July 2006

Another outing for the Nike+ iPod sports kit

| | Technology

I tried out the Nike+ iPod Sports Kit on a timed exercise session yesterday. I set it for 45 minutes. Worked perfectly. Every 5 minutes the music fades out and the voiceover tells you how many minutes are gone, or if after the halfway point, how many minutes are left. At the halfway point it cuts in and tells you that as well. For the last 5 minutes it counts down on the minute which is good. This think this is definitely going to help me exercise more. Here is a screen shot of the 45 minute walk as graphed on the Nike+ website.

Walk2 Click Picture for larder view

It was uphill then a downhill section towards the end. Hence the speed increase. I also triggered my Power Song with a few minutes to go just to test it. Marvellous 🙂

I’ve also been doing a bit on my exercise bike. See side bar on right for totals. The miles listed are as reported by the bike. I usually do an hour per session and it reports about 13 miles in that time. The calories used is a combination of the number burnt according to the Nike+ and the bike. Probably not very accurate. The bike is good as you can read at the same time!

The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham

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I couldn’t resist. I had to put Oxygen aside and get into The Day of the Triffids. Like my post about The Kraken Wakes I found this book to be different from what I expected it to be. The Triffids are largely incidental to most of he book. The main theme is the collapse of society after an event makes most people blind. Of course if you can’t see the Triffids you are in trouble…

All in all a very enjoyable read. Next up Wyndham’s The Trouble with Lichen. It’s got a periodic table on the cover so it’s bound to be good! 🙂

Dayofthetriffids

Urban myth

| | General

I’ve always known that Prince of Wales Avenue from the gates of Stormont to the Parliament Building was a mile long. The reason I’ve known it is because it was perceived wisdom. Everyone said the road was a mile long. But is it? When testing my Nike+ iPod Sports Kit I walked the full length of the road. I figured this would be a good test of how accurate it was. The iPod reported that the road was about 0.6 miles long. What? I was disappointed. How could it be so wrong? Bummer.

There is a road that runs parallel to Prince of Wales Avenue just beside the Stormont grounds (Castlehill Road on the map below). It is more or less the same length. I use it regularly to and from work. I have reset my car tripmeter turning into this road the last couple of times and it reports that his road is between 0.6 and 0.7 miles long. Just what the Nike+ iPod Sports Kit was reporting for Prince of Wales Avenue.

I’ve just used Mapquest to measure the length of Prince of Wales Avenue on screen and using the scale on the map it turns out that the road from the gates to the top, just below the steps of the parliament building, is 985 metres!

Looks to me that the common knowledge that it’s a mile from the gates of Stormont to the Steps of the Parliament building might be an urban myth. I’ll have to check the park layout board at the gates (which I’ve never read) and see what it says. It’s more like a kilometre long it seems.

Here is a picture from Mapquest showing the Stormont grounds. Prince of Wales Avenue is listed as Ulster Way on this map.

Mapqueststormont Click picture for larger view

Nike+ iPod Sport Kit

| | Technology

I got the Nike+ iPod Sport kit today and tried it out tonight. I don’t have a pair of the proper Nike shoes yet so I just stuck it under the insole of a pair of Caterpillar trainers I have. They have a thick insole so I was just aware of the sensor under my foot but it didn’t make it impossible to walk. It’d be uncomfortable to use it that way all the time though. I tied putting it under the tongue and laces of the trainer but it didn’t work there. I set it for a 2 mile distance program. It’s pretty cool. As I walked the distance counted up on the screen. It’s shown in 0.00 format so it goes 0.01, 0.02 etc. When I’d done half a mile the music faded down and the instruction voice told me I’d done half a mile. After a mile I was told I was half way there. At 1.5 miles I was told I’d half a mile to go. I had to stop after 1.75 miles as I the car park in Stormont was due to close!

When I docked the iPod it uploaded the data to the Nike+ web site and asked me if i wanted to visit the site. Here is the result –

Irnikeplus1 Click picture for larger view

I’ll need to get the proper shoes and calibrate it over a known distance. All in all I’m impressed.

Sunset play count hits 100

| | General

I noticed today that the play count for the Kate Bush song Sunset has hit 100 in iTunes on my Macintosh! I said I was listening to it a lot. This includes iPod and desktop plays but not the plays via CD in the car. Here’s a picture of my top 10 in iTunes by play count (click picture for a larger view).

Sunset100

Max Woosnam

| | General

Heard a piece on the Today program on Radio 4 last week about a new book on a sportsman called Max Woosnam. Apparently he was brilliant at everything he did. Here is the introduction from the entry on him at Wikipedia –

Maxwell “Max” Woosnam (September 6, 1892 – July 14, 1965) was a British amateur sportsman who excelled in many sports during the early part of the 20th century. In lawn tennis he was an Olympic gold medallist and Wimbledon champion, both in doubles, as well as captain of the British Davis Cup team. In association football he was the captain of Manchester City and once played for and captained the England national team. In snooker he scored a maximum 147 break; in cricket he scored a century at Lord’s in a schoolboy match, and in a table tennis game against the actor and film director Charlie Chaplin he won while playing with a butter knife instead of a bat.

I love that last line about the table tennis. What a guy 🙂 The new book is available here.

Max-Woosnam Max Woosnam (1892-1965)

New build of YAPT

| | Science

There is a new build of the Cocoa version of YAPT available. It now uses Objective-C rather than AppleScript internally (actually I’m still setting First Responder via AppleScript on application launch). See the YAPT page for more info and download. Here is a screen shot of the latest build with some data for Francium displayed.

Yapt15072006 Click Picture for larger view

Time to get fit

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I need to get fit. Been a real sluggard recently. Not good. I’ve always been tall, slim and naturally fit without having to work at it. Funny how this changes as you get older! Well, I’m still tall! It’s time to put in some work and get rid of the “beer” belly. It’s more like a junk food belly but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.

I’ve posted about this before, but walking is really good exercise. So I plan to do a few miles a day and get fit. I might do some jogging as well, although it’s hard on the knees. I went for a 2.5 mile walk in the grounds of Stormont tonight with the ever brilliant Roger Taylor playing on the iPod. I’ll do another few miles tomorrow, either at Stormont or down beside the sea at Carnalea (see picture in header at top of this page). I’m sure you will be on the edge of your seats to read about how I get on [1]. I think I’ll go the cricket training on Monday and Thursday nights from now to the end of the season as well. I don’t think I’ll be able to play as I’m away in the USA for a few weekends in August, or have other stuff to do on Saturdays. I plan to play next season though. It’s a good incentive to get fit.

The new Nike+ iPod Sports Kit looks good [2]. I was ordering a set of JBL On Time Speakers for use with my iPod as a bedroom alarm clock (they have a built in FM radio as well) and I had a £20 money off voucher for use on the Apple Store. The Nike+ iPod Sports Kit costs £19 so I stuck one on the order and therefore will get it for free 🙂 I’ll need to get a pair of the Nike running shoes to fit the sensor into and some of the iPod ready clothing. There is a Nike Store a few blocks from where I’m staying in San Francisco in August whilst I’m at Apple WWDC. It’d be daft to go all that distance and not go shopping! The black Nike Air Zoom Moire shoes look just the ticket (see picture below). Once I get the kit I’ll be able to plan and follow a fitness regime using the iPod to record the progress and visualise it on the Nike+ website. Both of the iPod products mentions here, along with all the others, show how much of a platform iPod has become. it’s no longer just a music player. Having said that it is the best portable music player available. The other stuff is a nice bonus that doesn’t detract from the core functionality.

[1] About 100 people read this site every day, on average. Sometimes it spikes to a few hundred. Amazing!
[2] Review of Nike+ iPod Sports Kit available.

Nikeairzoommoire Click Picture for larger view

YAPT sub-page

| | Science

I’ve created a sub-page of the soapbox for YAPT. There will always be a link to this sub-page in the side bar on the right. This sub page will have a link to the latest version of YAPT. It will say when the latest build was posted and the archive will contain the latest post date as well.

Podcasts redux

| | Science, Technology

So who’s won my podcast war. Or, to put it another way, which podcasts do I look forward to? There are five that I listen too. Here they are in order of preference, but I do like them all.

1) The Nature Podcast

2) Science Talk: The Podcast of Scientific American

3) In Our Time

4) Seed’s Science + Culture Podcasts

5) CocoaRadio

I’ve recently added the TED Talks video podcasts as well. They look good but as always time will tell.

Dune (The Movie)

| | Uncategorized

Watched the 1984 version of Dune on DVD today (it’s a holiday in Northern Ireland). If ever a film needed an extra hour added its this one. It’s not often you hear people asking for scenes to be added to a film. I don’t think it would be possible to understand the film if you haven’t read the book. Urban legend says that the first cut of the movie was 5 hours long. Interviews in the DVD Extras reveal that David Lynch wanted to release a 3-hour version in theatres but the producers wanted a 2-hour cut. Lynch was correct I think. It’s interesting in this era of long films that in the 1980’s it was deemed that a 3-hour release would be too long. Hopefully one day we will see a restored David Lynch Director’s Cut.

Dunespecialedition Click Picture for larger view

Cocoa version of YAPT

| | Science

As I said in a previous post I was switching the development of YAPT from REALbasic to Xcode. This was due to an overall slowness in the GUI in the REALbasic version. There was an irritating delay in activation and deactivating the buttons for each element when switching the application to and from the front on screen. Also the About… dialog box was sluggish in displaying. Add in the fact that REALbasic can’t create Universal Binaries for Intel based Macs yet.

The first development version of the Xcode Universal Binary version of YAPT is now available. It’s much snappier in use and uses the Cocoa framework and Applescript. Only Hydrogen and Helium do anything at present. I plan to finish the interface using these two elements and then add information for the other elements once I’m happy with the layout etc. I’d be interested in any comments. This switch to using Xcode and Cocoa means that YAPT will be Macintosh only. There will not me a Windows or Linux version. There are plenty of other Periodic Table applications for those platforms anyway. Actually there are several for Macintosh as well but I don’t like them 🙂

Cocoayapt Click Picture for larger view

The Kraken Wakes – John Wyndham

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I’ve been on a bit of a John Wyndham binge lately. Sparked off by rereading The Chrysalids. Fuelled by The Midwich Cuckoos. Just finished The Kraken Wakes. It was really good. If anything it was too short as the end seemed a bit rushed and maybe has a bit of a deus ex machina quality to it. The story itself was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I did expect sea monsters à la those encountered by Captain Nemo 🙂

It’s not like that at all. The story is told as a retrospective account of events by a pair of journalists who are husband and wife. Due to their position they have access to important characters and events. I like the way it’s done, apart from the rushed ending. Like in The Chrysalids I want to know what happened next! The character interactions towards the end of the book reminded me a lot of Adam Roberts’ The Snow. Wyndham’s book was first though I’m sure many others have used similar themes. I’m starting to think of Wyndham in the same terms as H.G. Wells. I’ve got The Day of the Triffids sitting here and three other books of his on order. I think I’ll take a break though and read Oxygen by Nick Lane as I’ve been wanting to get into that for a while.

Thekrakenwakes

XR 250 Enduro

| | General

Someone took this picture of me in 1983 on my Honda XR250 coming over a jump on a track we used to use for off road motorcycling. It’s a bit blurry but I like it. You can see the “R-Plate” on the front fork as it was less than a year after I did my motorcycle test. They track we had was very good. We dug out berms at the corners, had both right hand and left hand turns, smooth straights, hairpins, 2 jumps and the straight up to the jump in the picture was very bumpy. This made the jump safer as you couldn’t hit it too fast. In the end the track was so good it attracted bikers from far and wide and the council closed it down after complaints about the noise 🙁

Still, it was fun for that summer in 1983.

Under The Crooked Moon – The Hot Puppies

| | General

The Hot Puppies are good. You can listen to some tracks and watch some videos at their website. The live Shoot Em in the Head video is good. Their debut album is on iTMS as well, although it’s not officially out until later in July. They have an excellent crisp sound. You can hear the vocals really well as they are not drowned out by the instruments. Good stuff. Early Queen recordings made a point of making sure the vocal mix was “crystal”. It’s something all bands should try to do. Well assuming they can actually sing, of course.

Herman Miller Mirra chair

| | Technology

I needed a new chair to use at my desk. After much research I settled for a Herman Miller Mirra. It’s good. Still tweaking the various settings but so far it’s very comfortable and should help prevent back issues due to spending a lot of time at the desk writing, typing and computing in general. Click picture for larger view.

Hot Space – Queen

| | General

Another blast from the past. The Hot Space album from Queen. I love this album (except for Under Pressure which will surprise most people). I’ve loved it since it came out and has been my favourite Queen album since 1982. Most people hated it at the time. Even my Queen loving friends. Funnily enough most, if not all of them now love it as well. The 3 tracks at the start of Side A – Staying Power, Dancer and Back Chat are brilliant when played together like a single long track.

This album has provided me with many hours of pleasure since it was released 24 years ago. Including another hour earlier today.

I was at the Milton Keynes Bowl concert in 1982 that was part of the tour that promoted this album. This was recorded for The Tube on Channel 4 television and has since been released as Queen on Fire – Live at the Bowl. I was right at the front on the right hand side of the stage.

The height of laziness

| | Technology

Vacuuming is a pain right? To quote Homer Simpson, “Can’t somebody else do it?”. Well failing that how about a robot? Enter the iRobot Roomba. Set it down in a room. Press clean button. Close the door. Come back later and it’s done 🙂

Of course it doesn’t do behind furniture (unless you move it out of the way first), doesn’t do stairs and can’t get right into corners, so you still need to do real vacuuming periodically. But for sheer geek value it’s pretty cool. Plus it does a really good job in the areas it does reach. I still have to get into the extras like timed cleaning, automatic return to power station etc. For my other vacuuming needs I have a Dyson DC15 All Floors with the The Ball. That’s pretty cool as well. Can’t believe I’m posting about vacuum cleaners. What’s the world coming to?

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