undisciplined brat with a hint of something worse wrong with her. And the father? God forbid he man up and play his role as he should; rather, he coddles and feeds into Hanna’s bad behavior. Seriously, there’s nothing to like about the characters here.
Moving on to the plot, Baby Teeth is an absolute snoozefest. Girl attacks mom, mom gets upset, dad doesn’t listen, rinse and repeat for three hundred or so pages. Seriously, the only good thing it has is that things escalate, but even that is extremely slow.
Overall, I’m utterly disappointed in this book. It’s extremely tame (though there is a brief, unnecessary sex scene). I’d like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a copy of this book for the purpose of an unbiased review.
Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Libertalia in Tabletop Games
Sep 5, 2019 (Updated Dec 2, 2019)
(Sung to the tune of “Rainbow Connection”) Why are there so many games about pirates? Why do I love them so much? (end music) Well I will tell you. Libertalia is one of the first pirate games I ever collected and played. I was finally able to introduce it to Laura recently and you can see by the ratings graphic that she really enjoyed it too. But why? It’s just another pirate game, right?
Libertalia pits the players against each other to become the wealthiest pirate captain by manipulating crew members and using their strengths to secure the almighty booty. The game takes place over three weeks, and each round of play is equal to one week. There are six playable days where captains will be selecting crew members to contribute their special abilities for gain and treachery to other captains.
DISCLAIMER: I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rule book, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy from the publisher directly or from your FLGS. -T
To setup the game lay out all boards in the center of the table, choose which color pirate you would like to represent and take all corresponding color components, fill the booty spaces on the bottom of the ship board with enough booty tokens for one per player per box, and give each player ten doubloons worth of starting money. The youngest player now shuffles their deck thoroughly and deals themselves nine random cards. They player then reads out the numbers of cards they have drawn so that all players will have a matching hand of cards of the same numbers. Example: the youngest player draws 9 – 12 – 16 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 25 – 29. Each player will remove those exact cards from their decks to form the matching starting hand. You are now ready to play!
All captains will simultaneously choose one card from their hand to play for the “day.” The youngest player collects all played cards and arranges them numerically from lowest to highest (with numbers in the gray box area breaking ties). The Day now begins with any Day time specific abilities triggering on cards that show the matching Day symbol beginning with the lowest numbered card and ending with the highest (we will call it “initiative” for the purposes of this review). It could be taking doubloons, or otherwise affecting other cards. Once complete, the booty tokens for that Day are claimed in reverse initiative order (highest to lowest) and Dusk abilities are triggered. When all captains are satisfied with their booty (or oftentimes NOT satisfied) any Night special abilities are triggered and performed as well as the Cutlass and Spanish General token abilities. Those that have been discarded (slain) are placed under the play mat on the left side (where one can find the graveyard), and all surviving pirates retire to the “Den” where they may still be of service at the end of the week or even end of the game. At the end of the sixth Day/Night any pirates alive in the Den with a Day of Rest anchor icon will trigger their special abilities. The youngest player then draws and relays the next six cards to setup the next round and you are off for week #2. Play continues in this way for six Days over three Weeks.
Components. The game has a fair amount of different components, but they are all quite good. The punchboard components (boards, booty tokens, doubloons) are all a good thickness and quality. They look so good that my 3-year-old son wanted to play with them and add them to his gold doubloon collection. Yes, he has a gold doubloon collection in a treasure box. The cards and play mats are of good quality too. The art on this game is absolutely stellar. It is so realistic and wonderful that you actually get caught up in the piratey theme and wanting to score that sweet booty. (I’m done with the booty jokes I think)
So this was my first pirate board game I ever purchased, and I obviously still have it in my collection, so it’s good right? Absolutely! This is one of the best pirate-themed games I have ever played and I am certainly not alone. As of today Libertalia is ranked #2 in pirate themed games on BGG by rank (I believe Friday is disqualified because that’s not really a pirate game to me). The interplay between the pirates you can choose in your limited hand each round, but captains may choose different combinations of pirates to use each hand and each round that you sometimes forget that they had not yet used their Surgeon, and this is such a great time for them to use it. Bloody sneaky powder monkey!
Libertalia is that rare game that you instantly fall in love with, and when you try to share your love of it with others, you can see their eyes light up over the brilliance of design and deep appreciation of the art and components. If I ever get into seriously blinging out my games, you better believe Libertalia will be one of the first I treat. Purple Phoenix Games gives Libertalia a buccaneer’s loot of 21 / 24.
Libertalia pits the players against each other to become the wealthiest pirate captain by manipulating crew members and using their strengths to secure the almighty booty. The game takes place over three weeks, and each round of play is equal to one week. There are six playable days where captains will be selecting crew members to contribute their special abilities for gain and treachery to other captains.
DISCLAIMER: I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rule book, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy from the publisher directly or from your FLGS. -T
To setup the game lay out all boards in the center of the table, choose which color pirate you would like to represent and take all corresponding color components, fill the booty spaces on the bottom of the ship board with enough booty tokens for one per player per box, and give each player ten doubloons worth of starting money. The youngest player now shuffles their deck thoroughly and deals themselves nine random cards. They player then reads out the numbers of cards they have drawn so that all players will have a matching hand of cards of the same numbers. Example: the youngest player draws 9 – 12 – 16 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 25 – 29. Each player will remove those exact cards from their decks to form the matching starting hand. You are now ready to play!
All captains will simultaneously choose one card from their hand to play for the “day.” The youngest player collects all played cards and arranges them numerically from lowest to highest (with numbers in the gray box area breaking ties). The Day now begins with any Day time specific abilities triggering on cards that show the matching Day symbol beginning with the lowest numbered card and ending with the highest (we will call it “initiative” for the purposes of this review). It could be taking doubloons, or otherwise affecting other cards. Once complete, the booty tokens for that Day are claimed in reverse initiative order (highest to lowest) and Dusk abilities are triggered. When all captains are satisfied with their booty (or oftentimes NOT satisfied) any Night special abilities are triggered and performed as well as the Cutlass and Spanish General token abilities. Those that have been discarded (slain) are placed under the play mat on the left side (where one can find the graveyard), and all surviving pirates retire to the “Den” where they may still be of service at the end of the week or even end of the game. At the end of the sixth Day/Night any pirates alive in the Den with a Day of Rest anchor icon will trigger their special abilities. The youngest player then draws and relays the next six cards to setup the next round and you are off for week #2. Play continues in this way for six Days over three Weeks.
Components. The game has a fair amount of different components, but they are all quite good. The punchboard components (boards, booty tokens, doubloons) are all a good thickness and quality. They look so good that my 3-year-old son wanted to play with them and add them to his gold doubloon collection. Yes, he has a gold doubloon collection in a treasure box. The cards and play mats are of good quality too. The art on this game is absolutely stellar. It is so realistic and wonderful that you actually get caught up in the piratey theme and wanting to score that sweet booty. (I’m done with the booty jokes I think)
So this was my first pirate board game I ever purchased, and I obviously still have it in my collection, so it’s good right? Absolutely! This is one of the best pirate-themed games I have ever played and I am certainly not alone. As of today Libertalia is ranked #2 in pirate themed games on BGG by rank (I believe Friday is disqualified because that’s not really a pirate game to me). The interplay between the pirates you can choose in your limited hand each round, but captains may choose different combinations of pirates to use each hand and each round that you sometimes forget that they had not yet used their Surgeon, and this is such a great time for them to use it. Bloody sneaky powder monkey!
Libertalia is that rare game that you instantly fall in love with, and when you try to share your love of it with others, you can see their eyes light up over the brilliance of design and deep appreciation of the art and components. If I ever get into seriously blinging out my games, you better believe Libertalia will be one of the first I treat. Purple Phoenix Games gives Libertalia a buccaneer’s loot of 21 / 24.
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