Tue
Sep 30
8:22pm
Thought -
Think I might be suffering from Osteitis Pubis, brought on by my half-marathon training. Probably shouldn’t do the half now. Not happy.
Sun
Sep 28
6:25pm
I don’t like my Nike+ SportBand
My positive review of the Nike+ SportBand the other day must have offended the karma police for some reason, as halfway through today’s 14km run the display carked it.
Can’t read that display? No, nor can I.
And a quick Google search for “nike sportband display broken” takes me to the Nike+ forums, where there’s a thread titled “Sportband Display gone bad” with 9 pages of bad experiences.
It seems that sweat and/or condensation is the culprit in most cases. I can vouch for that - I have to unhook the device from the band and wipe the sweat off it when I’m done running. Some forum posters have reported that wearing it backwards (difficult to explain, but trust me) seems to help. My opinion is that it’s the small hole on the underside that’s presumably there to let sweat and moisture out actually lets it in instead.
Certainly there’s a design flaw there somewhere.
Strangely, the rest of it still seems to work. It recorded all 14km of my run. Hmmmm.
I bought mine at Foot Locker Geelong, so I’ll be back there next weekend for a replacement, I think. Fingers crossed that they come to the party.
Sat
Sep 27
12:52pm
Thought -
A 3ft flathead, or possibly shark, swam right underneath me in the surf this morning. Slightly freaky.
Thu
Sep 25
2:34pm
links for 2008-09-24
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Article about pro photographer David Burnett. Mentions his Holga camera
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Talks about the need to enable interaction on web sites, not just provide good content. A few years old but still relevant.
Wed
Sep 24
8:34pm
Gmail on your own domain
I’ve just successfully set up Gmail on my martinyoung.com.au domain. That’s not particularly relevant to the person emailing me, but it’s definitely better for me: I get all the benefits of Gmail (7gb of storage in the cloud, great spam filtering, IMAP etc etc) but with an @martinyoung.com.au address instead of an @gmail address.
If you want to have a crack yourself the instructions are here. I’ll be recommending it to my web clients - it renders the crappy webmail that you get via your hosting provider almost completely redundant.
On the web it’s the same as Gmail, but I can (and am about to) set up the account in Mac Mail to sit alongside my other email accounts. It’s just as easy to do that in Outlook.
The key is Google Apps. Read more about that here.
Wed
Sep 24
12:22pm
Thought -
Why don’t clothes shops organise their stock by size? Would be much easier and faster for shoppers
Wed
Sep 24
9:17am
Is free public Wi-Fi starting to gather steam?
Interesting piece by David Braue on one of the zdnet blogs last week about Internode’s decision to set up its South Australian Wi-Fi hotspot network to give free access to iPhone users.
Unlike Telstra and Optus, (Internode) doesn’t actually sell the iPhone, or any phone. So while those two carriers have big Wi-Fi networks just crying out for users, Internode actually has no incentive to provide free access to its Wi-Fi networks for any reason at all.
Telstra and Optus already offer their iPhone customers free access to their own Wi-Fi hotspots (I didn’t know that before I read the piece), and the phone supposedly switches automatically to use them. I’m not sure if that same Wi-Fi is also available to customers who want to use their laptop/iPod Touch, but throw in the freebie hotspots around town and there’s free Wi-Fi all over the place.
But, as Braue points out, seamless Wi-Fi nirvana is still a bit of a pipedream at the moment:
There is, of course, a major issue of geography — a customer of one telco could hardly expect to seamlessly roam onto another telco’s Wi-Fi network. Yet, with the right peering agreements, it could.
Something like the 3 / Telstra arrangement could work. That lets 3 customers use 3’s 3G network when in range and Telstra’s 2.5G network when not. Maybe a monthly plan that includes 1gb of home carrier data and 500mb of roaming data?
I’m interested to see what’s going to happen in this space in the next 6 months. If the telcos start bundling in Wi-Fi peering with their phone plans, then the free Wi-Fi in cafes and bars from start-ups like Cafescreen might not survive. Their business model is advertising-driven, so they might be OK, but if they die I’ll be looking to my current telco 3 to be one of those offering Wi-Fi peering so that I can continue to use my iPod Touch and my laptop when I’m out and about. If they don’t, or can’t, it’s bye-bye 3.
(This post published courtesy of the free Cafescreen Wi-Fi in Cafe on Collins, 303 Collins St!) :-)
Tue
Sep 23
2:33pm
Mon
Sep 22
10:00pm
I like my Nike+ SportBand
I can’t find too many positive posts about the Nike+ SportBand on the web, so I’m here to tell you that I like mine.
Sure, every now and again it thinks I’m running some sort of fast/slow/fast/fast/slow tempo on my runs (although it’s been better since I calibrated it), but it still gets the distance and time right, so if all you’re after is a simple distance/time recorder and some motivation to keep running, it’s ideal.
You could buy a fancy Garmin thing with the optional shoe pod, but you’d be spending at least twice as much of your hard-earned on it. There are other distance recorders out there, but they’re pricey too. I’m not a serious runner and I don’t want to spend too much cash on running gear. The SportBand’s cheap and it works OK, so I don’t see why there are so many knockers out there. Is it a Nike hate thing?
Mine’s fine, I trust it to record my distances and speed as accurately as can be expected from an AUD$70 device, and I’d recommend it as a good motivational tool to recreational runners who don’t already own a Nano or 2G Touch (’cos they should buy the SportKit).
So there.
Sun
Sep 21
3:17pm
Feeling good about the upcoming half marathon
Last week I had a couple of ordinary training runs and was starting to get anxious about my ability to complete the Half in a few weeks time.
But on Friday morning I ran 13km, the furthest I’d ever run, and felt good afterwards. Then today I ran 16km in 1hr 31, and this arvo I also feel pretty good.
The confidence is building that I’ll make it.
