If you are an ultra athlete that runs or rides for 24+ hours at a time, or if you just want to record a long activity without resorting to a less accurate recording mode you can rejoice!
I've been a Garmin user for years but some of my friends use Suunto watches and one feature I was always jealous of is their ability to charge the watch while recording an activity. This allows them to use the most accurate recording mode and still log long workouts or races as a single activity.
I even called Garmin Tech Support two days ago and their official line is that you can't charge the fenix 3 while recording an activity. Turns out they are wrong.
By default the fenix 3 is set to "Mass Storage" mode. This means that when you connect your watch to a computer via the USB charging cradle it will be treated like any other USB storage device and you can browse the contents of your watch from your computer. And of course your watch will also get charged while it is connected.
If you change this setting to "Garmin" mode you will get prompted to enable Mass Storage mode every time your watch is connected to the charging cradle. All you need to do is say "No" and your watch will get charged while it keeps on recording your activity.
To change this setting go here:
Settings > System > USB Mode
So why not always leave your watch in Garmin mode? Garmin Express can't see or sync your watch when it's in Garmin mode. The advantage to selecting Mass Storage is you don't need to press two buttons to enable Mass Storage every time you connect your watch to your computer.
Of course you can still sync activities by using the Garmin Connect Mobile app on your phone and pairing your phone with your watch and you can install some updates via Wi-Fi but if you want to update apps that you have installed on your fenix 3, you need Garmin Express.
hey martinBody:
Hello! This is me, Olga, from Moscow! Remembered me?Of course "meeting will happen" was a link to a place you don't want to visit.
How are you? Still got no message from you! I miss you actually! When we will go out for a date?
I'll be waiting for your suggestions and I hope that our meeting will happen as soon as possible!
We all love social networking services. They are after all, social; and sharing is one of the best things about the Internet.
For those of us that are physically active we also love to save and track and analyze our workouts. If you use a GPS when you walk/run/ride/swim and/or a heart rate monitor when you workout indoors and an online service this is easy. The benefit is you can compare your workouts to previous efforts, to other people, set goals and generate reports showing how much you did in a week/month/year and even get alerts when to buy new shoes or see how long you were sick or injured. Plus it's fun to comment on your friend's efforts.
The more into this you are, the more social networking and fitness services you are likely to use and it becomes a bit tedious to upload your activity to each one separately.
This is true no longer!
I'm no doubt a bit behind the curve on this but I recently figured out how to sync my activities between Garmin Connect, Strava, TrainingPeaks, Athletepath and MapMyFitness (which is also MapMyRun and MapMyRide) and MyFitnessPal.
I started with Garmin Connect because I use Garmin GPS devices when I run and ride but you can do all this if you use a Suunto GPS as well.
Full disclosure, I started down this path by reading a DC Rainmaker post and it seems that Strava is driving this so you might want to create an account with this service. It is free.
Garmin Connect --> Strava
Without connecting any device to your computer, start by logging into your Strava account and clicking the Upload button in the top, right corner of your browser. You should see this and at the bottom is a link to connect Strava and Garmin Connect.
Click the Get Started link under your type of device and follow the prompts.
Garmin Connect --> TrainingPeaks
https://home.trainingpeaks.com/garminconnect
Strava --> MyFitnessPal
http://blog.strava.com/train-smart-track-your-nutrition-with-myfitnesspal-7967/
MapMyFitness --> Athletepath
http://about.mapmyfitness.com/2014/10/athletepath/
Although I'm not seeing any of my MapMyFitness activities on Athletepath yet... hopefully that will get sorted out soon.
Garmin Connect --> MyFitnessPal
The end result is I only need to upload my activities to Garmin Connect and all the above accounts are synced. Neat. Now if only the custom name I give each activity would also sync. And the gear/shoes/bike.
This has been bugging me for MONTHS.
I have been wanting to display a bunch of thumbnail images in a footer on my blog and just was not able to do it. It was of course easy to insert images into the body of a post on my blog but the footer is just a code snippet that gets loaded at the bottom of every page so when you create it there is no way to insert images via the GUI.
No problem I thought, I’ll just upload the thumbnail images to Google Docs (now Google Drive) and reference them. And it worked… but only for a few minutes.
Turns out the URL for a Google Drive file is something like this here:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/UsMcbj2QLRo0hCCJokKE2-tyzan_64s63imheFoxpSXIAJlUBrcAFCbClVhbX1xRLEtrNveBx53tTcHILaDNKi4ePfBNnaDf8vUD3-fkZFRZ
Note that it does not end in .JPG or .PNG or whatever your image happens to be. That should have been my first clue. As it turns out the location of your image (or any other file you store in your Google Drive for that matter) changes from time to time and when it does, the referenced image of course ends up being a broken link on your site.
What do do?
I have a Flickr account so figured I would try that. Flickr is a fantastic picture hosting service that lets you share images in tons of ways. As it turns out, direct links is not one of those ways. :( Oh sure you can embed images (which is what I do with most of the pictures on my blog) and you can share pictures with any number of social networks but that doesn't help me out any. I just wanted a place to host images for free that I could reference in the HTML of my site.
Then a co-worker came to the rescue. He suggested I use photobucket as this service was designed to provide exactly what I was looking for. And you know what? He was right.
Not only can you share images you upload to photobucket in pretty much all same ways you can on Flicker, you can ALSO get a permanent, direct link to the file. Like this here:
http://i1256.photobucket.com/albums/ii490/itsnitram/Twitter.png
Note that this URL does end in .PNG which is exactly what I wanted. Mission accomplished.
At work we get a TON of junk email. I usually just select it all and hit delete but this morning we got an exceptionally entertaining message.
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL LETTER OF BEQUEST Do not treat as spam.... [No virus] OPEN ATTACHED FILE,Call me for more clarification
Body: Open attached file for full details...Paul Alexander
I've got to hand it to 'Paul', not only did he claim this email was not spam AND that it did not contain a virus, he was even so pro-active as to tell you to open the attachment. Nice. Paul gets an A for effort that's for sure. The only way to earn an A+ would have been to actually include a phone number.
Finally…
Ever since I started using My Google Apps account exclusively for my email I have been searching for a way to do this. I looked for months and in the past all the documentation I found led to dead links or terse statements that Google was not supporting a transfer at this time. But it appears that is no longer the case.
Go here to transfer your Google Voice account to your Google Apps account:
http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1378061
Google Voice is an amazing service. I have been using it for years now but acquired my number before I acquired my Google Apps account. It was always a drag to have to sign in to everything (except Google Voice) with one account and Google Voice with another.
As of this writing I just clicked the final button to confirm the transfer and the disclaimer says it could take 'up to five days' so here's hoping it works. I will post an update once it has transferred to confirm this works.
UPDATE - that didn't take long, just a couple of hours after clicking the transfer button it's done and my Google Voice number has been transferred from my Gmail account to my Google Apps account.
NOTE - the transfer dialogue never seemed to stop (see below) but it worked.
I love Google Voice - for so many reasons.
One cool feature is you can have it transcribe all voicemail and send you an email of the transcript. It's usually never perfect but most of the time it's close enough that I can figure it out without needing to call and actually check my voicemail. This is nice in situations like a noisy environment when you would not be able to hear your messages or when you are in a really quiet environment and are not supposed to make any noise.
Yesterday I got the following transcript sent to me:
"It was looking for Mark and I was looking for blowing, 20635564265. This is or will returning his call."
Looking for blowing…?! That's priceless.
It's been a while since I have used any of the restrooms at Volunteer Park and even so, I don't recall writing my phone number on the wall. And if I had, I would have used a much more exciting name than 'Mark'.
Predictably the real message was not nearly as scintillating as the transcript. I guess you can only trust technology so much. Still, this had Shelley and I in stitches for hours.
Funny how an innocent conversation can snowball into something big. And by 'big' I of course mean Martin buying more electronic gadgets and crap.
First some history. I have a lot of computers in our basement. They are ALL really old and they use a lot of electricity.
Almost a year ago I was talking to a friend about virtualization. We both work in IT (in the same office actually) and as virtualization was blowing up we were both saying how it would be great if we had an environment at home that we could play with.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and said friend is helping me shop for hardware to do just that.
We started looking seriously when I saw this article here in Maximum PC:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/build_it_340_ultra-budget_boxTalk about low budget! And this computer is still very capable. And it's relatively energy efficient. If you go with a less expensive case and add as much RAM as possible (16 GB without spending the bank on the motherboard) you end up with a perfectly fine, 64-bit, quad-core computer that can host up to seven virtual machines.
Add another identical computer and you have redundancy and the ability to fail them all over to perform hardware maintenance, etc.
But what about storage? You don't want to store the VMs on the physical computer that is hosting them because that 1) makes the virtual host more expensive and 2) makes your environment less redundant. The solution which was proposed by my friend was to get this.
Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 Cloud Edition
In case you did not know, Iomega was purchased by EMC and so this baby is certified for just about every kind of storage and protocol you can think of. Including all the features that come with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 which is what I will be using.
The ix2-200 has two drive bays and I will put 1 TB drives in each running RAID 1 (more redundancy!). Since I'm trying to go green the power saving features were really attractive and the street price is just $200.
The coolest thing is that for under $1,000 total cost (including tax and shipping) I will be able to swap six inefficient machines (some of which are not 64-bit compatible) for two efficient ones, upgrade all my servers to the latest versions of Windows (which requires 64-bit compatible hardware), save a lot of electricity and ditch a ton of clutter and associated hardware (KVM, extra monitor, etc.).
Can you say 'project'…? Oh yes. I'm looking forward to this one.
File this under best invention ever!
Shelley and I went down to our local IKEA store last weekend and one thing she specifically wanted to get was this milk-frother thingy. I was like, whatever... sounds pretty hokey to me. Boy, was I wrong. Check it out.
This bad boy runs on two AA batteries and works like a freaking champ.
Let me backup a bit and say that I love foamy milk drinks as much as the next guy but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend $5 for each one.
ASIDE – of course I spend way more than $5 on various other crap that I somehow justify but hey, this is my blog and in it this is highway robbery when it comes to a hot drink.
I love hot chocolate, hot tea, chai, plain old steamed milk with flavor, you get the picture. I also love all that is creamy, dairy, rich and smooth so it's natural I would love the foam you get in a latte. Enter the black magic that is technological advancements in consumerism.
Once we got back home we had this baby unwrapped and loaded with batteries faster than you can say, "Make mine a double tall non-fat half decaf with no sweetener and forget the whip please and you can skip the cup sleeve because I think they are silly and simply waste more paper." We poured some cold, non-fat milk into a cup, inserted this magic wand and let 'er rip.
In less than TEN SECONDS the cup was filled with frothy milk so stiff you could have mistaken it for icing used on a gingerbread house. No shit.
Did I mention that unlike what the IKEA web says it was only $1.99?! Oh yes. WE got one for home, Shelley got one for work and I will be mailing one to my sister. Thank god I am not lactose intolerant.
Way back when racers first started getting infatuated with technology the heart rate monitor and a pair of sweet, sweet Oakley Factory Pilot sun glasses were the peak of high tech.
These days it seems you can't even turn a pedal (and have it be worthwhile anyway) unless you are recording power, elevation gained and calories expended not to mention the ability to upload your data file to some online application that will tell you how much you rock/suck compared to the last time you rode this same route or compared to whoever else might be using the same online application.
I bought in for a while but then got sick of it all the beeps, numbers, gadgets, batteries and associated hardware. Interestingly, it seemed to me that pretty frequently the display acted as a governor and prevented me from going faster instead of helping me get faster. So for many years I was the guy with no dashboard. Sometimes I did not even wear a watch. I know, I know, "What is he thinking?"
That just changed.
First some history.
I've been meaning to get a power meter. After looking around it seems that the Garmin unit which will hopefully reside in the body of a Speedplay pedal makes the most sense for these reasons.
Not only is this particular power meter damn cool, power meters in general seem like a really good way to train smarter and more efficiently. And these days I am so used to not looking at a cyclometer that I bet I won't get intimidated by a high number. I can always put a piece of tape on the display. The release date for this has been pushed back countless times but the latest is, "The second half of 2011" whatever that means. Maybe I will get myself a cool Christmas present.
Back to today.
Although I rarely use a cyclometer I have fallen in love with using a GPS! My first experience was during TransPortugal in 2007 and I was blown away by how easy it was to use and how well it worked. For that event I got a Garmin GPSmap 60CSx
and was sold because of it's accuracy and durability and resistance to rain/sand/impact/etc.
All power meters require a head unit to display numbers and it seems like a shame to get a power meter and not have all the basic stuff like speed elevation, etc. These days a GPS is so accurate and not needing any wires is a dream. Plus you can easily move it from bike to bike without the need to re-calibrate anything. Not needing to attach a magnet to all your wheels is also a huge bonus.
So I just ordered a Garmin Edge 500.
The only feature this unit is missing is the visual map so I guess it would not be so good for hiking or getting lost in the woods on a mountain bike. Otherwise it seems ideal. Besides, I still have the 60CSx.
Martin meet 2011, 2011 meet Martin.
Especially when you are talking televisions it seems.
One of the cool things about building a new house is that you invariably will fill it with at least some new stuff. One of those new items will probably be a television. Shelley and I love watching movies and since it's so damn easy to connect your laptop to your television and since Netflix is so darn cheap I was thinking it would be wicked cool to get as big a screen as we can afford.
A friend at work volunteered some info that made me think twice about going all in for a television; it was this viewing distance chart.
So unless we want to shove our couch back into the dining table it appears that our existing 42" television will be adequate. Shit. There goes another technology wonderland fantasy up in smoke.
it won't stop me from looking at 50" models and contemplating moving the old television into the basement of course but now I will be shopping for quality instead of quantity.
How un-American.
You gotta love technology. Remember when you first started using email and YOU were 'that guy' who sent all the lame chain letters to all your friends? Then it was your aunt or your grandmother but there was always someone just discovering what you already knew.
This just happened to me on Facebook.
I got a friend request. It looked like this was a suggestion from another friend. When I have no clue who this person is or how they found me I usually follow up with a message and ask. In this case I said something like, "Hey, how do you know me or of me? Looks like Jeff recommend me to you, what is the common interest?" Here is what I just got back.
[some name]February 9, 2011 at 2:24pm
Re: friend request follow-up
I am not sure, I went to high school with jeff. I am very new to facebook and may have clicked something I was not supposed to. My real name is [some other name].
Priceless.
In the age of the iPhone 4, a bucket of brass balls can-do phone, and 4G, consumers are presented with phenomenal advancements not just in computing technology but in form factor as well. You can now literally hold in your hand exponentially more computing power than it took to send astronauts to the moon and return them safely to earth.
Of course technology marches on relentlessly and as soon as one manufacturer comes out with the latest Swiss Army knife of a device they are one-upped by another.
The first in this trend was the Pomegranate. Never before has so much 'stuff' been combined in one device.
Leave it to the German engineers to exceed even this with the xphone:
For those of you that don't speak German I will spell it out for you.
God I love toys.
Some history – waaaaay back in 2008 Facebook was what all the cool kids were using. Friendster was already collecting dust and Myspace seemed to have lost its luster. And classmates...? Whatever.
I was browsing my Sent Items folder this morning looking for something when I stumbled on this gem. I sent the last correspondence in this conversation on 12 February, 2008.
Apparently I had decided to try out this thing called Facebook and after signing up and not understanding it I wanted out. Hahahaha... I crack myself up. Anyway, here is that email:
Thanks Diego,
I just signed up to see what all the fuss is about and don’t use facebook so please do totally delete my account and confirm that this has been done with a reply.
Thanks,
Martin
> -----Original Message-----
> From: info+ngexxss@facebook.com [mailto:info+ngexxss@facebook.com]
> Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 8:46 PM
> To: Martin Criminale
> Subject: Re: Account Settings Help: How do I delete my account?
>
> Hi Martin,
>
> If you deactivate your account, your profile and all information
> associated with it are immediately made inaccessible to other Facebook
> users. What this means is that you effectively disappear from the
> Facebook service. However, we do save your profile information
> (friends, photos, interests, etc.), so if you want to reactivate at
> some point, your account will look just the way it did when you
> deactivated. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary
> reasons and expect their information to be there when they return to
> the service.
>
> If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your
> account deleted, let us know, and we will take care of this for you.
> Keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or
> retrieve any of the content or information you have added.
>
> Thanks for contacting Facebook,
>
> Diego
> User Operations
> Facebook
>
>
> -----Original Message to Facebook-----
> From: Facebook [my work email address]
> To: info@facebook.com
> Subject: Account Settings Help: How do I delete my account?
>
> Please tell me how I can permanently delete (not deactivate) my
> facebook account.
>
> username: [my work email address]
>
> Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;
> InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR
> 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR
> 3.0.04506.648)
> -----End Original Message to Facebook-----
