Thoughts about FitBit

Over the past four days I've been trying out a new gadget called FitBit Zip. It's a clip-on device that logs your activity levels and how these compare to your non-active periods. When in range of the laptop it's linked to (via a miniscule USB dongle), data is updated in your online account and graphs of your couch potato shame are generated. Tell FitBit what you’ve been eating and it will calculate how likely it is that you'll shed a pound or two.

Its main aim is to get you thinking about whether you're sufficiently active. A minimum goal of 5,000 steps per day is the preset target, with 10,000 a desirable aim. You get badges and a congratulatory email when you achieve them. You can also set yourself easy, moderate or challenging weight loss goals.

All of this is laudable – and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that despite working from home and not having a set exercise routine I was easily achieving my daily targets.

Once I've spent a solid week or more with the Fitbit Zip, I'll be sharing my considered thoughts in my review for iPad and iPhone User.

There are already a few things I've decided could work better though. A more comprehensive menu list that isn't so geared towards ready meals is one. I made a complete guess of the calorie count when I added Marmite on toast to my custom food list.

I'd also like to see a more positive spin on times when FitBit isn't logging steps. I may not be climbing stairs or going for a swim right now, but writing a report for two hours straight with only one tea break means I'm definitely engaging the grey matter, if not stretching my glutes. FitBit shows as grey any time you’re not apparently up and about doing stuff with your pebble-sized companion logging your every step.

Time spent watching X Factor and Grand Designs are certainly couch potato moments, of course, but FitBit also thinks you're idle when it's lying on your bedside table because you've forgotten to clip it on to your clothes. It's so unobtrusive that you have to remember to take it with you. Maybe it should buzz or glow.

You can manually inform the app that you were busy doing something that it hasn't recorded. You can add activities such as swimming, gardening, hiking or DIY, but unless you associate these activities with another fitness tracker such as Endomondo or RunKeeper

, it doesn't appear to credit you with any steps. You get acknowledgement in the form of coloured slices on the activity log for the day, but any time spent asleep is also taken into account (although the screen suggests otherwise). This means a large proportion of any day is likely to be grey.

Having got off to an excellent start with a four-hour-long walk around undiscovered parts of London, clocking up more than 15,000 steps, it was galling to discover the next day that a well-earned healthy sleep meant I didn't look so keen after all.

It's no bad thing to be shown what your average day looks like, but I'd also like a bit more encouragement and positive thinking from FitBit.

Passing the baton

Yesterday, I attended the AGM of Volunteer Centre Lewisham. I'd seen a message asking anyone interested in finding out what's happening with plans to bring back into use the former Victorian bathhouse (and latterly gymnastics centre) in Ladywell. Since Volunteer Centre Lewisham is one of the four parties working towards restoring the Grade II listed Ladywell Playtower and turning it into a community hub, it made sense to combine the meetings.

I've never volunteered in Lewisham, despite living here most of my adult life, and was surprised to learn that the organisation estimates that borough residents contributed a combined number of volunteer hours last year equivalent to £32 million. That's an incredible amount of goodwill and time devoted to caring, training, administration and thoughtfulness on behalf of other people. There are currently 900 volunteering opportunities in the area.

This summer, volunteering rightly became the focus of a lot of news stories and features thanks to those who gave up their summer holidays and their salaries to act as Games Makers and Ambassadors during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The cheerful army of volunteers "made the Games", according to many.

What also became clear is just how much those volunteers relished their weeks of involvement with the Olympics. They got at least as much from the experience as they put in. I certainly did.

As one of those lucky enough to have been chosen as a Team London Ambassador, I felt even more closely associated with the Games than the millions of sports fans glued to their TV sets and attending the events. Ask anyone who's chatted to me over the past three months. I've barely talked about anything else other than the Olympics and how much I've loved being a part of it.

Volunteering for the world's biggest sporting event wasn't exactly a hardship. We were given plenty of training, encouragement and support along the way by others who were themselves volunteers and who had stepped up to the mark to ensure what we brought to the Games was of value. Their invisible role was far more representative of what volunteering is like on a day to day level. Some of the training was delivered better than other parts, just as some of the locations at which the training days were held were more enticing than others. But in every case it was about people passing on knowledge, skills and experience - and the recipients soaking it up.

It's this experience that is intended to be the Olympic legacy. Volunteering is seen as a key indicator of how successful the London 2012 Games will be judged to have been and is something that the Games volunteers have been asked to comment on and actively promote.

Team London Ambassadors been offered the chance to complete Heart Start training, for example, so that in an emergency we could confidently use a defibrillator. Once trained, many of us will be taking that skill into our local communities and training more people in how to use this life-saving equipment.

One of the reasons I went to the Volunteer Centre meeting last night was to find out what's happening locally on the volunteering front.

Coming back to the Olympic legacy plans, there's already been a weekend of local sport intended to entice those inspired by our sporting heroes and heroines to take up a new activity in their area. The nationwide Join In project in August was a great start.

Last weekend, at our local track, I observed girls of all ages being given their first ever javelin lesson, while a assembly of teenage boys and a girl of around 10 were shown how to crouch for a sprint start and run 100 and 200 metres.

It's not just about sport, though. The volunteering spirit is about sharing the skills you have in whatever field you specialise - or simply lending a hand, as per the Brownie motto, to make things happen.

As well as a thank-you from the Mayor's office for being part of the pink and purple London 2012 welcoming committee, we got an email yesterday checking our address details so we can be sent a commemorative baton. That baton, of course, is more than just a keepsake. It's a symbol of what we, as volunteers, can pass on.

Plum Tarte Tatin recipe

With apples and plums hanging off the tree ready to be picked, it's the perfect time of year to make fruit tarts and desserts. I'm not quite ready for a pie or a crumble, though.

A recent episode of The Great British Bakeoff saw contestants grapple with fruit tatin. A classic dessert that the experts on cooking shows often dismiss as fairly simple stuff (I’m looking at you, Greg and John), the spareness of its ingredient list is deceptive.

The caramelisation, the amount of juice your chosen soft fruit produces – and what you decide to do about it – as well as the pastry itself, all pose pitfalls. I fell victim to the first of those pitfalls when I attempted to make my first ever caramel and ended up with gooey buttery sludge.

I consulted the Sweet Tarte blog for directions because baker Rachel had come up with a delicious-looking plum tarte tatin. Exactly what I hoped to make.

Unfortunately, rather than the glorious tarte she conjured up, I created nothing more than an icky mess using the butter and sugar caramel mix she suggested. My skillet pan perhaps wasn't ideal. It's a griddle pan, to be honest. But it was the only heavy-bottomed pan I have that can go in the oven.

Undeterred, I've had another attempt today as my punnet of plums won't stand too much more delay. I'd love to be using homegrown, but my young tree failed to crop.

I chose a different caramelisation method with only sugar, based on the directions on Sara Buenfield's BBC Good Food recipe.

This time, I used a heavy saucepan and transferred the sticky caramel mixture into a shallow baking dish for the cooking part. To try and keep the caramel from setting immediately, I placed the glass dish on top of the gas ring I’d extinguished moments earlier, so at least there was some heat. A swift smear with the flat of a knife meant I was able to spread the caramel across most of the dish before placing the plums cut side down and folding the shop-bought puff pastry over the top. There was very little to show for my 4oz of molten brown sugar though.

While the caramel experiment was taking place, I had the stoned plums in a glass dish and sprinkled a generous amount of caster sugar over the top. This helped soften them up, as I didn’t want to precook them or to peel off their skins. There wasn’t really much juice to worry about at this stage. However, I should have paid attention to Rachel’s comments about the excess juice as I also ended up with some in the bottom of the dish. Thankfully, when turned out my tarte, there was only a little seepage and the pastry was largely fine.

Next time I’ll get rid of any juice I can before placing the fruit in the dish to cook. I'll also invest in an ovenproof pan so I don’t have to dance about the kitchen transferring dangerously hot substances. I might even end up with some caramel on top of my fruit.

Plum Tarte Tatin

4oz caster sugar
teaspoon of butter [optional]
400g of very ripe plums, stoned and halved
extra caster sugar to sprinkle over plums
chilled puff pastry


Preheat the oven to 200-220 degrees
Wash, half and stone the plums. Place in a bowl, cut-side up, and sprinkle over around 1oz of caster sugar
Make the caramel by swirling a pan of caster sugar over a medium heat. Stir to prevent sticking. Wait until the sugar is properly liquid, not just slightly runny. It should be golden brown.
Place the plums face down into the caramel mixture, remove from the heat and allow to cool
When you’re ready to cook the tarte, gently place a sheet of chilled puff pastry over the top of the dish, trimming off any overhanging pastry. Press down only the very edges, not on the fruit itself.
Transfer the tarte to the centre of the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes.

When the pastry is all puffed up and has some colour, take it out the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Get a serving dish or large platter. Gently place it face down over the top of the tarte. Ensure you’re wearing an oven glove on the hand that goes under the tarte dish as fruit retains its heat in a big way. Put the other hand on top of the serving platter and quickly invert the tarte so the plums are exposed. You may need to use a flat knife to help release the pastry of the tarte from the dish you cooked it in.

Once the tarte has cooled, serve warm with cream or custard.

Blottr: sophisticated citizen reporting

If ever there was a situation inflamed by social media, the London riots of August 2011 was it. There were YouTube videos of looting and hundreds of erroneous tweets that gained currency as other people took them at face value and retweeted them.

Sitting in my spare room half a mile from the larceny taking place in Lewisham high street and a stone's throw from Peckham, Eltham and other supposed hotspots, I was incredulous at the reporting taking place. We'd got off the train to a certain frosty frisson, but most people were uneasy and curious in equal measure and wanted to see for ourselves what was actually happening. That local news sites, Facebook posts and Twitter all seemed to suggest apocalyptic scenes of smashed up cars, forced entry and burning buses was no comfort. Nor did it tally with what we could see or hear for ourselves. Eventually, we stood out in the empty streets and called home to reassure family that the situation was very far from what TV reports suggested.

A year later, Twitter reactions and breaking stories on news sites based on digital hearsay continue to mislead. But a healthy dose of skepticism has crept in too. You can make the outrageous and the implausible ‘trend’, but it's just as likely the voice of dissent or counter-information will have its time in the spotlight too.

Sites such as the BBC's and The Guardian's allow commenters to agree with or not, report or simply refute what others say, making the blog commentaries more democratic and balanced too.

What Twitter and other instant reporting tools can't always do is substantiate what they claim within the 140 characters the short form posts allow. So you could be breaking an important story, but if you can't say all of what you need to to back it up, its impact may be lost and your message buried beneath an avalanche of trending posts about @1D's multi-million-pound Pepsi deal.

Adding photos, links to maps, audio quotes and a couple of explanatory lines can make all the difference – but only if you have somewhere to post it. UK citizen news site Blottr was set up for this very reason. Celebrating its second birthday and with the obligatory Android and iOS apps with which to report on the move, it allows 'ordinary' people to report extraordinary events.

At yesterday's event to mark its two years were posters showing that Blottr was the first site to break the news of Gaddafi's death, along with a photo. News agencies and the BBC trailed the word on the street – and the web. If such citizen sites can get the details right and not be derailed by partial reporting – there's every reason to expect citizen sites to gain currency and become established information outlets in their own right.

Just today, there were multiple reports about the identity of the British family shot dead in their car in France. Multiple sources – guests at the campsite, word from policemen at the scene and other people in the know – all gave the same name.

Traditional news sites were conflicted about how to proceed, with the BBC and Guardian electing to state that such reports existed but that they would wait for the official statement from the French authorities before naming the slain family.

Not everything that's instant about the internet is for the good, but the democratisation of information and our ability to have a stake in what's reported surely is.

Time to loosen up those hips

I've got to do something about my hips. They're causing me more and more pain and nothing I've done to date has managed to lessen it.

Hip openers are meant to help but they sound painful. My hips already crunch and grind and lock up. Opening them up to more abuse doesn't really sound desirable. What's being opened and extended is the range of motion your hips can cope with. It's one of the big benefits of yoga – and it’s something I’m sorely in need of.

It's National Yoga Month in the US. In honour of this, my friend and yoga fanatic Ann Chihak Poff, wrote on her GoFitGirl blog about how to get started with this stretching and strengthening discipline. She kindly credited me with prompting her to consider what a beginner needs to know about starting yoga practice. It's something I've toyed with, but I've never got beyond trying breathing exercises and the initial stretches recommended on yoga videos and online.

The Wii Fit convinced me that there's something in yoga for me (but I eventually tired of the Wii Fit itself), but I didn't really know where to begin. I was put off by terms such as ‘hot yoga’, ashtanga, bikram and hip openers and scared of what a random gym class might entail. The local yoga practitioners I'd approached for advice all seemed less than keen to take complete novices. But it's about time I took the plunge.

September's going to be my 'get back into getting fit' month and Ann's helpful blog post was a timely reminder of how many resources are out there when starting a new form of exercise.

Lengthy walks and back stabilisation exercises have done little to ease the ongoing hip pain I've been having, so I need a more aggressive approach to fixing my spine and joint issues. Armed with some passes to the local gym, I'm off to reacquaint myself with the cross-trainer, the fixed bike and, yes, some yoga classes to ensure I’m stretching properly and lengthening my contracting muscles. Yikes! But anything's better than sitting here in pain worrying about how much worse the pain might get and letting those joints get stiffer still.