Who Watches The Watch?

Technology is amazing. 

My alarm on my phone went off this morning at 6:10am, to have me up and ready when the kids I was caring for arrived at 6:30. Without even taking my arms out from under the covers, I silenced it with a tap on my Watch. 

I wear an Apple Watch, which connects to my phone and tracks my general heath, though I haven’t referred to it much. But I did recently start the sleep tracking feature, and now at 11pm I get a gentle pulse on my wrist to remind me that I should be heading to bed, and in the morning, at 7am, I get a gentle musical call to start my day on, if I’m not already up at crazy-o’clock for work. My Watch can monitor my heartbeat too, and tells me that I dropped to a steady 48 beats per minute around 4:30 this morning. I guess it can track blood oxygen levels too, because it somehow tells me that I dropped to a mere 12 breaths per minute around the same time.

I also know that when I go for a run it triggers the Watch to offer to track the run, and although it takes a few minutes to register that I’m trying to stay fit, and not, say sprinting away from a rampaging rhino, the Watch knows enough that it will post-date the run to roughly the actual start time, not the time I agreed to register the activity. 

I’m very grateful to have this technology available to me, even if I probably only use 10-20% of its features to their fullest. 

There are two features I love the most, though. Tap to pay lets me tap my Watch to pay almost anywhere. It’s just so convenient and secure not having to get out my wallet all the time. 

But the feature I use more that any other on my Watch is Find My Phone. Ever since I got a Watch and discovered this feature, if I have put my phone down anywhere and I can’t see it in a five second glance from exactly where I’m standing, I just tap my wrist and ping my phone, setting off a sonar-like ping sound, telling me exactly where my phone is. The fact that this feature works even when the phone is on silent or sleep mose is amazing. This one, simple feature has literally saved minutes of my life. 

Technology. 

Amazing.

To Watch A Show

 I’m not sure what to write tonight, but I’ve sat down to try to mash out my 150 words as quickly as possible, only because I want to watch the newest episode of the science fiction series Foundation that went live on Apple TV just a few hours ago. 

Is there anyone else out there that fits in the Venn diagram overlap of “Reads Denis’ Blog” and “Watches Foundation”? I never read the books it’s based on, but according to those in the know, apparently neither did the folks that made the series! Fans of the books tell me, while the show uses characters and themes from the novels, it’s like they read a Wikipedia page, got bored after the Principle Characters section and made everything else up. 

And I love it! It’s crazy far future sci-fi, with ships that travel faster than light, empires that span multiple star systems, clones, and math that accurately predicts the future, but only in huge, civilization spanning level, not the actions of individuals. 

The special effects are high budget movie quality, with huge cities, vast wastelands, and elaborate, shiny spaceship interiors. Much of the sets were built and filmed in Limerick!! There are plenty of Irish accents among the secondary cast, and plenty of Irish names in the credits for all sorts of roles. 

The cast is great. I think, among a quality selection, my favourite actor is Lee Pace. I love every time his character appears on screen and I’m excited to watch his plans and plots come together. That, and I WANT HIM TO DIE! I want him to die a slow and horrible death, and suffer for every moment of it. Oh how I’m going to enjoy that episode when it surely happens. 

If you enjoy sci-fi, think about adding Apple TV to your list of streaming services you’re borrowing from a friend. 

Though that might be tough, as there aren’t many of us around. 

Addendum: Well, I watched the latest episode and it was great. Almost no sign of Lee Pace, but with the size of the cast, not every actor gets to be in every episode. Can’t wait to see what happens next week.