Mind body and soul fitness with Mrs PC

I have recently been surrounded by a lot of people on diets, and carrying out New Year’s resolutions to become fitter or healthier, counting their daily steps or calorie intake, and I felt it would be topical to discuss all the options available to help you if you wanted to join in.

There are many apps, some free and some not, that can be downloaded onto your smartphone or tablet to help you to improve your fitness both in body and mind.

For the battle of the bulge my Fitness Pal is very effective.  You basically put your details – age, height and weight into the app, and it will count calories for you.  You have to log what you eat, and you can look up food values on the app, so it can help you to know how many calories are in common foods, or even branded foods and drinks.  There is a database of about 5 million foods.  You can even scan the barcode of foods to assess how many calories are contained in it.  The app can help you set your goals and track your progress and motivate you to keep up your diet. 

As we all know, calorie counting alone is not enough to keep you in shape, and some exercise should be thrown in to the mix as well.  Most smartphones come with apps for tracking fitness.  The latest software update for iPhone included an app for health.  Look for the white app with the red heart.  If you keep your phone in your pocket all day long, it can then be used to track your exercise- count your steps, how many floors you have climbed and how far you have walked or run.  It’s incredibly incentivizing. 

If you want to track other activities, you can use Runkeeper, Nike Fitness, Strava or many others.  They will map your activity, be it walking, hiking, cycling, running etc and show you how far and fast you have travelled, and compare your workouts over time.  You can also see how many calories you have burned. 

Freeletics is an app that was recommended to me to try.   It brings a gym workout to your house.  It’s free, and it gives you short movies to follow like an exercise class.

Some people find that wearing a fitness watch is a good way to track both calories and fitness, as well as hours asleep.  Fitbit is one of the first of these type of trackers and reasonably inexpensive.  It is worn like a watch, and tells the time, your heart rate, how many steps you have taken, miles you have run, how many floors you have climbed, and hours slept.  It works with an app on your phone.  You can also input your food and water intake.

If it is your mind you want to train, there are lots of options.  I have just downloaded Fit Brains, which will help you to work on many different brain areas, and tests your speed as well.   You can set a daily reminder so that you keep up the training, and it will decide which areas you need to focus on.  Again your progress is tracked in the app, and you will notice that you do improve dramatically with practice.  The tests start off quite simple and become more complicated.  It takes about 5 minutes to complete your training.  Scrabble or Sudoku would also do the same job I expect.

In our busy world, that there is often so much rushing about, that we spend very little time resting our brains, which can lead to stress overload, anxiety, depression and insomnia.   Spending 10 minutes daily on a guided relaxation or meditation could be the very thing that you could try to include in your daily life.  I found an app called Headspace, but there are many more.  It is incredibly soothing to be guided into a state of tranquility.

Hope you may be inspired to try one of these suggestions, or to learn more about the technology you already have.  Do contact me if you would like to know more, or if there are any topics you would like me to cover in future articles.

Happy Easter to everyone.

Protecting your smartphone

The chances of smashing your phone's screen if the phone lands on the pavement or rough ground face down is very high.  It is awful if it happens to you.  The glass crazes and you can no longer use your phone.

The cost of a screen repair for an iPhone is around £85.
Buying a case with a front or protecting your screen with toughened glass is a really good idea.
Take a look at this, it isn't very expensive.

Gorilla Glass

It is available from Amazon.

I found it very easy to fit to my phone's screen.  A matter of a few minutes.

The first email

Could you guess when the first ever email was sent and by whom?

It is an interesting story.

You can read all about it here.

Who sent the first email and when?

Beware of Facebook Hacking

Do ensure that you use tight security on your Facebook page so that others can't log in and pretend to be you.  At the very least, add a mobile number so that you get a text if there is a log in from an unknown place or device.  If it was you, you get a code which comes as a text and you can enter to verify that it was actually you.

If you click on this article, you will find other useful information.
Tips to help you protect your Facebook account.

New Year's resolutions

Wishing all my readers a very happy new year and frustration free computing in 2016.

To start the year, I thought it would be good to recap on a few things that I have mentioned in previous articles. 

A new year often starts with taking stock of one’s situation and looking back over the previous year, the highs and lows and salient points.  You can do this with your computer as well.  Now is a good time for you to take a look at what you have on your computer tablet or phone, and decide if it’s still relevant to you in 2016.

On your computer, take a look at the Desktop- the first screen you see.  Is it covered in icons you never use or have no idea about?  (Icons are a shortcut to programmes loaded on your computer.)   If your screen is cluttered, take a moment to discover what the icons do- double click on them to find out, and if you don’t think you will find them useful, drag them into the bin.  This process won’t delete the underlying programme, but makes your screen look tidier, and you will feel more in control of your computer.

Next, take a look at your folders one by one, do this using Windows File Explorer or Finder.  Are your documents and photos a mess or can you find things easily?  Take time to delete anything irrelevant and create subfolders so that everything can be tidied up.  If you have lots of duplicate information, get rid of duplicates.  Many of my clients have lots of copies of their photos in different folders and no idea of what is where.

On your tablet or phone, look at the Apps on the main screen.  Do you use them all?  Are there other more useful Apps on other screens that are hard for you to find?  If so, drag the Apps around so they are where you want them, or delete ones you don’t need any more.  You can also create folders if you have a lot of Apps.

Make sure that you have updated all your programmes and keep your operating system up to date.  Don’t ignore those annoying messages that keep popping up from time to time.  If you don’t understand what the computer is trying to do, ask for help, or Google the problem.  If you don’t take action, some parts may not run as well as you would like.

Run Utility programmes such as Defragmentation and Disk cleanup to delete stray files and temporary Internet files.  This spring-cleans your computer’s hard drive.

Make sure you have backed up your computer, tablet or phone.  I would suggest you do this regularly.  Get to know how to do it, and don’t risk losing vital information or precious photographs because you don’t understand how to do it.

I would suggest that you need 2 external backups for photographs.

Once you have tidied up the inside of your computer, you can give your screen a wipe, and spring-clean your keyboard and mouse.  Use a microfiber cloth and some cleaning solution.  Make sure your keyboard isn’t full of dust and crumbs.  Turn it upside down and tap it.  For cleaning a laptop’s keyboard, turn it off, then turn it upside down and tap it lightly so all the mess falls out.

The start of a new year is a good time to tackle new challenges.  For those of you who want to learn something new, I would be more than happy to hear from you and help you. 

Happy New Year to all my blog readers and students.  Hope 2016 is a good one for you all. 

Wishing you frustration free computing and a desire to learn new things.