Got a STRAP-ON? Remember to TAKE IT OFF at WORK

Something for the Weekend, Sir? As soon as I arrive at a client’s office, I take everything off. The scratchy, suffocating feeling produced simply by wearing stuff drives me to distraction, so whenever I get the chance, off it comes. Oh to feel the air on my skin...

My clothes, you will be relieved to learn, remain distributed in rough approximation of current conventions of decency around my body parts. Everything else, though, ends up on the table: watch, wedding ring, glasses, phone, keys, wallet, coins… indeed anything that had previously been sitting, strapped or pocketed close to my person during transit.

Long gone are my student days during which I could happily wear nasty little "silver" chains around my neck or even crappier and more pretentious man-bracelets (all purchased from that fine purveyor of quality 1980s jewellery, Ratners), not to mention silly belt and wallet chains that used to keep getting caught in door knobs, seatbelts and ski lifts. These days, I can only just about put up with wearing a watch, and even then only for short periods.

Despite this, I am a big fan of using a wristwatch to tell the time. This means I am an old person. Da yoof, I notice, prefer to hunt around in their pockets or handbags for a mobile phone to provide them with this information. Give that this method of telling the time sometimes takes longer than it might to find and ask a policeman, I suspect that young men do this to legitimise their frequent compulsion to play pocket billiards in public.

Try this experiment for yourself: the next time you spy a young hipster sitting in a coffee shop tapping away at a MacBook while acting self-consciously bespectacled, tattooed, beardy and generally a bit of a twat, ask him for the time. He will invariably ignore the fact that the time and date are staring at him on his laptop screen and prefer to have a good old wander around Hairynobland before producing his smartphone to find out.

Of course, if you ask “Do you have the time?” and he immediately responds with “Do you have the energy?”, don’t blame me for the consequences, but do please invite me to the wedding.

Anyway, when it comes to finding out the time of the day, I am not one to tickle the tackle. I always prefer a quick one off the wrist. Given that I’ll do this despite my personal intolerance to strapping things onto my limbs, it suggests that a wrist is nevertheless a very convenient place to locate wearable tech (sorry, Glassholes).

As I hinted after the Apple Watch launch, sexing up the wristband with a bit of decent tech could help it make a comeback with a younger demographic. That said, we have a long way to go thanks to a combination of high power demands and rubbish battery life. Most people who use a boring old wristwatch can’t remember when they last changed the battery, if ever. Introduce a bit of whizzy new tech and their memories will improve straight away. When did you last recharge the batteries? This morning. When will you next need to recharge the batteries? Mid-afternoon, probably.

Perhaps if you app startup dudes stopped fiddling in your pockets for a few seconds and put your mind to the battery question, wearable tech would take off more quickly.

Netamo, famous for its app-linked weather station gadgets, typifies the lack of foresight in this field, in my opinion. The company is marketing a smart bracelet called June to jewellery lovers. What does it do? It measures your skin’s exposure to the Sun and sends messages to your smartphone to remind you to put your hat on or apply some suncream. And how do you charge up this smart bracelet that sits facing the sun, gathering UV rays all day, strapped to your wrist alongside your solar-powered watch?

That’s right: you plug it into the mains overnight. Duh.

On a more positive note, I was pleased to read recently that having a sweaty wrist is by no means a blocker to wearable tech adoption. This was one of my principal concerns over devices such as the Apple Watch that rely on electrodes that are supposed to make contact with the back of your wrist.

I am a sweaty bastard, you see. As it is with my humble but indestructible Casio G-Shock, I have to chisel off my dead skin from the rubbery wrist strap every week, and this is from ordinary daytime use. Imagine what it would be like if I wore my watch in the gym as well… well perhaps don’t. Then consider the effect on performance of all that human gunk on the back of an Apple Watch. Yuk.

However, I learn that wearable tech is now being developed specifically to harvest my perspiration. Unlike my wife, this tech does not pull a face and tell me to change my shirt – rather, it loves my sweat, wicks it up deliberately and then does useful things with it.

Forget about detecting salt: it turns out that practically nothing can be determined from the salt levels alone in your sweat, albeit with the very singular exception of diagnosing cystic fibrosis. But detecting sodium and chloride ions together can help make sportspeople aware of when they’re about to "crash". The detection of metabolites such as lactate, creatinine and glucose by wearable tech could be coming next, which should one day help monitor the health of people suffering from chronic kidney disease.

Add to this the recent discovery that several small-protein cytokines have the same concentration in a subject’s sweat as in his or her blood, the ability to monitor tricky health issues such as physical and mental stress with non-intrusive wearable tech could also be on the horizon. So far, the boffins (hah!) are talking about skin patches rather than wristwatches, but these will communicate to handheld devices such as smartphones.

Indeed, the wrist is only a convenient place if the device provides its own readout screen for you to look at. No doubt Reg readers are aware of the many other kinds of wearable tech that do not strap to a wrist, sit on your nose or clip next to your ear. For example, how about the Chiaro Elvie, which gives a new meaning to the term “personal trainer”?

Youtube Video

Or indeed the Rampant Rabbi... and his friends Vagenie, Cunt Dracula and her vibrating majesty, Buckingham Phallus, all from the tasteful team at Masturpieces. The wrist is definitely not the place for these thrilling gems of technology but I’m sure you’ll get a buzz from them etc.

One word of warning, though. If you’re like me and have to remove all such items when you arrive at a client’s office, chucking a Cunt Dracula onto the desk alongside your sweaty wristwatch will not win you any friends. At least, no one will ask you to come again. ®