Ring Ring Ring
Sofia Gilcrease
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The Apple Watch, and many smartwatches, lean on activity and "ring completion" goals. Walk a certain amount, stand a certain amount, do a certain bunch of stuff. The Oura Ring has completion goals, but a lot of its daily metrics are holistic: Does it look like you're doing OK today? Does that affect how you plan your day? The idea of Readiness Scores are creeping across the smartwatch landscape, but Apple in particular hasn't adopted them yet.
The Oura Ring is proactive, with a readiness score that suggests ways for you to take on the day ahead. The Apple Watch tends to look back at how my day was. Fitbit's fitness and health metrics have shifted more to the Oura model, and I expect others to as well. Or, at least, to augment the experience with more holistic data. The Oura Ring will flag if my temperature seems elevated recently, or my breathing rate changes, or my nightly blood oxygen seems to have shifted or my resting heart rate has been rising or falling. These could mean I'm getting sick. Or maybe I need rest. Or maybe it's just a false alarm.
Just a few days ago, I got sick with some sort of cold, and a fever. The Oura Ring noted my breathing rate increasing overnight, my temperature being higher. It suggested I switch to rest mode for the day. I took a COVID-19 test, but I didn't need the ring to tell me that. (It was negative.) Still, having an app that's aware that you might be sick can be useful feedback, and I've been noticing which stats change when I'm not feeling well.
In fact, my recent bad cold was a great test of how the Oura 3 worked to track my measurements. I've shared what the app showed shortly before, during, and after my bad cold. You can see some of the changes, especially in respiration rate, relative temperature, and resting heart rate.
Sleep scores, meanwhile, also showed changes. Sleep tracking with the Oura Ring works similarly to other watches and trackers, and over time I have found it correlating pretty well with how rested I felt the next day -- of course, I didn't track this against any more formal sleep measurement system, so it's completely relative.
I waited over half year to review the Oura 3 because, when I first started wearing it last year, nothing much had changed. The ring, which adds extra red and green heart-rate sensing LEDs and an improved skin temperature sensor, promises to have richer data than the previous Oura Ring. But at release the Oura 3 otherwise functionally the same as the Oura 2.
Long-promised blood oxygen measurements have finally arrived, thanks to a recent firmware update. These are taken overnight, and show up as a percentage rating the next morning in your overnight sleep data results: I've gotten numbers ranging from 97% to 99%.
Another readout estimates how "optimal" your blood oxygen levels were over time, and whether any drops in blood oxygen seemed to have occurred, but it doesn't get into specifics. Rings and watches can't be as reliable a source of blood oxygen information as finger-worn pulse oximeters, although Oura believes its ring can come close. Over the last handful of weeks, my readings have largely seemed fine. I'm not sure I trust it, though.
The ring's battery life seems to last around four days, which is great but it's also tricky. I prefer multiday battery life to daily-charge devices like the Apple Watch, but when you're out of a daily charge habit, figuring out when to charge becomes a challenge. The Oura Ring still has no low-battery reminder other than an app notification that can pop up (and get lost) on your phone. I find the ring can go dead for a few days and I won't even notice. I wish there were some sort of small battery indicator light on the ring.
The other thing to know about Oura's Ring is that it needs an extra subscription. Oura's subscription fee is $6 a month, on top of $300 or $400 for the ring, depending on whether you're getting it in the less expensive silver or black, or step-up matte black Stealth or gold finishes. Paying $300 for a ring feels like a lot considering you can get a full-featured smartwatch at the same price. But it's the subscription creep I don't like, even though original Oura Ring owners can get the ring upgrade subscription-free, and the ring comes with six months of the subscription for free. Fitbit already has a close-to-essential Premium service for its trackers and watches, and Apple leans on its Fitness Plus service. Amazon has a similar model for its Halo health trackers. This might be the future of wearables. Fitbit's watches and services also mirror Oura's: You can get a similar experience, especially if you're wearing a temperature-monitoring Fitbit Sense.
I love the daily sleep and wellness scanning of Oura's Ring, because it's exactly the type of analysis that's missing from the Apple Watch. But that might be changing soon, as Apple's expected next-gen watch possibly adds longer battery life and temperature sensing, too. Fitbit's new Sense watch and Samsung's latest Galaxy watches are moving in similar directions. Oura feels like a predictor of wearable tech's future, but like many first movers, it may not always be where people end up.
>Thanks. KathrynI don't remember who wrote it, but Kottke did record it a ways back --
I found his version of it on a CD after I heard him play this three years
ago. I forget the title to that CD; if you really want to hunt it down,
e-mail me and I'll look it up.--Ben HenwoodApplied Physics Laboratory / University of Washington
Seattle, WAben...@u.washington.edu
b...@apl.washington.edu
Not sure if I am thinking of the same song, but I think Leo Kottke did this song many years ago on an early album...ring ring, let the telephone ring..." Speakinawhich...I haven't seen too much in here about Kottke or John Fahey, both of whom I'd have to consider great folk artist, though not in the classic english folk tradition, such as John Renbourne...And one other item: has anyone who's heard the October Project think the singer sounds an awful lot like Jackie McShee from the old Renbourne groups?Thanx.
renzie
I beleive Leo was nominated for a Grammy for Country Music Performance
(or whatever the category is) for his version of this song a few years back.Anne Howard, Librarian and VOLUNTEER programmer, WEVL Memphis
For the fans of this song: On LK's video "Home and Away" there's a
concert segment where he gives a longish intro to the song, sings it
and afterwards they cut away while LK is taken to meet one of the
co-writers of the song and talk about the song, the story behind it, etc.
Nichael
Speaking of acou.git.gods in the Kottke tradition, there's a Florida
guitarist named Richard Gilewitz who just put out his second album,
"Voluntary Solitary," on his own Gillazilla Records. Richard is the guy who
wrote the last song on Leo's "A Shout Toward Noon" album (a portion of his
"Echoing Wilderness," retitled "Echoing Gilewitz" by Leo). The new album is
really good -- strong originals, as well as interesting covers of John
Fahey's "Requiem for John Hurt" and Jimmy Page's "Bron Yr Aur." If you
can't find it in stores, you can write Richard at Gillazilla, P.O. Box
5084, Spring Hill FL 34606. His live shows are a lot of fun too!
Dave&Jen
"Jennifer Juniper" is on the DELICATE DANCE recording. This was
Chris' second recording - his first being RUNOFF.This year Flying Fish released TRAVELOGUE which I recommend
very highly. Chris' playing and composing have matured nicely
since 1982's RUNOFF, IMHO. I love the "primitive"
feel of RUNOFF and the "elegance" of TRAVELOUGE. The cover
of "Ruby Tuesday" alone is worth the price of the TRAVELOUGE
disc.BTW - Chris will be in New Haven, CT on July 17 performing
for the Greater New Haven Acoustic Music Society.
True, Fahey did attempt to classify the musical style as "American Primitive Guitar".
Years later, Peter Lang and John Stropes, claiming that Fahey's term never caught on,
took their own crack at classification. I can't say that their term "American Classical
Fingerstyle Guitar" has caught on any better.Personally, I prefer Fahey's phrase for the music that he plays, as his music is flush
with what I call "seminal melodies" - tunes that so are basic, even primitive, and their
simplicity is very intriguing. Lang and Kottke at times capture this essence in their
music, but not to the extent of Fahey.-Scott.
"I remember Blind Joe Death"
Thanks for the lyrics ? I really really like this song and somehow I like to think of it is a thank you song for her father, who has walked her through her life (both as a child and as a performer). Anyways, thank you so much and keep up the hard work.
Hello, I just wanted to say that your blog post was really helpful in helping to explain this song for me. I first heard it on a visit to Tokyo earlier this year and I have been obsessed with it ever since. I tried to write a blog post to try and explain why I like this song so much. I give props to your blog, so thank you -pamyu-pamyu-yumeno-hajima-ring.html
The Tsukuba Kasumigaura Ring Ring Road is a 180-kilometer (112 mile) long cycling course certified as a national cycle route. Although it is only an hour away from Tokyo by train, you can enjoy cycling while admiring the natural beauty of Lake Kasumigaura and Mt. Tsukuba.
Take your pick from several Ring Ring Road courses with different views and difficulty levels, from hill climbing on Mt. Tsukuba, to rambling through the pastoral, rural landscapes. There are courses for every skill level. Rental bicycles can be picked up and dropped off at any point along the route. If you want to travel lightly, use the luggage storage facilities to keep your baggage. There are even accommodations that allow you to bring your bicycle into your room.
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