App Review: SleepBot

I have been in a perpetual fight with the stock alarm app for the iPhone. I hate it. It's terrible. I can turn it off before actually hearing it enough to wake up, more often than not, and as a person who gave up the stand-alone alarm clock years ago to be cellphone-only, that's decidedly inconvenient. I've downloaded a variety of free apps, and even paid for one that I thought was going to be THE upgrade, but none of them has made me as happy (Or well-rested!) as the app I wanted to review for you all today.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the one. The app that has started to change the way I sleep and the way I wake up. I give you SleepBot for both iOS and Android.  How nice that you can have it no matter what phone tribe you belong to!

It's got a clean, easy-to-learn interface, with just the right kinds of bells and whistles to do its job and do it well. You hit the Start Sleep button when you hit the hay, and it starts logging. When your alarm goes off the next day, the timer stops and it compiles the data and gives it to you in graph form. It has several pleasing (or jarring) tones for the alarm to choose from, from classical music to a klaxon reminiscent of an incoming air raid.

It has settings to customize how much sleep you need to get each night, so you can tell it what works best for you. It will show you the last fourteen days on a graph, so you can see if you're mostly hitting your target or not, and adjust accordingly.  When you set an alarm for the next day, it will tell you how long you have until that alarm, so you know if you've left yourself enough time to get the sleep you need.

It has been three nights that I have gone to sleep and awakened on time, without fail, relying on this app. It tracks sleep as well as time until the alarm, so you know how realistic your bedtime is in relation to when you want or need to get up the next day.  It logs your cumulative sleep credit or debt, so you have an idea why the hell you're so tired when you've shorted yourself on one night or several in a row. It's full of data, if that's your thing, but if it isn't, there's still a great reason to use this app: it has a predictive alarm.

"Okay," you say, "...but what does she mean by that?"

I'm so glad you asked! Let's say that I go to bed at midnight, and I set my alarm for eight the next morning. I put my phone on the edge of the mattress next to me so that my phone's accelerometer will be able to tell how deeply I am sleeping, and it adjusts my alarm accordingly. So my alarm could go off anywhere between 7:30 and 8:00, but at the time that I will be sleeping the lightest. This means that the alarm will happen at the time that it will be the least painful to wake up, and I will feel more refreshed than I would have if it had simply gone off at 8:00 as another alarm would. This, for me, was the feature that sold it over every other alarm scheme I had tried. I feel better waking up this way

I will report back if my love affair with this handy app comes to an unfortunate end, but right now I can't imagine that happening.

It's the first that hasn't had obvious problems or necessary features to distract from the essential functions I need in an alarm app.

Slow Cooker Butter Chicken

So not too long ago, Everyday Indian: Slow Cooker With Curry and Indian Spices was available for free for download at Amazon, and I jumped at the chance. I've been collecting digital cookbooks just for their space-saving wonderfulness.

Now, I have a complicated, mostly unsuccessful relationship with the slow cooker, and my previous attempts at butter chicken have been similarly goofy, but hope springs eternal. I decided to give this a try anyway.

It turned out wonderfully, so here is the recipe, with a couple of photos, and my modifications. I'll definitely be making this again.

It didn't last long after this.

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 T butter
• 2 pounds chicken thighs (I used 1 lb breast and 1 lb thighs)
• 2 t garam masala
• Salt to taste.
• 6 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 t cayenne
• 15 cardamom pods
• 1 cup+ plain whole milk yogurt
• 1 can coconut milk (8 oz)
• 2 t curry powder
• 2 T lemon juice
• 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
• 1/2 t ground ginger

Directions:

1. Bundle the cardamom pods together in cheese cloth or a sachet, so they do not separate in the dish.
2. Place the chicken on the bottom of your crock pot and then top with the onions, spices, and garlic.
3. Add butter and tomato paste.
4. Add the coconut milk and lemon juice.
5. Turn the crock pot on low and cook for nine hours.
6. During the last 15 minutes, remove the lid (if you haven't already) and stir in the yogurt. Add a little more, if you like it creamier. Salt to taste.
7. Remove the cardamom pods and serve.
8. Serve over basmati rice.

There is never enough mango lassi, no matter how much you make.

Suggestions:

• I removed the lid about three hours before the end of cooking time to let some of the water cook off and the mixture thicken a little, rather than waiting until the last 15 minutes. I suspect that's always going to be necessary.
• I fixed a simple pilaf with basmati rice, peas, and carrots to serve this over. I recommend this, as there's no veggies, otherwise.
• I served it with a mango lassi, one of my other favorite Indian foods.

Not much to add to last night, except more words...

The Details
WiP: Bear-baiting (Ew, I know) short story
New Words: 393
Total Words: 1528/15000ish

Calling this a victory. I didn't want to, but I did it anyway, and I got more than 250 words. 

First you have to write, and then you have to finish

With apologies to the eloquent Neil Gaiman for butchering one of his lovely quotes on being a writer....

In that way that the human brain is very strange, a short story roared to life today while I was reading a non-fiction book over lunch at a sketchy, local, fast-food Mexican place. A passage on bear-baiting in London in the 1600s, and I was suddenly wishing I had a pen that wrote well on pulpy napkins so I could take enough notes to keep it fresh until I got to someplace where I could start getting ideas down in a more formal medium.

Lacking a suitable pen or a notebook with which I could get started, I headed home and put fingers to keyboard to start roughing this idea out. I won't say that I set a personal best for words produced, but it was a respectable day of writing.

Now, to keep this ball rolling tomorrow!

The Details
WiP: Bear-baiting (Ew, I know) short story
New Words:  1135
Total Words:  1135/15000ish

Review: Tenth of December

Tenth of December by George Saunders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I picked this up after reading George Saunders commencement speech about the biggest regrets in his life were the failures of kindness from his past, when he could have reached out to someone and did not. I also remembered that radical empathic Cheryl Strayed spoke warmly about Saunders at a talk of hers that I attended.

These short stories are technically excellent, and I enjoyed them, but my hope and expectation was that the philosophy of the commencement speech might shine through the other work, and I couldn't find it anywhere. I would recommend this collection as displaying technically superior short story work, but if you're looking for more things like Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness, it isn't this.





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Review: Fangirl

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




I think I would have liked to have read a book like this before I left for college. It would have made some of the challenges of my freshman year a little more comprehensible.

This book is all right. It's smaller in scope and stakes than what I tend to read, and it might be...75ish pages too long. It started stronger than it finished, and as a result ended up feeling pretty uneven.

For anyone interested, this is set in Nebraska, in both Lincoln and Omaha, and it felt like I would have enjoyed the book more if I had been able to recognize the places she referenced.



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Review: Me Before You

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




I'm so sad my stomach hurts. I read the last 50ish pages with my hand clapped over the lower half of my face, holding in the denial I could feel building inside of me at the ending of the book.

You can see it coming, but there's nothing you can do to stop it.

This is a marvelous, moving, and tremendously sad book that doesn't shirk from the hard questions regarding assisted suicide and a patient's right to self-determination. I recommend it, but one shouldn't finish reading it in public, or anywhere where there's no ready access to facial tissues.



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