For now, this is the last installment of the I’m Still Using It series. We’ll start with a contribution from Michael Westbay:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still using Ingress. (Playing Ingress?)<\/p>\n
Hi there Nosilla Castaways. Michael from Yokohama here.<\/p>\n
It all started around the end of 2013. I was thinking about what my\u00a0goals would be for\u00a02014 and was\u00a0really thinking that I needed a\u00a0commute. I\u2019d been working from home since around 2004 and it was becoming clear that I would only leave the house to open the shutters in the morning and close them at night. A \u201ccommute\u201d in the morning and evening seemed like a good way to begin and end the day. (And if I could lose some of that tire around my waist, so much the better.)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I was very jealous of all the techies playing Ingress that I heard on the various TWiT shows. But it wasn\u2019t available for my iPhone 4S, and I didn\u2019t know anyone to get an invite, so I started plotting out what my commute might look like.<\/p>\n
I did\u00a0have a Nexus 7 that\u00a0I mainly\u00a0used for reading. I also had a portable Wi-Fi hot-spot for\u00a0when I took my MacBook to the park to work. Ingress was then released out\u00a0of\u00a0beta shortly before Christmas. So I signed up and a quick look at the scanner showed that most of the area I lived in was Green (Enlightened), so I went with the Blue faction (The Resistance)\u00a0 to have a good challenge.<\/p>\n
The whole idea of a commute became moot. I would go out after lunch exploring all kinds of places, shrines, temples, a statue here, a memorial plaque there. Where a Green controlled portal was, I went to either attack or gather items to level up. In that first year I lost 20kg just running around a 5km radius from home, capturing portals and creating fields. I went from huffing and puffing to get up the hill behind Shomyoji (a nearby temple) to being able to climb the more direct stairway up with hardly a pause.<\/p>\n
And I ran into a lot of people also playing the game. Especially around Shomyoji. They all had similar stories of weight loss and feeling more healthy overall.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve tried the other Niantic games, Pok\u00e9mon Go, Harry Potter, Pickmen; but I never stopped playing Ingress alongside them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The only time I ever heard of Ingress was when Pokemon was introduced, and all of the Ingress kids were all, “we were there before it was cool.” What a terrific way to have fun, become more fit, and have fun exploring your local surroundings.<\/p>\n
Stephen from New Zealand is up next. He writes:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still using my 13\u201d MacBook Pro (early 2013).<\/p>\n
I love that it has MagSafe and an SD card slot. It has a massive 8GB of RAM paired with a 250 GB SSD (there is still 72 GB unused).<\/p>\n
It has had one battery replacement and still goes well although it can\u2019t be upgraded beyond Catalina.<\/p>\n
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