RicMac

It’s been nearly a month since my last Writer’s Log update, when I reached the 20,000 words mark in my book. Today’s update is focused less on word count and more on the work I’ve been doing interviewing people, editing, and iterating on the book’s structure.

For those people who don’t know, I’m writing a book about consumer health technology. My book is about how the Internet is revolutionizing the health and wellness industry, by empowering the consumer to take control of their day to day health.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been conducting my second big round of interviews for the book. I’ve spoken to some amazing people: a Cardiologist who founded a health startup, a doctor in New York City who’s also doing incredible work in health tech, a Quantified Self early adopter, the founder of my favorite food logging app, the founder of a popular smart watch company. I’ve still got a few interviews to go, but I now have most of the information I need to write this book.

Also over the past month I’ve settled on the final structure of the book. By that I mean the chapter outline, along with the overall style. I’ve been iterating on the book’s structure since I began the project, back in October last year. Sometimes I’ve tweaked things because of what I learned in interviews or research – for example I’ve de-emphasized genomics somewhat since I first started (although it’s still an important part of the book). Other times the iterations have been about finding the right way to tell the story. I haven’t yet made public what the book’s structure will be, but I will let you know in a future Writer’s Log.

The other, less sexy, work I’ve been doing over the past month is editing the first four chapters and starting to write the fifth chapter.

So that’s where I’m at with this project. Let me know if you have any questions, or you’d like me to do these updates, or post to Facebook/Twitter/Google+, more often. I do keep track of news, especially about consumer health tech, but I’m much more inclined these days to save it to Evernote than to “curate” it on social media. Let me know though if you have any feedback on the public face of my book progress.

I just went past the 20,000 words mark in my book. It took me about 3 weeks to write the first 10,000 words, but just over half that (8 working days) for the second 10,000. And yes, I am tracking my daily book progress too, amongst all the other self-tracking I’m doing!

I’ve now written 4 chapters, give or take some gaps that need to be filled. In terms of pages, I’ve written 43 pages so far in Apple’s ‘Pages’ software, the equivalent of Microsoft Word. Apparently a good working average of words in an actual published book is 350-400 per page, which would make my work-in-progress 50-55 pages so far.

Soon I’ll need to do style editing and nitpicky re-writing on the chapters I’ve done so far. That will considerably slow down the daily word count rate. So I’m not overly concerned with how many words I’m averaging a day. It’s more important that I stick to my monthly goals, which for this month is to have 4 chapters completed by end of April. I’m well on track for that.

I’m also really pleased that I’ve got a good writing flow going. Flow has always been important to me as a writer. I need to have set times to write and I work better with distractions turned off (I’m looking at you, social media!). Also, with each new chapter, I’m getting better at writing book length material. That’s been a steady transition for me this year, after a decade of blogging.

As always, stay tuned for further Writer’s Log updates. Onwards!

Today I reached the 10,000 words mark in my book. 10,335 words, to be exact. I’ve finished the first draft of one chapter and am about 75-80% of the way through a second.

I actually started the latter chapter first, but I’m waiting on some extra information from the company I’m writing about. So I moved onto the second chapter, just last week, and today I finished the first draft of that. Content-wise, I have everything in there I wanted to say. It just needs to be edited for style, as I’ve been focused on telling the story and getting the initial words down.

I began the writing process on 7 March, so it’s taken me 3 weeks to get to this point. Therefore it’s looking like 2 chapters a month is a good goal to aim for. That means about another 5 months writing, since I’m aiming for 12 chapters.

My book is about consumer health technology and so far I’ve learned a great deal about that topic while writing it. My goal, of course, is to convey those learnings to as many other people as possible, through the book. But as always, stay tuned. I’ve got a lot more exploring to do yet!

At the start of this year I noted the return of the watch to technology innovation. The renewed interest in watches is largely thanks to Pebble, a crowdfunded smart watch that got a lot of attention at CES this year. It’s looking increasingly likely that watches are going to be a big driver in the rapidly growing wearable computing devices market.

According to research firm ABIresearch, there will be 485 million wearable computing devices shipped annually by 2018. The report doesn’t state the number of shipped devices currently, but it claims that an ”estimated 61% of the wearable technologies market is attributed to sport/activity trackers in 2013.” When you consider that Nike+, Fitbit and Jawbone are the current leaders in the wearable computing market, that makes sense.

The report goes on to state that “smartphone compatible watches are beginning to emerge, and rumors have materialized regarding Apple releasing a smart watch some time this year. Furthermore, we will see the arrival of the much anticipated, smart glasses later this year.”

I’m less bullish on “smart glasses,” at least for the consumer health market. Even though Google Glass is undoubtedly a clever concept and may eventually become a hot consumer item, most people won’t wear such glasses all the time. They’ll wear them like they wear sunglasses, an hour or so a day. Whereas a smart watch is something that people will want to wear all day, every day. As long as it’s a natural fit, useful and stylish – the three qualities I’m looking for in a health tracking device.

Earlier this week I read a Bloomberg report stating that, in addition to Apple, Samsung is also developing a smart watch. That’s not surprising, since Samsung will aggressively copy everything that Apple does in the Internet devices market. It’s been a winning strategy for Samsung and is hurting Apple – just look at the latter’s stock price currently.

More importantly, the smart watch, especially if mass produced by Apple, Samsung and other big consumer computing companies, will be a huge challenge to the current crop of health tracking device makers – Nike, Fitbit, Jawbone, BodyMedia, Withings and others. Like all of those current wearable devices, the smart watch will be worn all day by most users. Plus the smart watch won’t just tell time and have Web functionality, it will be a pedometer and so will directly compete with Fitbit, Nike+ et al. As an Apple source told Bloomberg:

“It [an Apple smart watch] would also house a pedometer for counting steps and sensors for monitoring health-related data, such as heart rates, this person said.”

Of course, there’s nothing stopping Fitbit, Nike and others from creating a smart watch too. Nike already has a smart watch, although it’s focused on the sports market – runners in particular. They’d need to come up with a more consumer-friendly watch, if they want to compete with Apple and Samsung (which they may not even want to do; they are a sports company after all).

Regardless of how all this shakes out, I’m looking forward to the Pebble, Apple and Samsung smart watches coming onto the market. I’ll certainly be buying one, although I’ll keep my Fitbit too!

Industry analysts at Altimeter, Chris Silva and Jeremiah Owyang, did a welcome overview post of the technology that mattered at SXSW this year. Welcome because nearly every other SXSW post I saw was about the parties and corporate concerts…although I have been extremely guilty of that too at past SXSWs! I didn’t miss going to SXSW this year, I was content to sit at home with my new cat and write my book. But I did wonder what – if any – technology made an impact at SXSW this year. So thanks Chris and Jeremiah for writing this post (hat-tip Marshall Kirkpatrick, whose Twitter a/c and blog post brought it to my attention).

Silva and Owyang identified Quantified Self – one of the main topics of my book – as a technology to “watch” this coming year. Of course I heartily agree with that. Here’s what they wrote about QS at SXSW 13:

“Last year Nike debuted FuelBand at SxSW, this year the technology was everywhere, including a show that quantified activity tracking and encouragement, including a hotly discussed show by Google Shoe that gave recommendations on your fitness activity.”

I did see coverage of the Google Shoe, which gives audio encouragement based on sensors (“Run faster!” etc). So yes, a talking shoe. I felt it was too gimmicky and, indeed, Google itself admitted that the shoe was “an experiment, as part of a broader marketing program, to spark conversations with brand marketers and agencies.” Did I mention I was glad not to be at SXSW this year?

Altimeter said this about where the QS market – specifically wearable fitness products like Nike FuelBand, Fitbit and Jawbone UP – is at this point in time:

“We think this market is real and growing, but, much like we see in the enterprise space, a lot of data is getting created and the use cases for that data are lagging behind; further, this is a series of walled gardens that don’t talk with one another yet, and require user-lock in. Right now the data is dirty and not being aggregated into a way that can be digested.”

Those are great points. In my own tests of these products for my book, I’ve found a lot of data and UI issues. That hasn’t surprised me, as the industry is still in its early stage. The product (and therefore platform) companies in this sector, such as Nike and Fitbit, are still working out the “use cases” for the data its devices collect. There are also many new startups emerging that want to use that data. They too are figuring it out as they go – and remember they’re dependent on good data from the likes of Nike and Fitbit.

Which brings me to the the Walled Garden issue, mentioned by Altimeter. In other words, the data that users create cannot easily be used on other platforms. I agree it’s a real concern in the QI space, just as it is in every other Web market – Facebook and Twitter of course are the two biggest examples of products where users don’t have a great deal of control over their own data. Using Fitbit as an example, I can export some of my data as a premium user – i.e. I had to pay for that ‘privilege’. But I can’t export all of my data and I certainly can’t use it fully in other Web products. That’s from the user perspective. Imagine how frustrating it is to third party products that want to use data from Nike, Fitbit and other platforms.

But it’s early days and because there is healthy competition among the platforms currently, I’m optimistic the ecosystem will continue to develop well and open up more over time. I’m also grateful that Google or Apple aren’t major players in the QS market (yet! I expect they will be at some point), because that allows the smaller companies like Fitbit and Jawbone to try and establish themselves – which they are doing.

Altimeter rates QS as a “watch”. The only other technology which got that rating from them was “Augmented and Virtual Reality (Google Glass and Occulus Rift)”. I agree those two technologies are both at about the same stage and that “watch” is a fair rating for them. I’m writing a book about QS and similar consumer health technologies precisely because it is still early stage, which means there is a lot of potential and therefore interesting stories to tell as it develops.

This week I decided to make a change in my diet. In order to measure how my body reacts to the new diet, I’m logging the food I eat – at least for the next week in the adjustment period. There are no shortage of apps and websites that enable you to log your food. Search your local smartphone app store for “food logging,” or a variation of that term, and you’ll find a number of apps hungry for your attention.

The trouble with food logging is that it’s a very manual process. Whatever app or website you use to enter the details, there are several steps involved. You have to search for each piece of food you’ve just eaten, figure out the portion you ate (which can require a combination of Google search, a unit conversion app and a calculator), then enter the data into your chosen food logging app or website. Even for a simple meal, there are typically at least four or five separate items to log. Repeat that process five or six times a day, including snacks during the day, and you have your daily food logging process. It’s not only a largely manual process, it can be a chore at meal times – which are supposed to be some of the most relaxing times of the day.

Despite the effort, if you’re changing your diet then logging your food for a period of time can provide meaningful data to help you in your goal.

Going Low-Carb

My own goal is to reduce the amount of insulin I inject every day (I’m a type 1 diabetic), plus lose a few kilograms off my waistline. As a diabetic, I’m always on the lookout for ways to improve control of my blood glucose levels (BGL). Oddly, I’ve never tried a low-carb diet before. Perhaps because it’s a controversial one for diabetics – the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has historically not endorsed the diet, although at the end of last year it appeared to change its position. Regardless of ADA’s support, it’s a fact that if you consume less carbohydrates in a day, your body needs less insulin to manage your BGL. Ergo, reduce carb intake to reduce insulin requirement.

The low-carb diet has proven very successful for at least one long-term type one diabetic, author and physician Dr Richard Bernstein. His strongly held view is that less carbohydrates per day leads to less insulin dependence, which leads to a longer, healthier life. He’s proven it in his own life – he’s in his late 70s now, after getting type 1 at age 12. I’m currently reading his book, ‘Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars’, to find out more.

Unlike my 3-week gung ho experiment with the vegan diet in 2011, for the low-carb diet I’m making a gradual change only. I’m not doing a full low-carb diet, like the famous Atkins diet, at this point.

I’m starting out by removing the following high-carb foods from my diet: bread, pasta, potatoes, cereals. For now, I’ll keep fruits – which are also high-carb – in my diet. That’s because I’ll need a way to offset the low BGL readings I will encounter during the adjustment period, as I consume less carbohydrates. I’m particularly focusing on breakfast, since I ultimately want to remove the need for rapid-acting insulin. I take two types of insulin every morning, before breakfast: long-acting and rapid-acting. The latter is to counteract high blood sugars after breakfast, which had been a problem for me last year.

Food Logging Apps

Which brings me back to food logging apps. Yesterday morning I had scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for breakfast, instead of my usual two pieces of wholegrain toast and peanut butter. I tried logging the new brekkie into Fitbit’s Food Log, but the carb count seemed too high. It stated 9.1 carbs for scrambled eggs, which I’m fairly sure is wrong. So I opened up another app that I joined a while ago, FatSecret. I have that app hooked into TicTrac, a dashboard I’m testing out for daily health tracking. FatSecret’s iPhone app, confusingly just called Calorie Counter, appeared to have the correct carb count for my scrambled egg breakfast (2.68 carbs). So I ended up logging all of my food intake from yesterday into FatSecret.

As you can see, food logging can be an imprecise thing – I don’t know for sure whether the carb count of my scrambled eggs was closer to Fitbit’s count, or FatSecret’s. But that doesn’t matter a great deal. The point of my food logging is to track the foods I eat so that I can cross-check it with my blood sugar levels. I don’t need pinpoint accuracy to do that, just a best guess. Which is indeed what my blood sugar level readings are, as blood glucose meters are notoriously imperfect (but a heck of a lot better than the urine tests Dr Bernstein was forced to endure as a child and young man – viva la technology!).

For the record, I’ve already seen a noticeable improvement in my BGL after breakfast. So much so that – for testing purposes – I skipped the rapid-acting insulin this morning and had normal BGL after breakfast. Although I noticed an unexpectedly higher BGL later in the morning. So I’ll need to continue testing, logging and monitoring.

It’s been over a month since my last ‘Writer’s Log’ entry. Partly that’s because I’ve been experimenting with other methods to keep my social media profile active. Also I began a private book journal this year. Perhaps that pushed the public one to the background. However, a friend reminded me this week that it’s been a while since I’ve done a Writer’s Log. So here goes…

The topic of today’s musing is the loneliness of being a book author. Have you noticed my new Facebook Timeline cover photo? I added it just after the new year began. I took that photo in December, on a beautiful summer evening here in Wellington, New Zealand. The photo was snapped on the Petone Foreshore and shows a lone paddler making his way across the calm blue waters of the harbour. In the background are the hills of Wellington city (on the right, as you look at the picture) and Matiu/Somes Island (a wildlife sanctuary, on the left).

I like that photo for several reasons. First, it reminds me that it was a gorgeous, balmy summer evening. Second, I enjoy the harmony of the different shades of blues in the photo. Third, the lone paddler is relaxed, but determined, and he’s making steady progress in the rays of the golden sun. All of that resonates with me.

Admittedly, you can hardly see the man in that photo – some might say it’s a stick figure on the horizon. Even so, I like to think the photo shows a man who is geniunely enjoying himself. He’s paddling at his own pace, stroking through the still blue sea in a straight line, to a destination of his choosing. It takes effort and he’s not quite sure if he’ll make it to the shore before his arms give out, but he’s not turning back. The sun keeps him warm and he’s absorbed with the paddling.

Writing a book is a bit like that, or at least that’s how I picture it. Over the past month I’ve been making solid progress: iterating on my outline, setting up interviews, researching topics, reading my favorite authors for inspiration and guidance, making copious notes. It’s been a relaxing time too, as I wanted to enjoy the summer and re-charge my batteries.

Writing a book is a lonely business, so the paddler reminds me of that too. It’s something I wanted though, after a decade of managing a virtual company of up to 20 people. I like working for myself – and by myself – again. After all, I started out as a lone blogger, back in 2003. So in a way it feels like coming full circle, only with a different challenge now: writing a book, instead of a blog.

This particular lone paddler will be making his way across the Pacific Ocean in less than two weeks, to attend a conference and interview various people in Silicon Valley and beyond for his book. Then it’s back to the blue sea of Petone again, to write.

I’m currently reading a biography of Ernest Hemingway, one of my literary heroes. What I like about this biography is that it takes a year-by-year approach to telling his life story, starting from 1930 when he was about 30. Each chapter is devoted to a year (or a 6-12 month section of his life). So every chapter not only tells me about Hemingway’s personal and literary life at that time, but also what was happening in America and the world. As one example, world wars loomed large over Hemingway’s life and that’s reflected in his writing output.

Over the weekend I watched a documentary about Chuck Close, the American painter. He paints very large portraits, which are constructed incrementally, tiny section by tiny section. I hadn’t known that Close is partially paralyzed, so when he’s painting it’s a very methodical process. The documentary showed him in his studio, sitting in his wheelchair. He’d take a brush, mix a colour onto it (while humming along to a Paul Simon tune playing in the background), consider the canvas, lean forward to colour in a small piece of his subject’s face, sit back and look at it, take another brush and put a different colour on it, settle back and look at the canvas again, then look at a photo of his subject, then back at the canvas, paint another spot… [repeat many, many times].

I decided over the weekend to read individual volumes of poetry by W.B. Yeats. He’s one of my favourite poets and I’ve read a number of anthologies of his poetry, yet I’ve not spent much time reading the books he published during his lifetime. Even though I know a lot of his work, I felt like I was missing some context. So I downloaded a bunch of his poetry books (they’re available for free on Amazon) that were published in his “middle period”, approximately 1900-1915. During that time he was writing a more direct and less ornate type of poetry. I started with ‘In the Seven Woods’, a volume originally published in 1903. The themes of the book include the passing of time, getting old, loss of beauty and romance. Because I’m about the same age as Yeats was when he wrote this book, I find myself relating to a lot to those themes. They’re themes I hadn’t necessarily picked up on before, when for example I’d read one of the more famous poems from the book in a career-spanning Yeats anthology. Like this one…

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of all things happy.
I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs
A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.

Title poem: In the seven woods, W.B. Yeats, August, 1902

Recently I listened to a 4-CD anthology by the band Fleetword Mac, called ’25 Years’. I knew their famous songs from the radio and TV over the years – Stevie Nick’s sultry voice, Lindsey Buckingham’s clear, glowing guitar, etc. But I hadn’t explored their back catalog before. This is one of the reasons I love Spotify, it allows me to review the chronology of an artist’s output. However in this case, Spotify doesn’t have many of Fleetword Mac’s early albums. It has plenty of their anthologies, of course, including ’25 Years’.

But it’s the same issue as with Yeats. Listening to ’25 Years’, I felt like I was missing a lot of context. In this anthology it’s particularly bad, as the CD set isn’t even ordered chronologically and the track list leaves out a lot of their early material. An Amazon reviewer summarized this poor state of affairs:

When this box set was released in 1992, it was to commemorate 25 years of what had become one of the biggest selling bands of the seventies. So, why has it gone out of print? For starters, fans of the Buckingham/Nicks hit-making version of Fleetwood Mac will be better served by 2002′s two-disc THE VERY BEST OF. Fans of the earlier versions of the band (and there were many) that included, at various times, Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer and Bob Welch, will be sady disappointed by their limited inclusion.

Of the first three discs, all of the songs but two are from 1977′s breakout FLEETWOOD MAC or later. That leaves only disc four to tell the rest of the Fleetwood Mac story. While it’s difficult to argue with what gets included on this final disc (from their first U.K. single “I believe My Time Ain’t Long” through Peter Green’s classic “Black Magic Woman”), to include only one track (Bob Welch’s “Sentimental Lady”) from a classic album like BARE TREES then turn around and include four tracks from 1990′s mediocre BEHIND THE MASK, only serves to show that the compilers were not really interested in telling the band’s full history.

Another problem with this box set is the sequencing. The four new recordings are scattered throughout disc one. The songs are not presented chronologically–you hear “Over My Head” (1975), followed by “Little Lies” (1987), then “Eyes of the World” (1982)–which provides for a haphazard listening experience.

So: Hemingway, Close, Yeats, Fleetwood Mac. What do all of those artists have in common, at least according to my subjective experience of them over the past couple of weeks?

They all reminded me that things are created step by step, over time. Chronological. And sometimes an anthology, even if it’s ordered chronologically, doesn’t capture the essense of a particular period in time. Maybe that’s because it leaves out the pieces you need to see the whole. Or maybe it’s because you’re missing some context.

That’s why I’m reading Yeats’ poetry volumes, as he published them, and it’s why I want to go and listen to some of Fleetword Mac’s early albums. Best-of anthologies are good for introducing you to a poet or band, but you really need to go back to the original works to fully appreciate them. As the artist intended you to, at the time they were released.

After all, as Chuck Close shows, the artist puts a lot of methodical work into producing each work. Plus, as Hemingway’s biography illustrates, each work is a product of its time, as much as of the artist.