Walking the dogs with some extra

As a geek I couldn’t help but put some tech staff into the boring everyday task of dog walking. I wanted to measure how many more km he completes running while I'm walking. I stuck a Holux M-1000C GPS data logger on the dog-collar with some sealing tape while I measured my track with the Locus app on my Samsung Galaxy S.





The result was something I expected: our 10 month old dog, Pipa, ran twice as much as my walkin distance.

	Distance	AVG Moving Speed	Max Speed	Moving time	Color on the map
Me	4.6 km	3.8 km/h	5.9 km/h	1:03:10	green
Dog	9.3 km	8.5 km/h	43.8 km/h (!)	1:05:49	red

The track visualization makes it easy to imagine the frenzy.

click to enlarge


click to enlarge

The software used for screenshots:

• Java OpenStreet Maps Editor (JOSM)

The software used for measuring:

• Locus app on Android
• ezTour for Holux loggers

BlindType on Android?

Sooner or later everyone meets the problem: typing on a tactile screen. I have pretty big fingers therefore typing on virtual keyboards usually slow for me because of the constant corrections. I happily adopted Swype when it was available on my phone, though that’s still far from perfect if we try to use it in Hungarian.

I just found BlindType a revolutionary keyboard where “No accuracy needed”. The demo is spectacular:

Google bought the company about a year ago, no news about BlindType since then. Come on Google, when can I see it in my next major Android update?

Reset Or Replace?

I own a Garmin Forerunner 405 stopwatch which I use regularly to track my running and biking workouts, and my hikes as well. Maybe I should call it on its official name, running computer, as it has a built in GPS which allows it to record my position in every second, measure the completed distance, my HR, calculate my speed, burnt calorie, etc.

Well, measuring and calculating all these is a power hungry thing. That’s the reason you have to charge it more like a phone than a stopwatch –  you don’t pop in the small battery and forget it for years but rather charge it in every 10 days or after every second workout. I bought it second hand, it is 3 or so year old now which is fairly old age for a phone battery, and it seems the dying battery problem reached my Garmin too.

It started to became erratic recently only. I usually can track a 6 hour long workout with one charge, but recently it dropped only to 2-3 hours. Sadly, in this €200 gadget the battery is not user replaceable, shame on you Garmin. I’m in Europe, in Hungary, sending it back to the German Garmin for a battery replace would be quite expensive from here as I’d have to pay all the expenses. (Not mentioning the likely language problems.)

‘Help yourself and God will help you too’ say the Hungarians, so I looked around if I can buy cheap battery on eBay or from China. Interestingly apart from the hypothetical discussions about battery life I found very few concrete on the net. I only found a German page where I can buy the battery for €20 + shipping. It's a bit expensive but better than nothing.

Digging deeper into the topic I found something interesting too. In a blog and on a couple of discussion boards you can read an instruction supposedly from Garmin Support about how to recalibrate your battery:

From Garmin Support

---

The battery of the Forerunner 405 is monitored by the software. If the software miscalculates the battery life, it can appear the Forerunner 405 battery is going bad. Providing a few instructions often recalibrates the Forerunner 405 to provide an accurate reading on your battery, and thereby resolve your issues.

To recalibrate the Forerunner 405 software:
1) Charge your Forerunner 405 to 100%
2) Remove the Forerunner 405 from the charger
3) Start the timer on your Forerunner 405
4) Allow the Forerunner 405 to completely drain
5) Charge the Forerunner 405 back to 100%
6) Wait one additional hour
7) Remove Forerunner 405 from the charger

This method can work in case of the computer battery packs so why not here? The battery type is the same (Li-Ion), and if the problem is software related it sounds reasonable. I’ll try it first before I buy anything. I’ll keep you posted!

Update (12/08/11) Whoa! I have done only 3 full charge/discharge cycle yet and the result is spectacular: the last up time was 6h14m which is the same time I could ever get out from it !

Damn You, Auto Correct!

I recently stumbled across this page, they collect the most hilarious autocorrect mistakes. Just two good examples:

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/10761/fast-learner/

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/10687/nighty-night-3/

Have a good laugh!

http://damnyouautocorrect.com

Whoa! This Is Augmented Reality!

I’m waiting for the Android version.

Blood, Sweat and Photographic Tears

Greg du Toit contracted several diseases and parasites while spending months half-submerged in a Kenyan watering hole. But he also captured a rare and stunning look of the wildlife he encountered nose-to-lens.

“This narration documents my pursuit of that ever illusive frame, which became an obsession that lasted a total of eight months and took me along an eventful journey, during which I contracted numerous parasites (some quite possibly unknown to science), not to mention the thousands upon thousands of insect bites.”

The full story is at Gizmodo

Remote Control DSLR BeetleCam Goes On Ground-Level Photo Safari

Through Gizmodo

Some wildlife photographers spend months immersed in muck to capture the perfect shot. The Burrard-Lucas brothers decided to let an RC car do the dirty work. Their BeetleCam came face-to-face with lions, elephants, and buffalo and captured these stunning shots:

The BeetleCam is the ingenuous creation of Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas, two acclaimed UK wildlife photographers who wanted to get up close and personal with some of Africa's most dangerous animals (with a wide-angle lens, natch).

They strapped a Canon EOS 400D on top of a four-wheel drive buggy and rigged up one controller to operate the entire contraption. The photographs, recovered only after the BeetleCam was "promptly mauled, and carried off into the bush" by a pride of lions, show the animals from a unique, "I'm-a-small-rodent-about-to-get-snacked-on" perspective.

You can see more shots and read further about the BeetleCam's adventures on the brothers' site. [Burrard Lucas via Wired]

Netbook Hack For Smooth HD Videos

One obvious drawback of the Atom based netbooks that they cannot play back HD video smoothly. Actually they cannot play back any higher bitrate video without framedrops/slideshow effect. It is even worse with flash videos which use more resources compared to a normal .avi container ones.

With a small hack the solution is here! You cannot squeeze out any more power from those weak Atom processors, but you can snap in a Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator card (BCM970012) to a PCI Express Mini Card slot.

Unfortunately there are few netbooks out there with an empty PCI-E Mini Card Slot, but you can sacrifice your WLAN card and can replace it for example with an Edimax EW-7711UTn miniature USB stick:

The whole replacement process in an MSI Wind is detailed at tech.icrontic

It seems that at the moment these cards are backordered, and you can find them on the ebay only around $100 - 4 times higher than the usual price.

Edit (10/08/2011)
The card is available again for around $30!

Meeting Wolfram|Alpha

My friend, Maciek brought my attention to this amazing data mining project, the Wolfram|Alpha. I already fiddled with it for a couple of hours and want to know it more- it is really worth it.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Recommended by YouTube

I opened my YouTube account today and I was recommended a few videos on the initial page. The first one was an LCD TV comparison test in Hungarian. I was surprised by the recommendation. Not the Hungarian language as it is in my profile, but the topic: I never wrote or mentioned TVs on any of my blogs as I remember. Interesting, good algorithms. Anyway, it turned out to be a very good review because they put in some plus: the humor and something else. Just look at the preview picture down there and you’ll get the idea! My favorites are these comments:

“I have no idea what she said but I watched the entire video :)”

“Could you make english subtitle please? the video is very good.”

“Good TV, but the girl is much more interesting :)”

Good initiative 220volt.hu! :)
Sorry for those who doesn’t understand Hungarian.

Windproof umbrella – indeed!

My girlfriend has just bought an umbrella on which tag they claim that it is windproof. It reminds me of a real windproof umbrella, I read a year ago or so. Check out the video! :))

Through design.spotcoolstuff.com

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Mary Poppins would not have gotten far with a Senz umbrella. Her umbrella, like yours probably, catches wind gusts and pulls whatever arm is holding onto the umbrella up and away. And if the wind gust is strong enough it will turn the normal umbrella inside out.

A Senz umbrella is different. It is designed to play with the wind.

While a typical umbrella is like a parachute the Senz is like an airplane wing. The Senz angles airflow around the umbrella, making the Senz usable in gales up to 70 mph (100 km/h). The Senz also shields your eyes from the rain and comes with an opening mechanism integrated in the handle. All of which has earned the Senz umbrella numerous accolades including a Red Dot Design Award, a selection for TIME Magazine’s invention of the year and, of course, Spot Cool Stuff’s endorsement.

Check out the video below that shows the Senz in a wind tunnel, held by people skydiving and used by a passenger on a speeding motorcycle.