Modern vs. modern retro vs. mechanical watches
Going all-modern sucks. Going all-retro sucks too. But what about modern retro?
A Casio watch really shows what this is all about.
A watch I own, the Casio MWD100H, is an example of modern retro. The electronic digital quartz watch with LCD panel is 50-year-old tech (the Seiko O6LC from 1973 more or less laid out the foundation for LCD panel quartz watches), but my Casio has more features, a hybrid steel/resin case, 100m of water resistance, a night light and a 10-year battery. It's very affordable, uses old tech but has modern improvements (the battery life and water resistance are the biggies there), functions properly and can handle life (as in take a knock and still keep working).
Any watch you can buy new for a reasonable price that uses proven and reliable old technology you can actually use is good.
Here's a funny thing that mechanical automatic watches (like what Seiko makes) and all smartwatches share:
Very few of them can hold a charge for over a week.
One week is 168 hours. If you fully charge a smartwatch or fully charge an automatic mechanical watch, neither will make it a full week before needing to be recharged...
...unless you're willing to pay huge money.
A really good power reserve figure for mechanical automatic watches is 80 hours. An example of that is Tissot Powermatic 80. Not all that expensive, but hang on..
A supremely good power reserve for an automatic is 5 days, as in 120 hours. An example of that is the Oris Aquis Date Calibre 400. When I say 5 days, I'm not kidding. Oris prints that right on the dial just to get the point across. Oris yet again comes into the fray offering a 10 day power reserve with the Oris Big Crown ProPilot x Calibre 115. And wow is that thing expensive.
Are there mechanical watches that can hold a charge for longer? Yes. And you can't afford any of them.
Now let's go modern.
In smartwatch territory, the best of the best, the Apple Watch Ultra 2, has a battery life of...
...72 hours - and only in "low power" mode. In regular mode, 36 hours is the best it can do. I'm quoting Apple's specifications directly there, by the way. Feel free to fact check me on that one.
To be fair however, there is the Garmin Fenix Solar smartwatch. It supposedly can hold a charge up to 87 days with solar enabled BUT... that's only when battery saver mode is enabled. If you have everything enabled on that watch, as in all satellites and music, it goes all the way down to 7 hours. And that's quoting Garmin's specs directly for the Fenix 7S Pro Solar Edition.
And then...
...there's the Casio F-91W for under 20 bucks that holds a charge for oh, about 7 years.
And heck, you can even go more retro with the Casio F-84W! I'm pretty sure that one has the same battery life, just with mid-1980s styling to it. And yes, you can buy it new, or at least you still can at the time I write this.
Here is why modern retro is the best watch you can use
Let's say I take the Casio MWD100H off my wrist and put it in a box for a month. After that month is up, I can go get the watch out of the box, put it on my wrist and off I go. I don't have to set anything. I don't even have to press a button. I know that at worst, the time will only be off by 30 seconds. An accuracy of +/- 30 seconds a month is normal for all Casio digital quartz watches.
Same scenario with a smartwatch: Unless it's something like a Garmin Fenix with a really, really good battery saver mode, the watch won't work at all once I take out of of the box after a month has passed and will need charging first before use.
Same scenario with a mechanical automatic watch: Not ticking. I have to shake it back and forth for a minute to give it some charge, set the time, set the date, then off I go.
Incidentally, this is why the best mechanical watches are time-only, such as some Hamilton field watches. Messing around with setting a date on a mechanical watch is annoying when all you want to do is put the watch on, give it some charge, set the time and go.
In the end, the cheap digital quartz, that modern retro watch, is the best thing you could use because of what you DON'T have to do just to use it.
I think the only thing better is a Casio solar atomic digital which sets itself. Cheap versions of that are Waveceptor models, and expensive ones are G-SHOCK solar atomic.
And if you're a fancy pants, see G-SHOCK G-STEEL solar atomic. That will set you back a few hundred, but still, it's solar and sets itself.
I'm liking the MWD100H I have right now, but I might pick up a Waveceptor at some point.
Smartphone navigation is kinda trash
It is a sad and rather embarrassing state of affairs when a GPS device made 15 years ago navigates better than anything available on your phone or infotainment system.
If you use a navigation app on your phone, tablet or infotainment system, be it Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps or whatever it is, you know how moody it gets. It's a very risky gamble every time you launch that app to navigate anywhere while driving. Will the app spin you around in the wrong direction? Will it randomly change your route without telling you? If you instruct the app NOT to take you on tollways, will it ignore that and do it anyway? Will some random box of text appear BLOCKING the map exactly in the spot you needed to see? Will the app even launch properly AT ALL?
These are, unfortunately, regular questions nav app users have that they ask every day.
Two truths when it comes to nav apps:
As a lookup tool, it's good
A nav app is at its best when you need information. Find places, see opening and closing hours for businesses, find links to web sites for further information about businesses, schools or whatever, it's all there.
As a navigation tool, it's garbage
Everybody is okay with a nav app guiding them along until it does something stupid. And there are several levels of stupid when when it comes to nav apps.
Traffic reporting is worthless because it's a crapshoot whether it even works or not that day.
On the days traffic reporting is working, that's where the app may (and probably will) randomly change your route without telling you.
Any time an "update" happens, things are changed around. Buttons are moved, colors are changed (always for the worse), fonts are changed (again, always for the worse), and so on.
For long trips, heh.. yeah, don't do that with a nav app. Bad idea.
Don't you love it when your phone/tablet/infotainment will just up and decide, "Nah, you don't need the GPS antenna right now EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE DRIVING. Hope you memorized which highway number you need to take! Good luck!"
There are also other instances of stupid. Too many to list.
This is the navigation solution that works
The little guy you see in the photo above is a Garmin nuvi 1260. That's not the model I recommend only because most people want something larger but not too large. The one that fits the bill where it's readable during daylight driving (and obviously at night also), has big legible fonts and is stupidly easy to use is the Garmin nuvi 50 IF SET UP PROPERLY.
Proper setup means this:
Power it using the supplied Garmin charger that plugs into the 12V or use a proper USB power-only cable (it's cheap). You can't use a regular PC USB cable because it doesn't have the correct wiring, but you can use that specific cable for power. I own THREE of them just to make sure I have a backup and a backup for my backup.
You need a 32GB microSD memory card. Yes, it very specifically must have that capacity. You can't use 64GB or greater because it won't work. Why? Older device, that's why. The reason you need the memory card is to store your map data since the Garmin doesn't connect to the internet.
After that, maps are updated by doing the following:
First, create a folder called MAP on the memory card. Use a computer for that.
Second, download some map data from a free alternative map provider. If downloading United States data, it has to be a region and not the whole area just because of the way the maps work. Pick a region and use a torrent client to "Download Map for SD Card". If you need a torrent client, use qBittorrent. It's free. The map download will be a ZIP containing a file called gmapsupp.img.
Third, extract the ZIP, take the gmapsupp.img file and copy it to the MAP folder you created on the memory card.
Fourth, put the card in the nuvi 50.
Fifth, power on the nuvi, go to Settings > Map > Info, UNCHECK the old map and CHECK the new map.
The nuvi 50 is now ready to use, BUT HOLD ON THERE BUCKAROO... The only "weird" thing now is adding in favorites by use of GPS coordinates.
Set the nuvi to accept decimal degrees coordinates by going to Where To? > down arrow > Coordinates > Format and set to h ddd.ddddd°.
Use Google Maps to get your coordinates for wherever you want to go. Remember how I said that a nav app is a good lookup tool? This is an example of that.
Find the coordinates for the place you want to save. Then on the nuvi 50, go to Where To? > down arrow > Coordinates. Two gray boxes there with numbers in them, both touchable. Top gray box is latitude. Bottom gray box is longitude. If the coordinates I get are 28.0310035156253, -82.45149903418908. The nuvi 50 only accepts 5 places after the decimal, so I round. N 28.03100 W 082.45150. When done, I touch the Next button, then Save, name it, then touch Done and it's saved to Favorites.
Yes, you can search for stuff using the downloaded map data on the nuvi 50 itself, but it's always better when you get the GPS coordinates from the phone to save a favorite precisely. Coordinates never do that "snap to road" nonsense. For example, if get coordinates where it's EXACTLY at the entrance to a parking lot right at the gate, you will ALWAYS be navigated precisely to that spot when selected as a favorite from the nuvi 50.
Again, use the phone as the lookup tool to find places because it's really good at that - but let the nuvi 50 do the navigating.
If you ever want to delete a favorite on a nuvi 50, the process is this: Where To? > Favorites > touch the Favorite you want to delete > touch the "speech bubble" of the favorite in the middle of the screen > Delete button.
Oh, and bonus: The nuvi 50 will never randomly delete your favorites. Any favorite you save STAYS THERE until you delete it yourself - WHICH IS HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO WORK. Isn't that great? It sure is!
Other questions answered that I know people will ask
I'm getting these out of the way right now.
"WHAT'S THE MONTHLY CHARGE? WHAT DO I NEED TO SIGN UP FOR?"
Nothing and nothing. GPS, as in Global Positioning System, is ALREADY PAID FOR by taxpayer dollars. You do NOT need to pay extra to use it. You do NOT need to subscribe to anything. You do NOT need to sign up for anything.
All you need is a GPS receiver like the Garmin nuvi 50 and map data. THAT'S IT.
"HOW OFTEN CAN I UPDATE THE MAPS?"
There are free alternative map providers who update weekly or monthly for Garmin navigator usage. You can update every week if you want to but don't have to. Updating once or twice a year is fine.
"I NEED TO MAKE A MAP CORRECTION!"
Do that on openstreetmap.org because that's where the map data originates from.
Yes, you do need to sign up an account to do map editing, but it's free, the cost is $0.00, and it's 100% optional. You only do this if you really want to, meaning it's not required.
"WILL THE SPEED LIMIT SHOW UP ON THE MAP?"
Nope. And given the fact those can change in certain areas, that data would be worthless anyway. Learn how to read a speed limit sign.
"WILL I GET TRAFFIC REPORTS?"
Nope. Traffic reporting these days is next to useless anyway. You don't need it.
What you do get...
...is a basic A-to-B navigation system that works. You get directions because that's what matters.
In other words, it's minimalist GPS navigation of the late 2000s and early 2010s era. The only simpler navigation would be a compass and paper map.
Yes, it is still true Garmin makes new GPS navigators for the car today. I run a DriveSmart 66 myself. And Garmin even makes a basic model that's less in price, the Drive 53.
However, the nuvi 50, while old, is very easy to use, very easy to acquire and cheap. Garmin made tens of thousands of these things. They're on Amazon, on eBay, at thrift stores and so on. As long as you can power it, put map data on a memory card and insert that into the 50, the entire setup is less than 35 bucks.
Heck, there are reproduction mounting brackets made new for the 50 because it's such a popular model. That in combination with a Garmin compatible Arkon mount means you can pretty much mount it anywhere in the car.
Getting a nuvi 50 is so cheap than you buy several to have as backups.
A few last things I'll say about the 50:
There is the 50 and the 50LM. The LM means "lifetime maps", meaning yes, you could connect it to a PC, run Garmin Express and maybe get free maps from Garmin directly. And that's a big maybe. You do need the 32GB microSD card. But even if you have it, some 50LM's out there can still get the Garmin-issued maps and others can't.
The only good reason I can see to connect a nuvi 50 to a PC is to see if any non-map-related software updates are available. If there are, great, update it.
I think it's better to use the alternative OSM (OpenStreetMap) map just because it is updated far more frequently, and you can update it every week if you want to. Can't do that with the Garmin maps. You'd be lucky to get one annual update with a Garmin-issued map. Better to use OSM.
If you don't know how to make a fried egg sandwich, you're an idiot
You may not know what a UPF is. I'll tell you.
Supposedly, one in seven adults (14%) are addicted to UPFs, which means ultra processed food. You can probably guess what type of food that is, but I'll tell you anyway. It's the usual suspects. Soda, ice cream and basically all the stuff you're not supposed to eat regularly.
Is this 14% figure an America thing only? No. It's a global thing.
What I would love to know is how many of those UPF addicts actually know how to make a fried egg sandwich, as that is the second most basic thing you could make in the kitchen. I'll tell you what #1 is in a moment.
A fried egg sandwich in its most basic form is this: Toast two pieces of bread. Toss a pat of butter in a pan. Do your pans suck? Get a new set. Turn on a stove burner and put the pan there so the butter melts. Once butter is melted, crack an egg into the pan. Cook until firm. Put the cooked egg on one piece of toast. Take the other piece and put that on top. DONE.
Yeah, you can get more fancy with a fried egg sandwich, but that's the basic version. Anybody who doesn't know how to do that is an idiot because that's seriously basic kitchen skills.
The absolute most basic thing I know of to make in the kitchen where you actually have to cook something is boiled potatoes. Wash potato. Cut potato. Put potato in boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain. Eat.
Any one of those UPF addict fools can do that - and don't tell me they couldn't, because they ALL know how to make macaroni and cheese from a box. If you can boil crap pasta, you can boil a potato.
My guess - and I'm certain I'm right on this one - is that those UPF addicts don't know how to cook a damned thing using real food. Zero kitchen skills. They never learned, nor do they want to. And no, a microwave pizza doesn't count as cooking. In fact, none of that frozen crap you "cook" in a microwave counts.
That article says more research needs to be done into the problem of people eating nothing but garbage, and that UPFs should have more clear labeling.
Oh, great job, genius. Slap a label on there. That'll work.
It won't.
How do I know? It's already been tried and nobody pays attention to them. Ever see those cautionary labels on soda vending machines? You know, the whole "Balance what you eat, drink & do" thing? That's a good example. You've probably seen them. Does anybody care? Nope.
You could go full stop and slap a big ol' label on a chocolate bar wrapper that said outright "THIS IS REALLY BAD FOR YOU, DO NOT EAT IT", and people would still ignore it and eat the chocolate bar anyway.
Labels won't fix anything, but kitchen skills would.
Boil a potato. Make a fried egg sandwich (if you want to go fancy, add ham, cheese and garlic powder for "Italian" tasting bread). Steam some vegetables. Fry up a chicken breast. Make your own salads.
And for any idiot that says, "But.. but what will I eat when I'm on the go and not in the kitchen?" Oh, please. Just stop at a 7-Eleven and grab a packet of plain nuts. That's infinitely better than some fast filth slop burger. Grab a bottle of water there while you're at it. Or just pour yourself a hot coffee (not the premixed crap). You don't need the damned soda.
It's not hard to get off the filth, people. Truly, it isn't.
I stopped driving on the highway
It's not for the reasons you think.
My definition of highway is any road with a posted speed limit of greater than 50 miles per hour. Yes, there are plenty of non-highway roads with posted speed limits greater than that, but to me, I consider driving over 50mph anywhere to be traveling at a highway speed.
I do live in the land of crazy drivers. This is said of many areas, but mine in particular is notably bad. The drivers are actually not the reason I stopped driving on the highway. I'll get to the actual reason in a moment.
A fact of anywhere that has bad drivers is that in order to stay safer, you must do the "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" thing. Some people label this as driving defensively. It's not. What it does means is that you must do as traffic does else you increase the risk of an accident happening. For example, if everybody is speeding along on the highway at 80mph, you must also do that. If you don't, you're the slow guy that everybody is trying to get around, causing people to weave all over the place. You are the problem in a situation like that.
So if it's not the drivers that got me off the highway, what was it?
Debris.
A whole lot of construction just began around my local area, and that means trucks. Dump trucks, gravel trucks, haulers, loaders and so on. These big vehicles get on the highway and spray rocks all over the place.
My little car has taken a real pounding over the years from all the debris that's smacked into it from highway driving. Oh yes, there are scratches, dents and paint chips. I had become used to this, but when the construction started, the debris got even worse.
It was time to get off the highway for a while, so I did. I set my Garmin DriveSmart 66 to avoid highways completely (very easy to do), and I've avoided highways for over a month now.
The photo above is an example of the types of roads I've encountered. These are the type where big trucks can't go, which is what I wanted.
I grew up in the northeast, and a big part of the driving experience there are backroads. Small, narrow roads with twists, turns, roll-offs on either side (no guard rails here, just trees), almost always in need of repair, and you legitimately put yourself in danger if you travel over 35mph on one. Why? Blind corners, and a lot of them.
Backroads scare people, but not me. Obviously, not all roads are like this, but since I stopped traveling on highways for now, I'm encountering more of them.
The single biggest advantage I have by using no-highway routes is time, as in time to react. The likelihood of my car getting hit by debris from a big truck is diminished significantly when using roads with a posted speed limit of 50mph or lower.
Surprising things I've learned about no-highway routes
This stuff is really eye-opening.
More often than not, only 5 minutes is added to the trip
I recently went on a 13 mile (each way) trip that has several different ways to get there but I'll concentrate on just 3. The 3 are highway, major roads and backroads.
The backroads way - and it is all backroads - while certainly the slowest, only adds about 4 minutes each way.
The backroads route feels like a ton of time is being added to the trip when driving it. Nope. An extra 4 minutes each way is not a big deal at all.
For trips over 20 miles each way, that is when a significant amount of time is added on. But generally speaking, if the trip is fewer than 20 miles each way, I'm not seeing more than 5 minutes added on each way at worst.
Not having to deal with highway ramps is nice
Both highway entrance and exit ramps really beat the crap out of a car. I have to put my foot into it when on the entrance ramp, and do a lot of braking when on the exit ramp.
Since I don't deal with those, I now accelerate and decelerate slower. My car doesn't get beat up as much.
It's easier to get places
This is the one that surprised me most of all.
The highway is supposed to be the easiest way to get anywhere.
It isn't.
The complicated crap happens at the end of the exit ramp. When I exit the highway, I'm on that ramp and get shoved in with a whole bunch of other cars all going to the same general area. The traffic that happens there basically negates any advantage the travel speed of the highway had.
I've already had a few instances where I putt-putt by where everybody is stopped at the end of an exit ramp. Several lanes jammed, each with 10 to 25 cars or more. And when the light goes green for them, it's a certainty not all of them will make it. This means whoever is at the back of the pack will have to wait through two red lights.
I don't deal with that because I'm not on that ramp, and that feels good.
Will I keep using no-highway routes?
In the month I've been doing this, yeah it's working out well. I avoid the big trucks, there's less wear and tear on my car, and only a few minutes is added for most trips I make.
For the time being, I'll continue driving this way. At bare minimum, I'm staying off the highway until all the construction on or near it is completed.
Right to repair going in right direction.. somewhat
We're getting there but not quite where we want to be just yet.
What is right to repair? The ability to repair something you bought using readily available parts.
I'll give an example of repairable vs. unrepairable.
Repairable: Garmin DriveSmart 66. I can take out the screws from the back of that device, take it apart and repair whatever I need to. Replace the battery, replace the main board, replace the screen, microphone, whatever. All of the internals are accessible and parts are available.
Unrepairable: Most smartphones and tablets. The battery is sealed and the device is usually designed in a way where it's very difficult to get in there. And even if you could get in there, getting parts is either not easy or outright not possible at all.
Google has bucked this trend by stating they will stock spare parts for seven years for the Pixel 8 phone. That's good. Very good.
Two drawbacks to this. First, the Pixel 8 right now isn't cheap, but that's not too much of a big deal since prices will fall since tech always does that. Second, how repair-friendly is the Pixel 8? Nobody knows that right now since it hasn't been out in the wild enough just yet.
What this says about the state of tech in general
Basically put, this 7-year commitment for parts availability by Google says, "It's okay to coast for a while."
At this stage of the game, there are two obvious things going on. "Faster" isn't a selling point anymore, and consumers just want tech that works and stays working without having to re-buy it over and over again.
Regardless of how speedy a CPU is in a phone, what ultimately slows it down isn't the hardware but rather the network it's on. Yeah, you could have a phone with the fastest processor on the planet, but that doesn't do anything to improve upload and download speeds. That being true, it makes more sense to improve software technologies rather than hardware...
...except when it comes to the battery. I'll get back to that in a moment.
Where software is concerned, this phrase should be in every developer team's office: "NO BLOAT". Get that code to be as small and minimal as possible. Make it tiny. Do the same for network transfers, because since the network itself is the choke point, get those uploads/downloads to be super small.
And the reason I say right to repair is going in right direction somewhat is because I'm a firm believer in the following:
Every single thing considered to be a portable computer should have a user replaceable battery.
The only thing anybody cares about when a phone gets older is the ability to replace the battery. We used to be able to do that, but then that was taken away in favor of non-replaceable sealed batteries. Why? "Thin" styling and the very weak reasoning that it improves resistance to water damage...
...but the actual reason is that when the battery dies, it forces people to buy a new phone since they can't replace it.
A commitment to parts availability is great and that is a step in the right direction. But what really needs to happen is BRING BACK THE ABILITY FOR THE USER TO REPLACE THE BATTERY.
Changing the battery in a phone should be DOABLE and EASY. In the past, all you needed to do was crack off the back cover, old battery out, new battery in, DONE. That's what needs to happen again.
From a design standpoint, designers hate the idea of a user replaceable battery because it adds thickness to a phone handset. To that I say that everybody is already thickening up their phones with things like Otterbox cases and phone grips anyway, so the whole idea of thin design is just stupid to begin with. All that ever did was make the handset more fragile.
To really make things right, so to speak, bring back the user replaceable battery across the board. Yes, you can buy a cheap BLU View 2 prepaid phone which does have a replaceable battery, but that handset is considered to be an outlier. User replaceable batteries should be the standard across all handsets.