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rubiTrack…

I noticed some slightly odd behaviour within rubiTrack when it was reporting “stopped” time, such as at lights and whatnot… for example I stopped the other day for a couple of minutes because of a problem with my bike but it showed as 1 second which wasn’t right…

I posted on the rubiTrack forum on Sunday and hey presto after sending the developer an example file shortly after 8pm yesterday I received a response at 3:50 this morning with a link to an update! Absolutely incredible service, I’d have been quite happy if I’d heard back in a few days but this is superb attention…

If you have a Mac and are looking for a fantastic piece of software for GPS activity tracking then I cannot recommend rubiTrack highly enough – it offers a wealth of features and new feature requests are welcomed on the forums…

02/03/2010 robert General Comments (0) Permalink

Multitasking…

At last, a sensible post on the topic of iPhone/iPad multitasking: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/18/inside_apples_ipad_multitasking.html

18/02/2010 robert General Comments (0) Permalink

new car…

never had a BMW before, picking up a 325i SE Coupé next week

i’m rather looking forward to having a clutch again despite the DSG gearbox in my GTI being absolutely fantastic there is something missing without a clutch, a distinct lack of connection to the engine and the road…

12/02/2010 robert General Comments (0) Permalink

A very bright let down..?

Father Christmas was very kind and brought me a new light for my bike… An Exposure Race MaXx 2… it’s absolutely bonkers in terms of brightness, 480 lumens (which is a fancy way of saying “don’t look into the light, seriously, you’ll blind yourself”)…

Charging time is about 8 hours, and from that it’ll run in the brightest mode for 3 hours, however, a few days after Christmas I went to show someone and the bloody thing didn’t come on… hmm me thinks… so I charged it again then ran it for 3 hours and it then ran for another hour or so which according to the chap at the service department it shouldn’t do… it then lost all of its charge again!

At £225 RRP this is certainly not what I expected so I sent it back at a cost of £7 (which is 3% of the RRP, which wasn’t refunded!) and waited, and waited and waited… three weeks it’s taken and all they did was replace the battery and o-rings… not that impressed to be honest… Ron in their service department was a very nice chap but there didn’t seem to be much urgency which I found odd considering it’s winter and therefore the time when a light on yer bike is sort of necessary and there were even times when I called them and was told that it was “on the bench with a tag that says ‘pass’ but the chap dealing with it isn’t here so I don’t know what’s happening”… Phil (right) & Stuart (left) in my bike shop (apparently this is where Father Christmas sourced the light) only have good things to say about Exposure and it was on their recommendation that I went for this not a Fenix torch with a lockblock, I’m in no doubt the Exposure light is absolutely incredible and the illumination is insane but caveat emptor, if it goes wrong then hassle them on the phone daily.

Robert.

07/02/2010 robert Riding
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Hayabusa band…

Rich, a mate at work is the drummer in a band called Hayabusa, they’ve just released an EP which you can get either from iTunes or Amazon… have a listen and if you like what you hear then why not download the album :)

A few of us from work went to see them at their launch party at The Roadhouse in Manchester last friday, t’was absolutely stonking…

Good luck with the EP Rich :)

They have a MySpace page with gig dates and whatnot…

02/02/2010 robert General Comments Off Permalink

Manchester to Blackpool to Manchester

I’m riding the Manchester to Blackpool charity event again on the 11th of July this year… I’m raising money for The Christie again so if you can spare a few quid it’d be much appreciated…

More details on my JustGiving page including the reason for the odd title of this post…

Cheers – Robert…

16/01/2010 robert Riding Comments Off Permalink

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year 2010!

31/12/2009 robert General Comments Off Permalink

Merry Christmas…

Merry Christmas

24/12/2009 robert General Comments Off Permalink

GPS tracking software for the Mac

I have the Garmin Edge 305 GPS gizmo for my bike and it’s fantastic… it uploads to their own website fine (but the site is a little slow, completely flash based and at times I find it somewhat annoying that it keeps opening new windows all the time) but it’s not possible to compare rides or any of those fancy things…

So on my Internet travels I found some software called Ascent which I downloaded and had a nose around, very good software that has some nice features but when I went to buy it the online shopping experience was awful, it used kagi.com and I could deselect a feature I didn’t want so I cancelled the order… a short while later whilst browsing their forum I spotted a reference to rubiTrack and had a look… initially it didn’t look as good as Ascent but having used it for a short while it’s absolutely fantastic!

If you are in the market for some GPS training software then I would strongly recommend rubiTrack – it’s fantastic…

There are some missing features, it’d be nice to be able to create my training programmes in a single app (currently I’d use Garmin Training Centre for that) but I mentioned the ability to show different metrics (speed, altitude etc.) in different measures, i.e. speed in MPH, altitude in metres and within days there was a posting offering a new version that included the feature… wonderful customer service :)

It’s not free but at well under £25 it’s good value and keeps making me smile as I discover more features the developers don’t seem to sing much about…

Robert…

25/11/2009 robert Internet
Mac
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Global Warming…

I’ve just read this article on the register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/30/climate_fools_day/

I get a hard time whenever I make statements like “the earth really doesn’t care about the 500 years it takes for a plastic bag to rot away” or “why does nobody ever consider the fact that we know there have been ‘ice ages’ and no doubt ‘hot ages’ too”… My understanding is that the planet earth is about 4,500,000,000 years old so that means the bag will be gone in around a nine millionth of the earths life – in relative terms to my own life that’s about 0.00000405 years or 127 seconds! So it’d completely vanish and be gone in two minutes relative to my 36.5 years of age, personally I consider this to be virtually no time at all, I could easily train my body so I could hold my breath for that length of time!

I firmly believe there is so much nonsense peddled by “experts” and the media which appears to be the primary influence on what we think hardly ever seems to challenge what these “experts” say – the register article above is well written and well considered… I for one would gladly chip in a few quid for some myth busting marketing to go up against the truly appalling advert the article mentions…

I’m quite happy to recycle where it makes sense (unlike here in Trafford where we are expected to wash everything before it goes in the recycling bins – surely there is a negative impact in terms of water usage, chemicals in the washing up liquid or dishwasher tablets?) but this scaremongering bollocks should stop!

Just my two pennies – Robert…

30/10/2009 robert View Finder Comments Off Permalink