A Simple Life of Luxury

We got an energy monitor earlier this week and it has made fairly interesting reading. We’ve never been frivolous with our energy usage and do generally switch off lights when they aren’t in use (although I’m better at that than Anna), and don’t leave the TV on standby etc. but having the monitor has made us that extra bit careful.

We thought we probably use a fair bit of electricity simply because ‘living at the end of the line’ means we don’t have gas so all of our cooking and heating comes from electricity. In addition my work as a freeelance web designer means I work from home so as well as having a computer, two monitors and various hard drives etc. running all day long I’m also making cups of coffee all the time and generally using electricity during the day.

On top of all that the weather station that I run is operational 24 hours a day. As well as the weather station console, it has its own dedicated computer, monitor and router which is on 24 hours a day uploading data to the internet at minute intervals.

So, we don’t know how much electricity most people use so have little to compare our usage against but it is interesting to see which appliances are the most power hungry. Every time we switch something off the monitor shws us how much energy (and money) we are saving. It has worked as we did go around the house seeing if there was anything we could turn off. The VCR was switched off completely as we very rarely use it. We left it on before as resetting the clock on it was a pain, but we never use it to record things anymore and it saves a few watts, so off it went.

My computer and its peripherals use about 200-250 watts whereas before I would leave it on if I was popping out for a short period of time I now tend to turn it off. I haven’t experimented with how much energy sending it to sleep saves yet.

There are of course certain things we can’t turn off. The fridge has to stay on, the smoke alarms have little lights on them so must use some electricity albeit a very small amount. The weather station computer stays on as does the digibox because resetting it takes a few minutes and it is often set to record various things. We may however put it on a timer plug so that it turns off between midnight and 6am as it is rare that we record things during those hours. The cooker stays on too simply because we use the clock on it to tell the time and Anna’s alarm clock is always on as well. Other than that, I think the only other things constantly drawing power is the doorbell (which has a little light on it) and ironically the energy monitor! All in all we manage to get our energy consumption down to just over 100 Watts at its base level and when we are in and using the TV, computer etc it is usually up around 500-600 watts.

As soon as we start cooking or using the tumble drier then it obviously soars. The microwave, kettle cooker and toaster can really get things going and so far I think we’ve managed to hit around 5Kw as a maximum. All interesting in a geeky way but it does help us do our little bit for the environment and probably more of an incentive to people, especially at the moment with rising fuel prices, helps us save some money too.

If we manage to save 15% our electricity supplier will give us £15. How much electricity do you use??

Phew, I’ve just climbed down from the telegraph pole after repairing the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station. A few days ago the humidity sensor failed and was produing a 100% humidity reading despite the fact that this obviously wasn’t the case.

A qucik e-mail to McMurdo who are the UK distributors of Davis Instruments weather stations and the fault was diagnosed and a fix initiated. This was the 3rd temperature and humidity sensor to have failed and the new, upgraded digital versions wouldn’t work with the SIM (Sensor Interface Module) that I had. The answer therefore was to upgrade the SIM board to the new version so that I could also upgrade to the digital humidity sensor.

The parts arrived this morning and I’ve now changed them all over and everything seems (fingers crossed) to be back up and running and providing accurate weather data once again. It meant changin quite a bit of the guts of the station, all that is left of the original now is the rain gauge, anemometer cups and the solar panel. It’s now on its 4th temperature and humidity sensor and 3rd SIM board… The joys of running a live weather station!

As usual McMurdo were really helpful and helped me get the weather station back up and running in no time.

Sometimes I hate computers!

My broadband connection has been getting slower and slower over the past few days and eventually ground to a halt last night… Couldn’t do anything, not even retrieve e-mails. I’ve been on the phone to my ISP and submitting support tickets etc. but with no solution. In the end this morning I got an old computer, old router and loads of old cables out from the loft. Switched all my other computers, routers etc. off and decided to try with a completely different set of hardware, cables and even different BT outlet socket in the wall.

Connected it all up, switched on and would you believe it, it worked… I didn’t expect that, but now it seemed as though there was a problem with my hardware somewhere.

So, I connected the new (old) computer to the BT socket I was using before. That worked. Next step was to connect the new (old) hardware through the surge protector and splitter I was using before. That worked.

Next step in the chain was the cable between the splitter a the router. That worked. Could it be the router? I swapped the routers back and that worked OK… Now, the only difference between the initial (not working) set-up and the new set-up was the ethernet cable, the computer itself and the fact that the phone wasn’t connected… I connected the phone and all was well. Changed the ethernet cable back to the one I was using before. All fine. So, I connected the computer that were originally connected back to the router. Started them up and connected at a decent speed (Well, decent for this neck of the woods anyway… A crawl for most people!).

Basically everything was exactly the same as it had been before. Not one component has changed, but now it works and before it didn’t… Maybe it was just a fluke and my ISP fixed the problem whilst I was swapping hardware around? Maybe its just a temporary fix and I’ll be back to pulling my hair out again in 10 minutes. But at the moment, fingers crossed, touch wood an any other superstitious things I should do I seem to have an internet connection again and can get on with some work.

An earlier post all about keeping motivated with respect to keeping fit suggested the purchase of some gadgets. the idea being that spending money on them will mean you have to go out for a run to justify the expense, and the new gadget will encourage you out so that you can play with it. Well, I took my own advice the other day when Apple dropped the prices of their iPod shuffles and bought myself one. OK, OK I know, I already had a 30GB iPod video so why do I need a shuffle as well?

Apart from the fact that I couldn’t resist it especially at less than £30, the shuffle is my better for running and cycling with simply because of its size. I’m able to clip it on anywhere and get out there for a run without having to wear clothes with pockets in to fit my bigger iPod or even worrying about breaking it.

Unfortunately my back has been hurting a bit lately, so I haven’t had much chance to use the shuffle yet, but I will do soon.

Ever since starting geocaching I have wanted to dispense with the paper cache description and find a streamlined way of paperless geocaching. As yet there isn’t a GPSr that allows you to simply visit the geocaching.com website, do a search for parituclar caches and then upload all of their details to the GPS device. As far as I’m concerned it is about time that Garmin and Groundspeak teamed up to produce such a device as it would make things so much easier. Of course, I’m sure they will, but no doubt it will be too expensive for me and Mac support probably won’t be great.

However, now that I have a new GPSr things have improved a little. My previous experiences were time-consuming to say the least and not ideal. I had a Garmin eTrex, but no cable to connect it to my Mac so a typical geocaching expedition would mean first visiting geocaching.com to find caches in the area I was about to visit, printing out the cache descriptions for each of these and then manuakly entering the co-ordinates into the eTrex. Once out looking for them we would have pieces of paper everywhere and of course only a few of the caches loaded into the eTrex.

Now that I have a Forerunner 305 can at least connect my Mac to it so can upload co-ordinates without having to enter them manually. This is an improvement, and coupled with macCaching and an iPod I can now go paperless geocaching… It isn’t quite ideal. For a start the Forerunner isn’t really designed for use as a geocaching machine and can only store 100 waypoints. Secondly the cache descriptions are on my iPod not the GPSr which means taking both out into the hills with me. It is still btter than it was though and here is the procedure

1. Log onto gecoaching.com and create a pocket query for the area you are about to visit. I tell the query to return 100 results (as this is all the Forerunner will hold) closest to my destination, and select caches that aren’t mine and I haven’t already found. i also limit it to active caches and exclude events etc. Once this has been done I get email a gpx file containing the details of these caches.

2. Open the gpx file using MacCaching (A Cache management database for the Mac.)

3. Export this list of caches from MacCaching to both my Forerunner and my iPod. This gives me all 100 coordinates on the forerunner and all of the descriptions of the caches within the Notes setion of my iPod

Now, when I get to where I’m going I simply switch on my Forerunner, go to the navigate screen and lookfor the nearest caches. This gives me the caches GC number which I can look up on my iPod to find the description.

Much better than using my eTrex, but still fairly limiting by the fact that 100 caches doesn’t actually cover a huge area in some locations. I’ve just done a pocket query for an area of North Wales that I shall be visiting soon, but 100 caches doesn’t come close to covering the area. Still, 100 caches is more than enough to keep me busy!

I’ve recently decided to try to get a little fitter again, so as well as buying some gadgets I wanted some software to track my progress (or lack of progress as it may turn out to be). I’ve been looking at various applications for the Mac and evaluating them so thought I’d share my thoughts on some of them here. Hopefully it will give others in my position an idea of which applications will be best for them.

My main objective was to use the software to record any training sessions so that I could look back over time and see improvements. keeping such a journal also helps with motivation. My first port of call was a journal and scheduler on the Nike website. It was very nice, had a nice Flash based interface and did many of the things I wanted it to do, but really I wanted to be able to store the data locally so the next apps I looked at were iSmartTrain and WeightMania.

iSmartTrain
iSmartTrain allows you to manually enter data about your training sessions, or download them from a compatible (Polar) Heart Rate Monitor. It has a nice Mac style interface, (although it isn’t a full cocoa-based app) and I really like the main calendar view which allows you to see all of your sessions colour coded according to the type of activity (running, swimming, cycling etc.). The calendar view then has a nice weekly summary showing your weekly stats for training duration, distance, number of sessions, calories burned and a few other bits if info.

Also in its favour is the way it presents the graphs, allowing you to see most of this data in a nice clear format so that you can see the number of sessions, distance, time etc for each activity over a set period of weeks or months. All very clear and easy to use and at first I thought this would be the package for me.

iSmartTrain also allows you schedule events for the future, further helping to keep you motivated.

However, after the purchase of my Forerunner 305 (GPS and Heart Rate Monitor) iSmartTrain became less attractive as it isn’t compatible with Garmin devices and doesn’t have any mapping facility to show you the routes you have been on. For those without such a device though it could be ideal.

WeightMania

WeightMania is a huge app with so many options it is difficult to know where to start. More than just a training log, it is a complete lifestyle log allowing you to record not only your activities but also every single calorie, gram of fat, carbohydrate and anything else you eat as well as probably every bodily function you could possibly think of! It really does have it all, including a huge database of food types with their typical nutritional values. It also has tools such as body fat calculators, BMI calculators, BRM calculators and many more, and even goes as far as having recipe managers and grocery lists. For those of you who want to record and manage your entire lifestyle this tool does it all.

The Mac version has a nice modern interface and despite its numerous functions is relatively easy to use. You can of course just ignore the bits you aren’t interested in if you wish.

For me it was just overkill though and once again without compatiility for GPS mapping and connectivity to the Forerunner it wasn’t quite right for me. I also felt that I would spend so much time trying to record everything that there would be little time left to actually get out there and do some training.

Garmin Training Centre

To help keep me motivated I bought myself a new gadget, a Forerunner 305 GPS and heart rate monitor, armed with this my requirements from my software app changed a little. I now needed compatibility with the Forerunner 305 and something that would take advantage of some of its features. Garmin Training Centre software is a free download, so that made it attractive to start with, but once I started playing with it I found it a little limiting.

The maps produced are basic to say the least and the overall appearance and usability isn’t great. It is also lacking in features and just not quite up to scratch. I have to admit to not having explored its potential fully, but part of that is simply because it didn’t inspire me.

Ascent
Ascent is described as ‘GPS trainomg for the Macintosh’ and is fully compatible with the Garmin GPS devices. Simply plug in the device, and sync it with Ascent and your latest training sessions are added to the journal. Not only that but it overlays your route onto a Google Earth map and produces traces of your heart rate, speed, pace etc. All very interesting and it all works well.

The app itself is very Mac-like, but it does have a few little interface peculiarities that you need to get used to. For example, clicking on a toolbar icon with an downwards pointing triangle which normally indicates that the button contains a drop down list, performs an action. To get the drop down list you need to click and hold. Other than this it seems to do exactly what I want it to and does it very well. The maps are great as are the data screens and your training sessions can be viewed in a list or in a calendar view.

Also in its favour is the fact that it is still being actively developed and the developer is approachable and answers questions quickly via his forum. This is the app that I have decided to use and have now coughed up the registration fee for. However, there are still some improvements I would like to see.

The calendar view s OK, but I think it could display more info, entries could be colour-coded by activity and it would also benefit from a weekly summary similar to that of iSmartTrain. Also, the Summary graphs are very limited. and not very well presented. You can’t determine the period of data that is displayed, you can only select a weekly or a monthly view and you can’t distinguish between activites either. Instead all activites are grouped together and the total distance, time etc is displayed whereas I would like to see the total distance ran separately to the total distance cycled. Hopefully such things will be added / improved as the app continues to develop.

TrailRunner

I also looked at this app along the way. It looks really nice and although designed as a route planning app that allows you to plan routes on a map and then upload them to your GPS device it also allows you to import and analyse your routes /workouts. It has a diary feature for recording these workouts and an exercise planner.

The app looks really nice and is under constant development, but I never quite got the hang of it. I think part of this was because I was approaching it from the point of view of recording my training rather than using it to organise and plan my training. It is certainly worth a look, but I didn’t persevere enough with it. I may take another look at this one soon though.

TrackRunner

On paper this looked like the ideal app, all the mapping and data analysis of Ascent, coupled with the calendar and graphs views of iSmartTrain. Compatible with my Forerunner 305 and other Garmin devices and donationware too. The screenshots made it looks as though it was just what I was looking for.
Unforuntaley it just didn’t work properly. First of all you need some other software (LoadMyTracks) in order to import data from your GPS device into it and secondly I couldn’t manually enter data into it. Well, I could but I couldn’t change the date fields on it so I could only enter training sessions on the day I did them! It certainly has some potential, but was too buggy and crashed a couple of times so I soon gave up on it. I’m sure it will improve in future versions, but at the moment it wasn’t quite up to scratch which was disappointing as it looked so promising.

Summary

To round up, none of the applications were quite perfect for my needs, some came close and with a few tweaks any of them could be right, but I’m currently using Ascent and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the developers continue to improve it by adding to the graphing capabilities and improve the calendar view a little. I’m sure they will come up with other enhancements that I haven’t thought of too. lets hope that keeping a record of my activities keeps me motivated and helps me improve my overall fitness.

I’ve been doing well with my attempt to get a little fitter, or at least slow down the decline brought on my increasing age! I went for another run yesterday with my Garmin Forerunner 305. I had planned to take it relatively easy and keep my heart rate at around 150bpm, but as usual, the first few minutes of the run saw my heart rate go mad. This time it hit a maximum of 196bpm, much higher than my theroretical maximum of around 183bpm.

I haven’t decided why this is yet, I wasn’t running that hard, in fact I was taking easy, and I have a feeling it may be due to a poor connection between the sensor and my skin. After a couple of minutes (once I have worked up a bit of a sweat and the connection becomes better) everything settles down and my heart rate seems more normal… It could also be due to some interference from something as so far I’ve been running along the same route so this peak happens at about the same place each time.

It could of course  be nothing to do with the technology itself, which seems perfect the rest of the time. It could be that the technology is recording things accurately and I’m a freak of nature!

I shall have to try another run on a different route soon and make sure the connection between the sensor and my skin is good before staring off.

The Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station is now back online again.

We had some problems with it in December. First the temperature and humidity sensor stopped functioning properly. A replacement was ordered, but when installed it fried the main SIM board within the sensor suite and everything stopped working properly. I have since got a brand new SIM board and a new temperature and humidity sensor and spent yesterday morning up the telegraph pole installing the new components and getting everything working.

Once the new SIM board was successfully talking to the console I powered up the PC and got it doing its thing, manipulating the raw data and uploading it very minute to the live online display. The data logger still had a few rogue readings stored in it so I had to manually remove some of these data points but it all seems fine now and the live data is once again available online.

Seeing as James asked for a daily updates as far as my attempts to get fit are concerned, here are the stats from my Mountain Bike Ride around the Pendam Trail at Nant-yr-Arian today.

First the route itself, My Speed and Heart Rate graph… Max 172bpm once again! And the summary stats.

After the first lap I then did another lap of the most northerly loop, and on the way checked in on a couple of my geocaches to make sure they were OK. Both caches were fine, but the tree hiding the cache at Blaenmelindwr has been felled and a few people have had problems with the coordinates for the cache at Syfyddrin, so I took some new readings with my Forerunner 305 which has a better GPS receiver than my old eTrex.

I was impressed with the performance of the Foreunner, as it seemed to keep GPS reception even through the forested parts of the trail and looking at the route in Google Earth, the trail made by the second lap was perfectly on top of the first time around so accuracy seems to be good… Shame my fitness isn’t quite up to the same standards!

As you know my latest gadget which arrived yesterday is a Garmin Forerunner 305, which is a GPS enable Heart Rate Monitor training device. The idea is that when you are out running, cycling or doing any other outdoor activity it tracks your precise position and speed using the GPS and records your heart rate using the heart rate monitor so that you can train effectively, or just look at it out of interest.

For me it is a way of encouraging me to get fit again. I used to be really fit, but marriage, fatherhood, mortgage, increasing age and the need to earn money have all got in the way of that, however recently in a bid to reverse the trend I have started running and mountain-biking. Nothing too serious yet, but the new toy could change that as i am now able to track my progress.

I’ve just returned from a little run using it and it seemed to work well. Of course, none of this would be any good without some software to analyse the data so I have been trying out various offerings which I shall report on soon. My favourite at the moment is a program called Ascent from Montebello Software so here is some of the data presented by Ascent from todays run.

First, the route which is automatically generated by the software using the GPS tracking:

Next the speed and heart rate trace, with heart rate peaks marked:

And finally an overview of some of the important statistics:

Click on any for a larger image. as you can see I’m not fast yet and haven’t covered much distance but I now have a base from which to improve. Also, the tide was quite high so at one point I had to run up and along the pebble ridge at the top of the beach… That of course slowed me down considerably… That is my excuse anyway!