Heel striking is one of the things that is taking humans further away from our natural running form, which is forefoot striking! Essentially, running with cushioned footwear places stress on your feet, particularly your ankles and calf, which impact your knees, hips and lower back.
The difference between barefoot walking/running and walking/running with cushioned shoes are like night and day. Walking barefoot on a city street would be quite the sight and while not very practical, breaking free from the restrictive modern lifestyle would be quite liberating...just imagine the freedom of being able to show up to a job interview, literary barefoot!
Since walking barefoot is frowned upon, we can at least content ourselves with the closest thing to walking or running barefoot, which is wearing minimalist shoes like the VivoBarefoot  Primus Trail FG.
The amount of detailed feedback you get from your feet when wearing non-cushioned shoes is refreshing. The Primus Trail FG allow you to feel every bump on a road and every rock on a terrain, which in turn gives you more control of your running.
As you are more aware where your feet are planting it changes the dynamic of your running from a heel strike to a midfoot strike or forefoot strike, which long distance runners employ. If you wear cushioned shoes, chances are you will be more of a heel strike runner.
Going from cushioned shoes to barefoot or minimalist shoes is somewhat similar to going from high profile car tires to low profile car tires, which have shorter sidewalls that makes them corner really well because the tires hug the road.
The drawback with low profile tires though, it's that they give cars a rougher ride because of the shorter sidewall. Car tires are designed to help with the car's suspension system; hence why car tires are made with high sidewalls to help absorb road bumps.
Car tires are to rims, what shoes are to feet! But, unlike car rims, our feet are actually designed to be barefoot but of course, that is not very practical on our concrete jungle; hence the need for footwear.
If your budget can afford it, the VivoBarefoot Primus Trail FG have exceptional built quality, making them perfect for maintaining the barefoot lifestyle. The Primus Trail FG "trainer-like" design also gives them a "cool factor" which is always a plus for barefoot shoes.
VivoBarefoot Primus Trail FG are, certainly, on the high end price for barefoot shoes but, you do get a 100 day trial when buying these shoes so, if you change your mind within 3 months, VivoBarefoot will let you return the shoes for a full refund, which is nice.
The "trial refund" is a pretty good deal, considering that most shoe shops will not refund you once you literary walk out of the shop with their shoes (after paying for them, of course!)
The naming of these shoes is quite interesting too. The name Primus is presumably after the American alternative metal band, while Trail FG stands for Trail Firm Ground, meaning the Primus Trail FG are outdoors barefoot shoes.
The rubber sole is extremely rugged and has an interesting multi-directional thread pattern with grippy Y-shaped markers that helps give you traction on different types of surfaces, including gravel road surfaces, cobblestone streets, asphalt or concrete roads.
These Y-shaped markers, which measure 3mm at their base and 3mm long function similarly to the spikes of indoor track shoes, giving you grip while boosting your acceleration.
The top section of the Primus Trail FG barefoot shoes is made with PET bottle recycled fiber and designed with a breathable mesh. The Primus Trail FG are, essentially, made with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) rubber and polyester so, they are extremely lightweight, weighing just 250 grams (approximately the weight of a the average smartphone).
As you can see from the pictures, the Vivo Barefoot Primus Trail FG have excellent spacing for wide feet going from the midfoot to forefoot and toe box area. This means, your toes have room to move comfortably and your feet won't develop neuroma (inflamed nerves), which happens when shoes are too tight in the toe box.
With shoes, it untimely comes down to whether your feet are happy. Being able to feel the ground underneath your feet is a pleasant down-to-earth experience; hence why sandals and clogs are popular although they are not as great for running as the Primus Trail FG.

Getting a decent budget projector used to be a bit of a hit and miss, but not anymore! With offerings like the Vivibright F30, one can now get the full movie experience you've always wanted at a decent price and without sacrificing color accuracy and brightness.
The Vivibright F30 projector has a sleek Xbox-like design and a solid foundation, including useful features like vertical keystone and focus adjustment, as well as the ability to mirror and rotate the image of the projector from the settings.
On the back of the Vivibright F30 projector, you find three connection options, including two USB 2.0 plug and play ports for paying content off of a USB flash drive, one HDMI input to connect devices like an Apple TV, an Amazon Firestick or a Roky stick, and an S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) audio out to connect an external speaker (no S/PDIF cable is included).
The F30 projector also features, on the back of it, a dedicated power switch button, a 3-pin power port (3-pin power cord included), nine user control buttons for navigating through the Vivibright F30 menus and settings.
The control buttons are tactile and clicky and include enter, source, power, left/right navigation, up/down navigation, menu and back.
The settings menus include OSD language, PictureMode, Color Temperature, AspectRatio, Reduce Display size, Sound mode, Surround sound, sPDIF mode and Flip so you can change the orientation of the image from top-to-bottom and/or left-to-right
Aspect Ratio can be set to auto, Just Scan, 4:3 or 16:9. Surround sound can be turned off or set to standard Surround or SRSTruSurroundXT, which increases the volume while enhancing the bass an treble.
There is also an infrared (IR) receiver on the back of the unit for the included IR remote, and a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting an external speaker.
Being able to add an external speaker to the F30 projector is neat although you probably won't need to because the built-in stereo speakers in the F30 projector are really loud. The overall sound quality is also good, which is surprising considering the price of the Vivibright F30 speaker. 
It's worth mentioning that once you connect an external speaker, it mutes the F30 internal speakers so, you cannot get dual speaker functionality, which would have been an added bonus.
On the right side of the Vivibright F30, you find the two rubber wheels with rubber spikes for vertical keystone correction and focus adjustment. It's neat that you can manually adjust the sharpness and vertical orientation of the image but the wheels are not as convenient to use as a slider mechanism, which you easily slide from left to right. With the Vivibright F30, you have to hold down the projector while keystoning and adjusting the focus.
On the front of the projector, you find another IR receiver and the 3-inch diameter lens (with cover) which outputs to 1080p native resolution, meaning the F30 projector has a natural 1080p resolution without upscaling or downscaling.
A 720p projector can output 1080p but it has to enlarge the image, which degrades the image quality. The F30 does support lower resolutions including 1080i, 720p, 575i, 480i, 575p and 480p.
On the bottom of the F30 projector, you find rubber feet, four threaded mounting holes for mounting the projector on a ceiling projector mount (not included) and a small retractable front stand to raise the angle of the lens.
The quality of the projection image is very good in the dark, thanks to approximately 3800 lumens of brightness; however, the F30 only has an ANSI lumen rating of 360 lumens, meaning the F30 projector is not great in full daylight but good enough with just a bit of ambient light coming through drawn curtains.
If you can't make the room as dark as possible, you can always try projecting the image closer to the projection screen to make image appear brighter.
The F30 has a dynamic contrast ratio of 15,000:1, which is much higher than the average contrast ratio of a computer display (about 1000:1), but nowhere close to the 4,000,000:1 contrast ratio of a plasma display.
Setting up the projector between 100-inches and 120-inches from the screen works great, though you also have to keep in mind that the corners of the projected image appear slightly out of focus the longer the distance.
The slight distortion on the corners of the projected image isn't an issue when watching movies but might be an issue when playing games that display in-game info on the corners like minimaps.
Saying this, you can remedy the corner distortion by making the center of the projection not as sharp and bringing the projector closer or, of course, you could use the built-in Reduce Display' function, which works similarly to the zoom functionality of some projectors.
The Vivibright F30 projector uses a 130W LED lamp, as well as a 5.8-inch LCD projection panel; hence you can expect LCD degradation (or screen burn-in) where the image develops discoloration after a certain amount of lamp hours. The good news is that the F30 LED lamp is rated at a massive 50,000 lamp hours. You can buy it from Amazon at a discounted price using code PP8C5CQ4

Switches are everywhere, and while some switches require pushing or flicking, they all have the same function and that is to control the flow of electricity or a signal at the push of a button!
From computer keyboard switches to regular electrical switches, they come in all shapes and slightly different implementations like wireless light switches that you stick anywhere on a wall without having to do any wiring from the switch to the light source.
One of the latest on switch technology goes by the name of SwitchBot, a small box measuring 4cm long, 3.7cm wide and 2.4cm tall that contains smart electronics, as well as a tiny mechanical arm capable of actuating various types of switches. SwitchBot is cheerfully lightweight too, weighing only 40 grams.
The concept of SwitchBot is an interesting one, more so because of its quirky Artoo-Detoo like sound effect when operating. SwitchBot not only looks the part but also does the business with a simple mechanical arm that extends and retrieves, literary, at a push of a button!
Being a wireless push button, SwitchBot works via a mobile app but also has the advantage of being able to work with your voice. SwitchBot is part of a tight-knit ecosystem that includes the SwitchBot Meter and the SwitchBot Hub Plus, all of which are controlled via the SwitchBot mobile app.
SwitchBot uses Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy connectivity and has no Wifi module built-in; hence the SwitchBot Hub Plus, which is an integral component of the SwitchBot ecosystem because it doubles as a universal infrared (IR) remote controller and Bluetooth-to-Wifi bridge so, you can send commands to SwitchBot over a Wifi network via Bluetooth, and control devices like a TV that uses infrared (IR).
On top of that, the SwitchBot Hub Plus has a neat rain cloud design that lights up with different colors.
With SwitchBot, you can create timers, scenes and IFTTT integrations, as well as control with your voice via Alexa and Google Assistant although, you need to own an Alexa Echo or Google Home smart speaker. Integration with SmartThings, Wink and Nest is not yet supported but it is reported to be in the pipeline.

While SwitchBot is not currently compatible with Apple HomePod, you can still control SwitchBot with Siri, thanks to SwitchBot supporting the Siri Shortcuts feature that was released with iOS 12, which lets you voice control any app that is running in the background.
This means, you can have the SwitchBot app run in the background of your Apple device, allowing you to ask Siri voice assistant to control your SwitchBot.
It's worth pointing out that while you don't require a HomePod smart speaker, you do need a SwitchBot Hub Plus in order to control the Bot via Siri voice assistant.
As well as being compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant, SwitchBot is compatible with the IFTTT (if this, then that) app, which enables you to connect tons of IFTTT compatible devices.
Another handy use for SwitchBot would be to automate the power switch of an electric immersion heater inside a water cylinder that has no timer.
The SwitchBot mechanical bot and companion mobile app would effectively allow you to create a timed immersion heater that you can operate at certain times to reduce your electricity bill.
Using the SwitchBot Meter and SwitchBot Hub in conjunction with the Bot lets you control some devices efficiently like an air condition (AC) unit where the SwitchBot Meter would help activate the AC unit at a specific temperature or humidity. The SwitchBot Meter is both a Bluetooth thermometer and hygrometer.
All three SwitchBot devices, including the Hub Plus, the Bot and the Meter have a 3M adhesive on the back so you can stick the devices anywhere.
There are also two small 3M adhesives with a fishing line loop that allows the SwitchBot arm to push and pull on a switch so, it can turn on and turn off a light switch without the need of two SwitchBot arms.
The battery inside SwitchBot is CR2 Lithium type used in garage remote doors, and rated to last up to 2 years when SwitchBot is operated twice a day.
It's nice also that AAA alkaline batteries are included with The Meter as they are great for both high-drain and low-drain devices. Of course, you can use other AAA types, including lithium, NiMH or lithium-ion.
The SwitchBot app works great without glitches though you have to keep in mind that SwitchBot is a bluetooth device; hence you have to be mindful of the bluetooth range limitation. The SwitchBot app also requires location turned on for Android devices, which may put off some users
The maximum bluetooth range between the SwitchBot Hub (Plus) and SwitchBot is 80 meters in direct line of sight, but depending on the thickness of walls the bluetooth range is considerably shorter.
You may also experience some connectivity issues using SwitchBot, depending on the number of devices nearby running on the 2.4 GHz short-range radio frequency band.
If you are looking for a solution to wirelessly actuate rocker switches and/or push buttons at a specific time or temperature, the SwitchBot, Meter and Hub Plus by Wonder Tech Lab is a neat IoT solution that will give you both app and voice control.