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It’s such a perfect day…

Anything but the other

…for staying inside, but cycling back home, did not feel for it. Picture taken out of the window at work yesterday on my way to the locker room. But in fact it was not that bad since the temperature was quite high, did not freeze at all, but I was Wet, Wet, Wet

If you look closely you can spot the boat heading for Aker Brygge from Nesodden in the fog.

Beta testing Sport Tracker: GPS issue

Work/Geek

As a start, I’m not sure what is causing this issue, actually I do not think it is the Sport Tracker application itself, I suspect my Nokia E72 GPS unit providing the application with inaccurate information. I have noticed that the altitude is many meters wrong, as I have documented in this post.

First stop, not far from my home, currently not sure of the exact height, must do a follow up, but I do thinkt 215 meters are to much. First picture showing the location.

UPDATE:: On my way home at the exact same location the altitude showed 186 meter.

Sport Tracker dashboard

The second test I’m quite sure about the height, just about 2 meters above sea level, standing at the harbor in Oslo. Note the heading saying Sankt Hanshaugen. The picture is from the GPS application on my Nokia E72, OVI maps. Sankt Hanshaugen is, as the last picture shows, more than 1 kilometer away from the harbor! Strange thing that the location mark is correct, but the address not.

Sport Tracker tells me that I’m 43 meters above sea level

…but I’m not!

The pink dot left bottom showing the location of the harbor, the yellow one right above showing Sankt Hanshaugen. The blue one to the upper right showing my first location.

Wasp nest outside on the barn

Anything but the other

When washing the winter tires (ok, I know…very late…) and later my bikes I suddenly noticed just above my head a big wasp nest. Damn those bastards! Anders got stinged last week, it did hurt but no more than that. At least we know that he is not allergic and he now have a lot of respect for the wasps. Anyhow, I did not try to remove the nest, but if I sometimes would need to remove a nest I found a how-to for how to get rid of a wasp’s nest.

Bicycle Chain Maintenance

Leisure

Brought both my MTB’s along when visiting my in-laws this weekend to do some maintenance. Both bikes needed a good washing and some maintenance. First I had to take care of my commuter bike, I was unable to apply enough tension to it using the tension seeker. According to the user manual the best way to apply tension is upwards, but when I mounted the single speed kit earlier this year the chain was so long that it was not possible, so the chain had to run underneath the tension wheel. But now the chain had been stretched so much that I was not able to apply tension downwards either. So only solution was to cut the chain, a bit uncertain when doing that because I had to cut away two cufflinks which is about two cm as the picture shows.

The chain had to be of the cog in order for me to lock it together, but when done I could just put the chain in place by spinning the pedals like I did on my old bike when a boy and afterwards apply tension to it. So now as you can see, all according to the manual

Noticed when cleaning the chain to my Kona-bike that it was a bit damaged. A bit uncertain right now if I need to change the cassette as well because of this, must find out how to figure that out. The cufflink in the middle is damaged the most, the one to the right has got its share of beating as well, and the one to the left is as it should be

Inception together with Jonas

Leisure

Went to the movies yesterday to see Inception together with my brother Jonas (hopefully he will not be harmed by the fact that he is to young to see it 🙂 ). Two and a half hours packed with excitement I must say. Jonas summarized with saying “I enjoyed it, in it’s own way it was not to unreal”…and skipping some logical issues, he is totally right. An evening well worth spending in the movie theater!

[video:youtube:HilwtqaN4Gs]

Beta testing the new Sport Tracker application

Work/Geek

Sport Tracker was first an application provided by Nokia, but is now maintained by Sports Tracking Technologies. Cut’n paste from their webpage, here are the key facts

  • Sports Tracking Technologies was founded 2009 by Ykä Huhtala, Jussi Kaasinen and Antti Sorvari, after a successful spin-off from Nokia
  • Headquarters in Helsinki, Finland
  • Nokia Sports Tracker beta was released in 2007 by Nokia and it has millions of users worldwide
  • Sports Tracker for Nokia S60 5.0 touch phones was released by Sports Tracking Technologies in April 2010

As one of the lucky few responding very fast to a post on Facebook I got to beta test the new product. I had already downloaded the early-version, but had not tested it more than once since the GPS-connection failed. So I just kept on using the old version from Nokia since I considered it bulletproofed. Might have been just a one time issue, but since the webpage was not up and running enabling me to upload workouts I did not bother finding out.

But, now I have the updated version, and it is just running smoothly. Some updates to the user interface, but no big changes leaving me lost in menus and such. Some screenshots from the application

Starting a new workout, you now have even more activities to choose from, but as before also the opportunity to define you own.

The calendar as before, but they have added the line separating the weekend from the rest of the week, a small change, but making it even easier to view your workouts.

Here you see the summary of my workout today. A bit more info added, together with the map. Must admit I find for instance Google Maps more detailed than OpenStreetmap but this is really no issue since they don’t use OpenStreetmap on the webpage.

Testing replay of the workout on the phone. Must admit that I was not aware of this functionality, mainly because the previous Nokia version is translated to Norwegian and the word “gjentagelse” did not explain to me what it did, and I did not bother to find out either. But “replay” in the beta version made me interested…

Here you see the summary before uploading a workout to the webpage, also enabling you to add a description of the workout before uploading.

Now you also have the possibility to share your workout on Facebook, done directly from your phone while uploading.

As I am aware of right now the new version is missing something that I really liked in the old Nokia version, that being

  • The possibility to say that your new workout is based on an old route. I did for instance have to saved routes which I used frequently – to and from work. Not that I spent time comparing my times each day, but it would be fun comparing competitions from one year to another and having saved routes are easier than navigating based on dates to find what you will compare your workout against.
  • The possibility to share your workout while your doing it, meaning that someone can view your current position on the webpage. When out on singletracks all by myself, I enjoyed the possibility to share my current position, so if I where to have an accident and knocking myself unconscious the ones at home would be able to see approximately where I was. Luckily I have not needed this…yet 🙂

Would have been nice to test the HR-functionality as well, but I do not bother to buy new stash for my Polar watch, been using to gadgets for the past seven months and I’m ok with that.