daverea.com

Sometime in 2006, some co-workers and I tried our hands at running. We’re not all that fast, and our endurance isn’t all that great, but we enjoy hitting the pavement together, and we’ve all reaped some big-time fitness benefits from the hundreds of miles of ground we’ve covered in our four years of ground-pounding. What we lack in performance, we make up for in dedication – we run right through the bitter Upstate-NY winters – but none of us has ever felt dedicated enough to drop several hundred clams on a dedicated GPS training device.

But then, at long last, the Droid came to Verizon, and I finally entered the world of Android users. Not long after me, one of my running buddies traded in his Blackberry Storm for a Droid as well. Since then, I’ve tried out a couple of apps for runners, and thought I’d share a few observations here…

CardioTrainer

The first app to join me on my runs was CardioTrainer, from Android app house Work Smart Labs. I tried the free app on a couple of trail runs during a visit to California, and it did a great job. Given the unfamiliar surroundings, it was nice to have a little insight into how far I’d gone. CardioTrainer measures distance, time, pace and calories burned in real time using your handset’s GPS receiver, and automatically – and anonymously – uploads completed workouts to the Work Smart servers. There, you can view additional details about your performance, as well as check out your route on a larger map.

After returning home, I tried CardioTrainer on several routes that I had previously mapped using online tools such as MapMyRun or the GMap Pedometer. The app’s distance measurement is very accurate, and receiving spoken pace and time information proved helpful in regulating my speed and achieving a more balanced effort. Still, it’s is not without its annoyances – despite the formidable processing power of the Droid, CardioTrainer takes noticeably longer to register screen taps than other apps, especially when it’s using the GPS. During some runs, while the overall distance and time numbers are correct, large portions of the track are mysteriously missing from the track display. I suspect this has something to do with the autopause feature.

Checking in on the CardioTrainer web site, users can view their training history and data logged for each workout. Oddly, each workout’s elevation graph is accessible on the web site but not via the handset interface, while a pace graph is available on the handset but not on the web site.

Pros

• Many configuration options
• Live map display – very helpful to check for dead-end roads when running in an unfamiliar place!
• Automatic track upload to CardioTrainer web site
• Can track several different activities – running, walking, biking, etc.
• Ability to manually add workouts (such as for indoor activities, swimming, etc.)
• Configurable auto-pause stops timer and pace calculations if you stop moving

Cons

• Pace graphs only show miles/hour, not minutes/mile (which would be preferable)
• Voice guidance configuration could be improved
• Autopause can disrupt track logging
• Can export KML and GPX files, but not import

Buddy Runner

After experiencing a few quirks with CardioTrainer, I took a look in the Android Market for other options. Buddy Runner seemed to have a strong rating and a friendly pricetag (it’s also free), so I gave it a shot during today’s run. While the interface is far more sparse than that of CardioTrainer, BuddyRunner does allow customization in one area that its competition does not: specifically what data is read aloud to you during voice guidance. Rather than CardioTrainer’s pre-defined content – which alternates depending on whether you’re at a milepost or mid-mile interval – users can choose exactly which data points they want to hear.

In use, Buddy Runner is simple – the main screen provides “Start / Pause” and “End” buttons, as well as tickers displaying time, distance and pace. A map view is also provided, though I’ve never looked to see if it’s updated in real-time. I particularly like the fact that Buddy Runner gives you an option to select how your voice-output pace is calculated – it will read out either the “live” pace from your last few seconds of running, the average pace for your last mile, or your overall average pace for the entire run. Based on my usage of CardioTrainer, I’ve surmised that the only pace it reads to you is the “live” pace, which is what I prefer to hear anyway.

Pros

• Better voice guidance configuration
• Simple interface, easy to use while running
• So far, no corrupted tracks
• Configurable pace calculation (last few seconds, last interval, entire run average)

Cons

• Only tracks running – no other activities
• Autopause is either “on” or “off” – the stop interval isn’t configurable
• Requires e-mail address to enable uploading of tracks to the web, but does upload automatically
• No visible feedback on button-presses, such as highlighting – a complaint common to many Android apps

Conclusion

With both CardioTrainer and Buddy Runner on my phone, I’m hard pressed to choose a winner – neither is head-and-shoulders above the other, at least when it comes to running. I’m inclined to look past CardioTrainer’s occasional quirks, given that it has the capacity to track other forms of exercise, as well as input indoor workouts manually – we all know I enjoy my time on two wheels. Which will I use going forward? For day-to-day runs, Buddy Runner wins, since I can choose what I want read aloud to me while running. If both apps were to slap on a $5 price tag tomorrow, however, my money would go to CardioTrainer – it simply delivers more functionality and a smoother user interface. They’re both great apps – and I would encourage any Android-toting runner to give each a try.

In 1947, the Heathkit company – a formerly-bankrupt aircraft manufacturer – introduced its first electronic kit. The $39.50 oscilloscope became a best seller, a dozen years after the company’s new owners bought Heath for a whopping $300. Back then, hobbyists built ham radios, black-and-white TVs and hi-fi sets from vacuum tubes, soldering fiberglass circuit boards together with glowing guns from Radio Shack, hunched over basement workbenches, surrounded by a haze of blue-gray flux smoke. It was long before the days of microscopic surface-mount components, squirted from machines at tens of thousands of parts per hour.

Not long ago, I wrote here about the atrophy of amateur radio, and inquired (unsurprisingly, unsuccessfully) if there was any hope for that pastime. Most things ham trigger a lot of nostalgia in me – recollections of dad-chauffeured car trips to the city for radio classes with Jason; of my “Elmer”, Ed, N2EH (now a silent key); of good times spent with the other hams at the RIT Radio Club, who were among the best of my college friends; and of countless growing-up hours spent tinkering, building things, and un-building things. For a long time, I thought this spirit of geek tinkering was similarly waning, but recently I’ve had a few reasons to change my tune…

First off, the pieces and parts. In the golden age, resistors, capacitors, coils, tubes and transistors were the parts du jour – and you could do some pretty cool things with them. The 70s and 80s brought integrated circuits – and my generation of tinkerers dove head-first into logic gates, op-amps, newly-commodified microprocessors and LED displays. But as the demands of the tech-buying public called for more miniaturization and richer feature sets, things got more difficult. Ball grid array packages – unsolderable by all but the most-dedicated and well-funded (or craziest?) hobbyists – ushered in an age of inaccessible parts. But now, thanks to projects like Arduino, and companies like Bug Labs and Gumstix, pluggable modules and microcontrollers are becoming basic building blocks in themselves.

But more than just the evolution of what’s available to build with, there has been a renaissance in the builders, too. People like Diana Eng and Jeri Ellsworth, and groups like the recently-formed Interlok Rochester – or, hell, the entire readership of Make Magazine – remind me that the spirit of tinkering is alive and well. Maybe hobbyists aren’t exactly making the next iPhone – though they’re certainly trying and in some cases, succeeding! When you’re faced with the immense complexity that’s possible via today’s gadgets, it’s easy to get discouraged about the potential for electronics as a hobby. But it’s also easy to be hopeful and inspired when you look at what these folks are doing. To the tinkerers: keep up the good work! And to those who’ll bring us the next generation of electronic building blocks, I can’t wait to see what you’ve got in store…

I have never flown a plane. On instruments. With a failed artificial horizon. But Bill Whittle has, and in the midst of his stellar essay on civilization, he has managed to write about doing so in what amounts to the single most-inspiring piece of literature I have ever read.

After too-long an absence, The Web of Trust is back online. Go. Read. It.

While I may not have ever had a life-and-death experience like the one Bill describes in his essay, I have encountered plenty of scarily-stressful times, many involving others’ life-and-death experiences. Times when I could feel those “tearing claws of panic” working their way into my shoes, threatening to derail whatever endeavor I was pursuing unless I took control. In each of those times, recalling The Web of Trust has helped give me the resolve to press forward. The words of Bill’s flight instructor – “Kick Its Ass.” – echo in my ears, simultaneously providing focus and motivation. There is no ambiguity, no subtlety of strategy, simply an imperative: You know what to do, you have the capacity to do it, so Do It. Now.

Laundry time! (image source: sxc.hu)

Not too long ago, I saw a television commercial that touted the energy (and, hence, money) saving abilities of some-brand-or-another’s high efficiency washers and dryers. I wondered… Could dropping upwards of a grand and a half on high-efficiency washers and dryers really save enough coin to make up for the cost?

I toyed with the idea of calculating the cost of running a load through our good ‘ol Kenmore washer and dryer, but never really ran with the idea until this week, when my shiny new Kill-a-Watt energy meter arrived. With Kelly at work for the day, I shut off the furnace, emptied my bladder and set up my newly-unboxed gizmo to measure how much electricity the washer was pulling out of the wall. I figured I’d run a worst-case test – a bleach load, warm wash, with towels, and a double rinse. The results?

• Electricity – Washer: 0.32KWh ($0.018)
• Electricity – Dryer: 0.49KWh ($0.056)
• Gas – Total: About 0.3ccf, or 0.30555 Therms ($0.30)
• Water – Total: 60.3 gallons ($0.15)
• Detergent – 3.2 ounces ($0.32)
• Bleach – 4.2 ounces ($0.115)
• 1 Dryer Sheet ($0.05)

The grand total? 73.94¢. Worst case. A smaller load, with colored clothes (hence no bleach), and no towels? I’m guessing less.

So even if that magical high-efficiency washer and dryer could clean our clothes with no energy or water at all, it would still take almost 1,900 loads of laundry to pay for them. If we assume that they cut our usage in half (still, a pretty tall order) then doing about 4 loads of laundry a week (which we do), it would still take over 18 years for them to pay for themselves.

Those old ceramic-white Kenmores are looking better and better…

If you want a cookies that makes you want to close your eyes, chew slowly and say “mmmmmmmmmm” for a really long time, go to Levain Bakery in Manhattan, and order one of their Chocolate Chip Walnut cookies. Unless you’re this [very disturbing] guy, one will be enough.

If you don’t happen to live in New York City, or would perhaps like to make such a cookie at home, then take a gander at My Brother’s Interpretation of these taste-bud-gasmic cookies. And do rate it highly, won’t you?

And, if reading his instructions and making them for yourself just isn’t enough, you can watch him prepare them – in 3 different shirts – over at Veoh.

Image source: pinchmysalt.com

Since right around this past Christmas, I’ve been on a complete bread tangent. It probably started with my annual attempt to produce a memory-invoking stollen bread, which was repeated twice over this year so that we could share the results with as many friends and family as possible… But not long after Christmas day came and went, I found myself visiting local bookstores, looking for a copy of Peter Reinhardt’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.

Since buying the book, I’ve tried recipes for classic, pre-fermented Italian bread, and a delicious potato-rosemary bread that filled our house with the smells of roasting rosemary and garlic as it baked. But neither was really all that blogworthy, mostly because they just weren’t as photogenic as the breads in Reinhardt’s stellar book… Until now.

My Pane Siciliano started on Friday afternoon, when I prepared a pate fermentee pre-fement, and quietly stashed it in the refrigerator to work its enzymatic magic. On Sunday, I prepared, kneaded and shaped the dough, then slid the pale little S’s into the refrigerator for an overnight proofing. By this morning, they’d grown pretty dramatically, and were ready for the oven after a half-hour to perk up at room temperature. In they went, along with a few spritzes of water for a steam treatment, and about 18 minutes later they emerged, ready for their close-up…

Pane Siciliano

Pane Siciliano

I know I’m just one guy, in the next state over, but I’d like to say thanks. Thanks to Scott Brown, and thanks to his supporters in Massachusetts. As a conservative living in New York, I’m pretty much guaranteed that my values have a pretty slim chance of being represented at the federal level – and it’s reassuring to see that someone has stood up and pledged to bring integrity back to a Senate where that value is sorely lacking.

A lot of people bought into the mantra of “hope” and “change” about a year ago. Now, “hope” is taking on a new connotation – people who love America and are proud to call this exceptional nation home are hoping that November 2010 will pull us out of the political tailspin we’re in. And the election of Scott Brown to a US Senate seat from one of the country’s bastions of progressivism is a big dose of hope, indeed.

Visually-deemphasized, marginally-interesting note: This is DaveRea.com’s 500th post! As if you cared! Woohoo!

As I recall, it was the early ’90s, I was somewhere between age 10 and the threshold of teen-aged, and was developing an appreciation for the value of loose change. Loose change could buy you baseball cards or candy at the corner store. Loose change could be hooked to batteries with alligator clips in glasses of salt water (wait…don’t all tween males at some point attempt to electrodeposit copper onto paperclips?!). Loose change could be used to test out the snack vending machine you just built out of Construx. Most importantly, loose change could be found between couch cushions, wedged into car seats, rolled beneath appliances and dropped under beds.

And so, on the occasion that my Mom ducked outside to work in her gardens or complete some manner of seemingly-boring, adult, home-ownerly task, if the thought occurred to me, I’d roam around the house collecting change. My brother’s room wasn’t very productive – he had just finished potty-training, after all – and our guest bedroom was occupied far too rarely to be much of a coin-magnet. The couch and easy-chair in our family room were convenient targets, but once in a while, when everyplace else left me empty-handed, I’d head for my parents’ room. It wasn’t off-limits or anything; heck, the door stood open unless they got tired of finding cat hair on their bedspread. And, on occasion, I’d find a coin or two hiding behind the ruffles of their bedskirt, or under the recliner in the corner, or peeking out from the gap between the carpet and the bottom drawers of each dresser.

On these occasions, and indeed any occasion that I had to visit my parents’ bedroom, I noticed that they each had a small wooden box on their dressers. The boxes weren’t the same shape, nor were they the same size, or correlated in any way other than that both parents had one. I noticed the boxes during my covert change-collecting missions. I noticed the boxes when I’d sit with my Dad, listening to TalkNet on his clock radio while he flipped through Corvette magazines. I noticed the boxes when, as a refugee of malfunctioning plumbing, I had to use the master bathroom in the mornings before school for a month or so. And I noticed the boxes when I’d sit with my Mom, talking little but experiencing much, during her final battle with breast cancer in 1998.

Every time I noticed the boxes, I came to the same conclusion: They must be for storing Very Important Things.

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