Innovations and Inventions: Between Pilates and Gadget | Israel today

This month I renewed in a new class - Pilates (men, erase your contemptuous smile. You would die to be as flexible as I was).

Most of my friends, whose I have not yet discovered about the new circle (just because it did not come out, of course), are engaged in aggressive sports such as cycling, running, powerlifting, weightlifting, mountaineering, triathlon, iron man or steel testicles.

I too could without any problem ride daily to Mount Hermon in reverse and come back walking on my hands, but these are the activities of yesterday.

Today what is going on is actually blurring the differences between the sexes and connecting to the delicate and flexible side of your personality, like in Pilates.

There are men who, despite not being professional bakers, got fired up about baking cakes and bread. There are those who dance in a Batsheva band, there are those who started knitting in their spare time, and there are also rumors about really groundbreaking men, who started enjoying the series "Emily in Paris".

Pilates does not have the radiance of extreme sports. Unlike friends who upload their photo to Instagram with the caption "I finished Iron Man in six hours," it's rare to find someone who finishes a Pilates class and shows off the text "I moved my hips a bit with a ball between my knees." This industry has no stars like Messi and Ronaldo, who make kids dream of becoming professional Pilates when they grow up. No one took their child on a bar mitzvah trip to see a Pilates class in Barcelona, ​​no T-shirts with numbers and emblems of the Emirates that give you a sense that you are part of something big, no judge on the court because there is no court, and attendees do not practice the instructor's mother profession. There are also no encouraging songs in the style of "To the circle at the Carmiel Community Center" or "Oh, this is not a joke - Deborah has a prank."

Participants also do not walk around with fancy gadgets like ruffled clocks that measure how many miles of pedaling and at what angle the ascent was, and even if you walk out of the circle limping and barely stand on your feet, the phrase "Pilates killed me, I did insanely careless movement there" does not sound good near Someone who has completed 150 miles on a bike plus three miles of swimming.

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Contrary to what I remember from gym classes at school, where the girls would come in blue cotton Ata pants with a rubber band, today’s Pilates practitioners come in branded, taut and beautiful clothes.

As someone who attends classes in faded sweatshirts from the time when an Indian head was still a hot brand, I still have room to get better.

In a typical Pilates room are scattered several beds, which at first glance resemble an interrogation room of a cruel intelligence organization or an inquisition facility from the good old days in Spain, where people used to stretch and lengthen.

The beds slide back and forth with springs and allow the trainee to improve flexibility with the help of hand straps, a wooden pole, balls, and more.

Being in a room, which until now was made up only of women, requires me to prepare differently.

First, the instructor is already accustomed to addressing the group as "girls," though as one who has lived for many years with a woman and three girls at home, I also sometimes speak in female language.

On the other hand, I find that no matter how much I am attached to my female side, as the only male in the class you do not like to squirm or say that it is difficult for you, even if after five minutes you feel that the spleen is about to burst out of your stomach.

For the group, the first rule I was asked to internalize is that they do not tolerate trainees who exhale loudly, in the style common in gyms.

So with all due respect to the not so easy activity on the devices, I put most of my effort during the classes in trying not to get involuntary voices out of my mouth, or worse, from other places in the body, which might have been suitable for reserve service alongside 30 men in a volume camp, but not for a class alongside women Polite.

We'll see how much I can persevere there.

• • •

This week I also renewed my gadget, when I bought with the best money ($ 150) a pair of glasses that are the result of a collaboration between Facebook and Ray-Ban, called Ray-Ban Stories.

There is no need to introduce Facebook, certainly not a week after we were cut off for an entire evening from them, from WhatsApp and Instagram and we were rewarded in exchange for exchanging a few words with the kids who raised their heads from the phone for a few hours.

Facebook has also recently been crowned the new evil of the world, the one that all governments dream of dismantling and weakening so that it stops quarreling between ethnic groups and controls our emotions.

I've not heard any bad things about Ray-Ban, but maybe it's because I do not go to Optica Halperin's branches.

In any case, this is an old sunglasses company, which reminds us of the time when pilots or those who wanted to think they were pilots were armed with its glasses.

Apparently even there they realized the dream of being a gnarled pilot was replaced by the dream of being a nerdy hitmaker, and went for a digital collaboration with Facebook.

The collaboration between the companies has spawned innocent-looking glasses, which make it possible to photograph a story from the perspective of the spectacle component in a 30-second video, including sound, as well as still images.

Due to the intrusion into the privacy of others, a tiny light is turned on during the filming, which is supposed to inform the subject that he has become an actor in the story.

When shooting a still image, the glasses make a sound that mimics the click of a camera, although it is played at the volume of the sneeze of a mute mosquito.

The glasses also include the option to give the device commands in the style of "Hi Facebook, shoot me a video" - but only in English, at least until there is a local version that understands Hebrew and also replaces the "Hi" with "Nu".

The photos and movies are saved on the glasses, and you can transfer them to your mobile phone via an app, and from there send them on WhatsApp or upload a story to social networks, which also allows you to show off to the world that you have cool glasses and that you do not shoot with a regular cell phone.

To remind you, this is not the first attempt to market smart glasses to the market.

Google tried it a few years ago, calling them "Google Glass", but it turned out that the glasses were not smart enough to predict that they would be a diligent failure.

The fact that the glasses photograph you without your knowledge was not well received, and the first users to purchase the toy were even scorned by opponents "Glass Holes".

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Since Israel is not yet included in the countries where the new glasses app is supported, I had to use endless tricks to be smarter than the glasses and make them think they are in another country.

After this matter worked out, I began to take advantage of the huge technological advantage of the glasses - to take pictures while both your hands are free for other uses.

You can cook and photograph the process while cutting onions with both hands, document yourself in a clothing store or supermarket while your hands move between the hangers and share the woman, so you can guide you on what exactly to choose from the dozens of products that look exactly the same to you.

If you went to a social event on your own, you can send her the pictures to help you remember exactly what all these people you are supposed to know are called but forgot their names, while your hands are free for handshakes and chatter with those people.

So that the image would not move too fast from side to side, I found myself turning my head rather suspiciously slowly.

Everyone who knew me thought something had happened to me, or that I had drunk too much.

Another problem is that when you are photographing people, you should tell them so in advance.

The fact that you have a small light on your glasses (which you need real glasses to see) does not really absolve you of responsibility.

Mark Zuckerberg claims in one of the glasses' image films that the small light bulb informs the environment more than when you photograph someone on the phone without their knowledge.

To me it's a bit creepy.

At a time when Facebook is accused of invading privacy, it is not certain that what will contribute to its public image is the launch of an intrusive camera, which allows anyone to be a detective tracker.

My highlight so far has been photography while performing with Tislam.

I played with both hands and took pictures, looking at my stage friends and the audience, or peeking at the keyboards to see what I was doing.

This is definitely a unique point of view.

In retrospect, I'm a little sorry that in the early days of the band they still hadn’t developed a faucet with a camera for me.

But with all the charm of the new product, and after two weeks with the trendy eyeglass camera, it's not clear to me exactly what Facebook scientists have been working so hard on.

Maybe I will understand after I try to photograph myself during a Pilates class.

yairn@israelhayom.co.il