Posted December 26th, 2011 @ 11:46am by Erik J. Barzeski
As I've mentioned here on the blog, I look forward to the day I can leave my iPhone in my car or at my house when I go running.
And though I'm reasonably healthy, far too many "reasonably healthy" people are hit by cars or suffer some sort of other medical emergency. It's not common, but it happens enough that if you can spend $20 to help medical professionals dealing with an unknown person (no wallet, no phone), you do it.
There are a few products out there which do this. Prior to today I'd only ever heard of Road ID. Road ID is a wrist band you can wear which lists your name, your medical emergencies, and names and phone numbers for your "ICE" (In Case of Emergency) contacts.
Just today I found what I consider a better solution: the 1BandID. Rather than being a separate wrist band, the 1BandID clips to your watch (like my Garmin ForeRunner 610). If it's essentially permanently affixed to your watch, you're far less likely to forget it or leave it at home, and that's kind of the point of having a little ID and information on you out in the world.
The one downside? Road ID has a nice system which lets you store your emergency information online. This lets you list more information than you can fit on the ID itself and it lets you update the information as frequently as you wish. I wish 1BandID did that, but at the same time, I'm not sure how many emergency personnel are going to log in to a website to get your medical information.
1BandID has a Facebook page here. I got the image above from this woman's blog. And finally, there's a good review from the "gadget guy" of the running/cycling/swimming world, Ray Maker here.
Posted December 25th, 2011 @ 10:19pm by Erik J. Barzeski
"The truth, that many people never understand until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt."
- Thomas Merton
P.S. Yeah, I know, great post for Christmas, eh? I will say this: it was our first non-strobed Christmas in several years. I relented. I gave in.
Posted December 25th, 2011 @ 04:03pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I know, the K really doesn't do anything post-2009, but whatever. 🙂
This year, another low-key Christmas. Still at our house, but once again, snacks instead of a "meal." Meatballs, crackers, cheese, veggies, some ice cream later at night.
Nat got a Kinect, because despite her saying "no, I don't want one" I told Carey to get one anyway because I figured she'd change her mind. She did - a week later - and we didn't give the Kinect to her until she sweated it a little and said she was disappointed in what she got. Next year, we feed the hungry or something, because it's starting to get a bit silly.
I got some running stuff we'd bought the week before at the Adidas outlet. And entirely too many chocolate covered cherries. 🙂 I've dubbed it Project Fatty, but that's okay. I plan to see how long they can sit on my desk before I eat them.
Posted December 24th, 2011 @ 10:58am by Erik J. Barzeski
Yeah, some people run 100 miles in a row. And there are some people out there who run farther than that.
Not really something I'm ever looking to do, and I think I look at people who run more than 26.2 miles with equal parts admiration, curiosity, and wondering just how insane they have to be. 🙂
Posted December 23rd, 2011 @ 02:50pm by Erik J. Barzeski
The Verge, which many feel is the best tech site going these days, publishes an awesomearticle on Kickstarter.
I've heard of every project mentioned except the two biking ones. If the iPod Nano had a way of always showing the clock (not requiring a touch), I'd have bought an iPod Nano and a TikTok or LunaTik.
Recently, I've looked at (but haven't helped to fund) the Elevation Dock (it's simply not that difficult for me to plug my phone in to my Mac Pro or the power outlet by my nightstand) and the Underfuse (I have an armband, or a pocket, and soon I won't be running with my iPhone).
Posted December 21st, 2011 @ 09:32am by Erik J. Barzeski
I've managed to pick up a Garmin Forerunner 610 with Heart Rate Monitor and a Foot Pod. Oh, and I grabbed the cloth strap as well for $19 because I've heard a few horror stories about the pins in the normal plastic watch band falling out. I may just pick up some LocTite or something if the band is fine.
The foot pod can measure your pace when you're on a treadmill (apparently treadmills are often quite inaccurate) and it can be calibrated by either running around a track once or twice or right off the GPS signal. But I'm looking at it more for the purpose of tracking cadence.
Next week I'll be on week six of the now eight-week Run5K (née Couch to 5K) app. Day three is "run for 20:00." Somewhat oddly, week seven reverts to running and walking ((The walks at the end are followed by only brief runs of a minute or two.)) before returning to runs of 25:00, 28:00, and 30:00 in week eight.
I'm somewhat anal about getting the times right (I don't want to mess up and short myself some time), so I plan to keep my iPhone running the app for the next few weeks, but I think in week eight I'll finally ditch it and just use the watch for my runs, and from there on out.
Posted December 20th, 2011 @ 08:39am by Erik J. Barzeski
There is no god and that's the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
At first I wasn't too sure about that. But religion came about as a way of explaining all kinds of things which are now explained through science. So perhaps if both science and religion were wiped out, we'd be where we are now eventually again. That'd just be history repeating itself - literally.
Posted December 19th, 2011 @ 02:57pm by Erik J. Barzeski
This video is meant to show something else. What it says to me is that there's quite likely tens, hundreds, or thousands of other forms of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and that it's incredibly obnoxious of us to consider ourselves alone in the world.
It also says to me that there's no possible way the "God" many people believe in can be right, because if there are other forms of life elsewhere, then they likely have their own "god" as well, and so ours isn't really possible (nor theirs).
Posted December 18th, 2011 @ 11:51am by Erik J. Barzeski
A few weeks ago, I picked up an olloclip. It's a three-in-one camera lens attachment for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. I've been impressed with the quality of the iPhone 4S cameras, so I jumped at the chance to try out the olloclip.
The olloclip is a small attachment made of lightweight aluminum, reasonable quality glass, and a sturdy plastic. The three lenses are contained on the two sides - fisheye on one, a wide angle lens on the other, and a macro mode lens beneath the wide angle lens (you physically unscrew the wide angle lens to expose the macro lens beneath).
I was impressed with the fit and finish of the olloclip - it was snug but fit nicely on all the iPhone 4 and 4S models I tried, including those with some thin screen protectors. It's a bit annoying to have to take the case off, but there's really nothing that could be done about that. The lens aligned perfectly with every iPhone camera I tried. It's simple to put on, remove, and to flip around or use. There's no software, either.
Posted December 17th, 2011 @ 10:57am by Erik J. Barzeski
My subscription to R.E.M.'s fan club has always been up for renewal around Thanksgiving, which is a dangerous time if you want to get the "Christmas single" package that makes the fan club worth the $10 all alone (or more).
This year I got the package and noticed my renewal date had passed, so I visited the site to renew again. I knew that R.E.M. had essentially disbanded, but thought that they might still send newsletters or something.
Posted December 16th, 2011 @ 06:50pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I persevered and finally got iTunes Match to work.
After it uploaded a ton of songs, I created a playlist as suggested here and, over the next day or so, deleted and downloaded higher quality versions of my iTunes songs.
I'll eventually go through and weed out the duplicates. I've seen a few.
Will I renew in a year? I don't think so. Then again, having all of my songs available on my iPhone might just do it. This year it was a no-brainer. Next year, less so.
Posted December 15th, 2011 @ 08:04am by Erik J. Barzeski
Recently I noticed that the Couch to 5K app I've been using was updated. The name was changed to "Run 5K" and the week I was in - week 5 - changed.
Thanks for your email. Sorry for any confusion. You're correct that the Couch to 5k name is trademarked by The Active Network, and they decided that other companies could no longer use the name or the training program (yes, the Cool Running program), so we've changed the name of our program and created an improved training program. Please let us know if you have any questions about the program. It's a shorter program - 8 weeks, instead of 9, so if you want to continue on your 9-week plan you can start one week earlier. In your case, start in Week 4 to continue your training.
Posted December 14th, 2011 @ 01:35pm by Erik J. Barzeski
"I have discovered, in twenty years of moving around the ball park, that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats."
Posted December 13th, 2011 @ 03:38pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Riddle me this: why doesn't Netflix allow me to embed one of their streaming movies on a web page? For example, suppose I like the movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead ((I do, by the way, very very much.)). Why can't I embed the movie on a page, recommend it to people, and let people watch it right here if they have a Netflix account?
It would seem to be a good thing for Netflix. People could promote videos they like and Netflix may get some word-of-mouth advertising. Is it because they're worried about the advertisements I could put around the movie, or something? Or maybe the studios care about that kind of stuff?
Just today I found what I consider a better solution: the 1BandID. Rather than being a separate wrist band, the 1BandID clips to your watch (like my Garmin ForeRunner 610). If it's essentially permanently affixed to your watch, you're far less likely to forget it or leave it at home, and that's kind of the point of having a little ID and information on you out in the world.
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