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Another day on the trainer and surpassed another record

Jul 042012

Well, biked on the trainer again, trying to follow a spinning video. Holy crap, they could kill a person, and it is a bad idea to try and stand and pedal on an indoor trainer, very hard, there is not enough resistance to make it work, no matter the gear. Also, you wouldn’t think that changing gears would do anything, but you can really get a good workout if you go up in gears! I also set the longest distance I have ever biked record again, covering 11.3 miles in 45 minutes. Glad it is starting to get better, getting close to being comfortable enough to join a local club.
Thanks for reading,
Later

Another ride after taking a couple of days off

Biking, Personal No Responses »

Jul 022012

Well, took a couple of days off of riding, had some time issues that made it so I could not ride. I put in 30 minutes and covered 8.25 miles and used my smaller cogs in the back for only the second time. It is surprising how much harder it really is to turn that gear over, after like 5 minutes you are really feeling it, your legs really start burning. I intermingled the small cog with the larger ones and just kept going switching to different gears as I rode. I also started to use some virtual rides, these are videos that you are taken on a ride in a different location, they are really quite neat, although the one brand seems to spend a lot of time showing the bikers instead of the actual ride environment itself. I prefer those videos because I like the power output they show and cadence and speed, lets you know what you could expect to be doing on your ride, I just do not like the emphasis on the riders. Oh well, enough for now.

Thanks for reading,

Later

Still riding, but still on the trainer….

Biking, Personal No Responses »

Jun 272012

Yes I am still riding, well at least on the trainer, that way I can be much stronger and have better physical shape when I actually move outdoors. I have had two big workouts over the past week, setting two mini records for myself. One is the total distance covered, now realize I am riding in a 32 tooth front and 22 tooth rear just so that I can get a lot of turns on my cranks so I can get a better workout aerobically speaking. I have achieved my first 10 mile ride, this goes back over the past year, I have not ridden that far in 20+ years (back then I was commuting to and from work over 15 miles one way, 5 days a week, I was fit back then). I have also set another personal record, over the course of 8 miles, yes on the trainer, I averaged 16 miles per hour, so I made it 8 miles in 30 minutes. I am hoping that is a sign of how in shape I am and that it is a good one. Today I start to move up the gears, will give me much farther distances but should also work me out muscualrly. I will probably try just switching to the bigger front gear tonight and see how it goes, hopefully I can start to prepare for group rides soon and possibly join Chesapeake Spokes as well. We shall see.

Thanks for reading,

Later

Another day, another workout on the trainer

Uncategorized No Responses »

Jun 202012

Well, worked out on my bike trainer. Just did a quick 30 minutes, a nice steady pace. I have to set a goal and try and get a century done, but think it may have to wait until next spring.

Thanks for reading
Later

New WP7 App for finding music titles etc….

Personal, Smartphones No Responses »

Dec 052011

Ok, I was upset with Shazam moving to the “you get 5 lookups a month for free” stance. So I switched to using Bing for those music searches, it is built right into the phone if you press the search button. Its performance was less than good, it would find very few songs and it took a long time for it to grab the music to do the lookup. Last night I notice SoundHound is in the WP7 app store so I tried it out and boy oh boy, it works quite well. It has found all of the songs I have thrown at it and fast too, still need to see how quickly it will work but it seems MUCH faster than Bing. You can check out SoundHound at SoundHound.com or just go to the app store here http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/6bae10bf-e831-49b7-a51f-cee8e91c7b1d and grab it. It is well worth it and it is free to boot!

Bullying needs to stop and stop NOW!!

Personal No Responses »

Dec 052011

I think it used to be considered almost normal for kids to pick on other kids or even teachers and coaches doing the same. I guess it was not so bad for us back then. I moved around a fair amount when I was young and that always led to being picked on or even bullied by the other kids. I never really seemed to fit in, I was not gay or really all that different, I was just into different things at times and liked computers which not many people were into. I had a rough go of it through out school which may be why I am as shy as I am, but I am one of the lucky ones, I came out just shy, others killed themselves. Why is it more prevalent now? Maybe it has to do with the fact the kids cannot get away from it now, it used to be that you could go home, like me, and submerse yourself in whatever it was I wanted to, and could forget about school, now the kids come home and get on computers like all of their counterparts do, but the bullying just continues through whatever social media they happen to be on. How many times do you have to hear how bad a person you are before it starts to tear you down to the point of wanting to end your life. A month or so ago a ten year old….yes I said 10 year old killed herself, and it was attributed to bullying. Then one of the people I had actually liked to read the posts from on EmpireAvenue, a high school student wrote about how his teacher led some of the students to pick on him and now he has quit Facebook and EmpireAvenue as well, which worries me. I also know someone close to me that was picked on for most of his life because he was a little bigger than they were, one of the nicest kids you could ever meet, and he was being picked on. And I know of a coach that had a bunch of kids calling someone very close to me “a quitter” over and over again, among other things that I am sure we may never hear all because he didn’t want to play for a coach like him. Luckily their was another coach that was very understanding and listened to my wife, who was strong enough to say something in the first place, about the situation because it seemed to end. Then today I see this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TdkNn3Ei-Lg#! and I just have to wonder, what in the world is being done about it? Why are kids able to do this still even if they know what it seems to lead to more so than it ever did. This should be considered hate crimes now, we do not seem to have any problem jumping to the conclusion that racial issues are hate crimes, what about the abuse these kids are getting at schools at the hands of their peers or their “protectors”? Why should a gay person, a fat person, a smart person, a quiet person, or just someone that is different, be treated like this? Sorry for the rant but seeing this video has made me a bit angry with society!

Fee free ATM Finder! Great freeware Mobile App you should check out

Personal 1 Response »

Dec 042011

One of the toughest parts about ditching your account at an evil mega-bank is losing the conveniece of their omnipresent ATMs. New mobile app 99 ATMs aims to help us find fee-free ATMs. Right now they only have data here in the SF Bay Area and the Portland area, but it looks poised to grow, with an open data model that allows anyone to contribute information for their area.

This is an free open source and open data project. If you can get more fee-free or local bank ATM data for your area then upload it to DataCouch to get included in this app!

So if no fee ATMs is what you want…check out 99atms.com

A nice software product for backing up drivers on a Windows PC

Computers, Hardware No Responses »

Nov 102011

Double Driver has a simple interface, and the program itself is very easy to use. Its noteable feature is that it can backup drivers from even an offline system. This is very useful in cases, where a system is unable to boot, for some reason. This feature, apart from others, gives it an edge over the other software. The only other software to have this feature in the category is DriverBackup!.

For backup, by default, non-Windows drivers are selected in the list. Options are available to invert this selection, to select all, or select none. Users may also select individual drivers of their choice, if they want. Drivers can be backed-up to structured folders(default option), as a compressed folder, or to a single self extract file. For the last option though, Double Driver crashed, when I tried to use it. Its a bug.

One other good thing about Double Driver is that it was able to back up drivers for devices which were not connected to the system at that time. My webcam was not connected, but even then, it backed up the driver files for that.

Restoration is also easy. Select the driver backup location, the folder where they were backed up previously, and it shows the list of drivers which can be restored. Again, options are available to choose which drivers to restore. The restoration process is quite fast too, and I will say its reliable.

Double Driver has the option to save the list of drivers in a text file. Option to print the list is also there. This feature is quite useful, to see which drivers have been installed on the system. The list is quite informational, providing name, version number, date, hardware ID etc.

Overall, Double Driver is simple, and very reliable, with some good features, making it the top choice in the category.

Quick post about a rather neat online game

Free, Games, Personal No Responses »

Oct 272011

Just wanted to post about a creepy little neat game called Closure and is at http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480006 and is free. The object is to get to the door and go through it, but the trick is that the board is only lit by little balls of light….no light=no board and you can fall through it, which can be advantageous in some circumstances, like when a wall is in the way etc. There are also these lamps that can move a light from one area to another as well as some keys to unlock the door. The game is quite good and fun and addictive as crap, but it is also quite difficult at times, once you make a mistake it is over and you must start over on the level. I think this is a very good game to play especially around Halloween, enjoy!

Trying to host this blog on wordpress.com

Computers, Hardware, Personal, Software, Web Development No Responses »

Oct 142011

Well, in an effort to cut the traffic coming to my house and to lower utilization of my cpu on my server I am trying to host this blog on wordpress.com at http://hometownnerd.wordpress.com . Not sure yet how I like it since there are no plugins here and cannot extend it much because of that not sure yet if I will stay here. Maybe I will keep both and just host the same info on both?

Later

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