Shower sounds

When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing a post about Bluetooth shower speakers, his pragmatic (if not necessarily practical) response was that I should install speakers into the bathroom. Agreed, if you want to stream music into every room in the house a holistic approach might be better but I'm hoping not to be in this house for much longer and making permanent changes isn't really desirable. Besides, that's not what I'm writing about.

Anytime I carry out a mundane activity or have a quiet moment I'm prone to a downward cycling of mood. From discussion with others who suffer from bipolar disorder, I gather I'm not the only one. Driving, cleaning and sleepless nights are particularly bad. I attempt to reduce the teary moments with music: an MP3 player is plugged into the stereo in the car, there are speaker docks in various rooms of the house and Bluetooth headphones for when I others aren't participating in noise, and my bestie gave me Sleepphones a few Christmases ago which get pulled out when I have a bout of onset insomnia.

I enjoy my showers and it's my first retreat if I need a good bawl. I've been keen to work on not just using the shower as a way to vent but also to turn mood around. So when I saw some unbranded, water-resistant Bluetooth speakers on a run round the supermarket — not my usual one — it got me thinking. And no, I didn't just toss a speaker into the trolley, I actually left it a couple of days.

I realised after a couple of days that at least twice a week recently I'd been taking an iPod into the ensuite for my morning shower. Even at the maximum volume it's difficult to hear over the water and annoyingly skipping through the playlist is a bit of bind. Considering that a trifling $18NZD was worth an experiment, I headed back to Countdown and nabbed one.

What I like about this particular gadget is that it has an inbuilt rechargeable battery and it has AVRCP — meaning it can play, pause and skip forwards and backwards through the playlist, and control the volume. It also automatically reconnects to the last connected device if in range, and (less important) it has Headset Profile so I could answer the phone if I wanted. The suction cap on this is actually quite good.

I no longer take my iPod Touch into the steamy bathroom: even with the doors closed the speaker connects just fine. Hitting the power button is the thing I do straight after I turn the shower on in the morning. As expected, it provides sufficient distraction during my shower to make the mundane enjoyable. An unintended consequence is that I also have a better sense of time: one song, two songs.

To be fair, I tend to use it only for my morning shower. The pre-bed wash, I prefer not to get revved up for.

So... if you're not up for wiring up the bathroom, this is a cheap and functional alternative to shower sounds.

List of Bluetooth profiles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The right form

In my youth I seriously considered pursuing a dance career. It wasn't unusual for me to be in the studio more than 3 hours a day with professionals overseeing me and drilling the importance of correct form and technique. Hours were spent in front of the mirror with my ballet teacher instructing me to move limbs by degrees and perfecting timing.

Given how important I find watching myself exercise to ensure that I'm programming muscle memory correctly, I find it odd how many gyms and studios don't offer mirrors or recording facilities. It's one of the reasons I appreciate the XBox Kinect: it's like having Miss Peters and her stick hooking under my ankle and pushing my leg 10 degrees higher or banging the floor to accentuate the beat.

Smartphones and tablets can be great for recording and then analysing your sporting and exercise pursuits and yet most of us don't think to record ourselves running to figure out why our knees and ankles are hurting, to watch ourselves serve the ball, or to the see whether our downward-facing dogs are correctly formed. There are plenty of apps to help with that kind of thing  - the photos are from Ubersense.

So whether you're just wanting to exercise correctly so as not to injure yourself or you're wanting to push your performance, I recommend you think about your devices for more than Facebook! It's just as handy for team performance: a way to analyse game play and tactics.

For my part, I'm usually satisfied to record using the onboard camera but it can sometimes be useful to have a few more tools to hand. Apps such as Ubersense and Coach's Eye can help with that.

Video Analysis & Sports Coaching App | Ubersense