Gary Lucero Writer

Category: Smart Watch

  • A Quick Pixel Watch 4 Review

    A Quick Pixel Watch 4 Review

    I wish I could say owning a Pixel watch is frustration free. It’s not. The Pixel Watch 4 is the second one I’ve owned, and while it functions correctly most of the time, there are many times it doesn’t wake when I raise my wrist, or I tell it, “Hey Google,” and it just sits there. And when it does respond with “Hi Gary” it often does absolutely nothing after telling it to. Or, both it and my phone, which might be in my pocket at the time, respond at the same exact time.

    Which is why I’m getting rid of it.

    I can’t say I won’t miss it, because I might. It does a great job of showing me notifications, new e-mail, what the temp is, and more, but I find it increasingly flakey, and that makes it hard to love. I want a watch that is reliable, not something I’d afraid will lose whatever valuable information I have to share with it.

    The Pixel Watch 4 is comfortable enough, its battery lasts a couple of days at a time, and it fulfills most of the functions a watch should. But it seems half-baked. Like Google is not really serious about its watches. Like they’re experiments, not real hardware.

    Which is why I’m switching to the Pebble Time 2, a color watch whose battery should last a week. It might be less smart, but I hope that translates into it being more reliable.

    Time will tell.

  • Pebble Index 01 Review

    Pebble Index 01 Review

    The Pebble Index 01 Review

    The Bad

    Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

    I’ve had problems almost daily, sometimes more than once per day, where I get false recordings.Somehow, I’ve pressed the button on the Index 01, which has registered as me recording a note, but it was only depressed for a second or two, and all it captured was static.

    This happens when driving, gripping some object in the same hand, or for a number of other reasons. It makes sense, really, because the button on the ring faces whatever object I’m holding in that hand. I’ve reported the problem to Pebble and asked them to add a setting where the software just ignores short recordings but they haven’t done so yet.

    And that’s really my only complaint. Otherwise the ring has held up well, and has performed better than I’ve expected.I don’t always wear it when I wash my hands or do yard work, but I do oftentimes, and have yet to have an issue.

    The Good

    Reminders

    The Index 01 excels at capturing reminders. All I have to do is press the button, bring my hand up to my mouth and say, “remind me at 12:30 to check the mail” and almost instantly it adds the reminder to the Pebble app.

    You can map reminders and notes to other apps, but the Pebble app works remarkably well as a way to get notified. I actually find how Pebble handles creating reminders much simpler and easier than using Tasks in Android. Even using Gemini to automatically create a new reminder is more of a hassle than just holding down the button and telling the ring to create one.

    Notes

    I honestly haven’t found a good use for notes. I create them, but I don’t have a great need for short-form notes. It’s also annoying to hold down the button on the Index 01 for more than a few seconds at a time.

    Questions

    When you double-click the button, you can ask questions. This is handy to get a quick, AI generated response for common questions. It’s another way to avoid using something like Gemini, which is great at answering questions, but can be a pain to invoke and wait for. Instead, the answer appears as a notification on your phone, and appears in a special section of the app along with your notes, reminders, shopping list, and other questions/answers.

    Shopping List

    Pebble has a special “Shopping list” category you can add items to, which is very handy.

    The Rest

    The Index 01 is sold as an open source ring that can integrate with other products and services, such as MCP. I haven’t tried to integrate it with anything except for Obsidian and Google Tasks. It works fine with Obsidian, but when Pebble adds reminders to Google Tasks, only the date and text come through, not the time. 

    A support rep from Pebble says this is a limitation of Google Tasks.

    Final Thoughts

    The only real problem I’ve had with the Index 01 is keeping track of it. If I don’t wear it all the time, I sometimes lose it. I once lost it outside, and another time in the recliner I normally sit in. Since it costs $75 (for now), it’s not something I would like to have to replace.

    But it’s useful, especially when opening my phone is something I shouldn’t do, like when driving. Or when I leave my phone in the house and I’m out in the yard. Then it’s invaluable, especially since my entire life is governed by reminders. I use them every day, all day, and I can’t remember a damned thing without them.

    I like the Index 01 so much I even ordered a watch from Pebble, the Pebble Time 2. It has a 1.5″ 64 color e-paper touch screen and stainless steel frame, and is much more low-tech than my current watch, the Pixel Watch 4. It also will have a substantially better battery life. I look forward to that and I don’t think I’ll miss the Gemini integration the Pixel offers.

  • AI Can Be Useful

    AI Can Be Useful

    Artificial intelligence is a much hated technology and for good reason. Like all the advances before it, it’s being leveraged by big tech as the be-all, end-all solution for all the world’s problems. It can lower costs, drive revenue, prevent fraud, and do it all cheaply. 

    Or so we’re led to believe.

    To be honest, though, AI isn’t bad. It’s the people who use it poorly and worsen our lives with it, they are the problem.Fortunately, we too can use it, and we can use it wisely.

    There are hundreds of uses for AI, but here are a few I find it particularly good at.

    Building Software

    Proficient coders will tell you AI is a superpower, but only if you know what you’re doing. I agree that’s the case when creating production software, but I create software for myself. 

    In my case, I vibe-code the entire project, and I never look at the source code. I ask Cursor Agents, my IDE of choice, to write the code and tests, investigate issues, etc., and I serve as the business analyst and software tester. 

    It does the rest.

    I also create and configure the GitHub repo, but Cursor Agents handles creating branches, committing the code, and pushing it. 

    And it does an excellent job. None of my projects are huge, and all the coding is done with either the Auto model or using Grok 4.5 High, but it very inexpensively serves the role as code creator and maintainer. 

    Recommending

    I recently chatted with Gemini about books. I told it the kinds of books I like to read, giving it several examples of ones I have enjoyed, as well as some basic information about what I like and dislike. I then uploaded a list of all the Kindle books I hope to one day buy, and asked Gemini to review the list.

    It pointed out how many of them didn’t meet the criteria I had outlined, because they were too technical, or written poorly, or there was some other issue with them. And it recommended several other books. I let it know which I’d already read and liked, added a few it suggested to my list, and now I have a pinned conversation in Gemini I can use anytime I need a book recommendation.

    This is an activity that AI is custom-made for. You could, for example, give it a list of TV shows or movies or video games that you like, and several you don’t, and ask for suggestions. And if you’re already familiar with ones it suggests, go back and forth with it until it understands your preferences and suddenly you have a valuable recommendation machine.

    Sorting Thoughts

    There are days when I feel upset, or have questions on my mind, or maybe I’m just wondering how something in the world works. In these cases I often turn to AI. I tell it what I’m thinking, what my problem is, or what my question is. We chat, exchanging comments, suggestions, and questions until I’m satisfied.

    This is another one of those situations AI is good at. No, it can’t solve all my problems, but it’s excellent as a sounding board, and it has a vast array of knowledge. I do this often, most of the time using the interactive feature in Gemini, where it’s always on, listening for my input, then it responds.

    We chat until I’m satisfied.

    Teaching Me

    I always have lots of questions. 

    I’m constantly wondering about technology, products, gardening, and more. I often turn to AI in these situations, providing it with pictures or other information. It almost always provides solid answers that help me understand the world we live in.

    I’ve gone from knowing almost nothing about how to set up a repo in GitHub properly to actually understanding the difference between CodeQL and Dependabots. I now understand better how to care for the plants in my yard. I have a better understanding about how smart phones, versus bridge cameras or full-frame cameras, work.

    AI encompasses the world’s knowledge, and if you are careful enough, and aren’t too naive, it can help you understand it.

    Reminding Me

    I couldn’t survive without the reminders I keep on my Android phone, or the calendar events I have for appointments. They keep me from forgetting all of the various things I need to do.

    But sometimes I just need a quick way to remember something. With Gemini, I can tell it things, and later, ask it to remind me about a fact I committed to it. I can do the same with notes in Google Keep, or in Google Drive, and Gemini can find those too. 

    It’s a persistent memory store that I can turn to at any point on my phone or computer and retrieve information I would otherwise lose to my aging mind.

    Assisting with Video Games

    Video games are an important aspect of my life, and have been for over 40 years. But my middle-aged brain, eyes, and hands don’t work like they used to. 

    Enter AI.

    Not only can I ask for game recommendations, but it also helps with understanding how accessible and/or difficult a game is, how long a game is, where I’m currently at in the game, and occasionally, it helps me get through a game. 

    In those cases though, my personal opinion is, if I need a walkthrough to complete a game, it’s not worth playing.

    Since chatbots like Gemini have access to all of the FAQs, reviews, opinion pieces, walkthroughs, and other information on video games, it’s the perfect place to answer all my questions.

    And So Much More

    This of course isn’t all AI can do. 

    I use it constantly, and while there are times it’s frustrating, where maybe I say, “Hey, Google,” to my smart watch or smartphone and it doesn’t respond, or I ask it a question and it returns something that doesn’t resemble an accurate response.

    But when it works, it’s like magic. It provides access to so much information, and does it so well so much of the time, it has become indispensable.

  • Technology Has Outgrown the Batteries that Power It

    Technology Has Outgrown the Batteries that Power It

    With the advent of the iPhone, computers lost their identity. Suddenly, a phone could do most of what a computer could do, and though it would take more than a decade for humans to realize it, eventually we understood we didn’t necessarily need a laptop or desktop anymore.

    Phones and tablets not only became great devices for consuming websites, but replaced computers for e-mail, finances, social media, and just about anything else we needed.

    The problem with this technological convergence is these devices: smart phones, smart watches, and tablets, have become overly complicated, to the point where we have to constantly tether them to a power source because everything we do on them eats away at their batteries.

    For me personally, I try to make recharging predictable, so every two days I charge my phone first thing in the morning, and hopefully, less frequently with my watch. But usage can be unpredictable, and suddenly one or the other plummets into a low power state, and it’s time to charge them again.

    This is a phenomenon we didn’t see with traditional watches, old feature phones, and cameras. Their batteries were relatively predictable, and we could count on days, for some devices, even months or years, of usage. Now all bets are off, and no matter what the manufacturer claims, our phones and tablets often suddenly die because of an unusual usage pattern, or maybe from a software bug.

    Regardless of the why, we pay for our use of these innovative devices with the inconvenience of having to charge them often.