My Garmin Forerunner

About a week and a half ago, I purchased a new Garmin Forerunner 405CX GPS/fitness watch. I used to have a Foreunner 201. That device could not track as much as the new one, and frequently the position track that it recorded was inaccurate. I can say that the 405CX works extremely well, and I'm looking forward to using it for quite a while. Of course, one of the negative aspects of this watch, along with most, if not all, of Garmin's GPS/fitness watches is that when the lithium polymer rechargeable battery can no longer hold a charge, you either ship it back to Garmin or upgrade to the next model.

Why did I buy this device? I want to start taking fitness more seriously, but I also like gadgets. At the present time, my fitness routine consists of using the treadmill, recumbent stationary bike, and the elliptical machine for my cardio workout. I also use the weight machines that are in the gym. With the weight machines, I do 16 different exercises. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I want to be able to replace or complement my current cardio workout with outdoor walking. The 405CX allows me to track a number of things while I am walking. Specifically, it will track my position, my elevation, my heart rate, and my walking cadence (steps per minute). The position and the elevation are recorded via the GPS receiver that is built into the watch. My heart rate is measured with a heart rate monitor that straps around my chest, and finally my walking cadence is tracking with a device called a foot pod. The two remote items--the heart rate monitor and the foot pod--communicate wirelessly back to the watch. The communications occurs on the 2.4 GHz band using a proprietary protocol called Ant+. When I am finished with my walking and I get back home, I simply have to bring the watch within proximity of my laptop computer, which has a USB dongle plugged into it that talks on the Ant+ network. Minutes later my workout is automatically uploaded to Garmin Connect, where I can view my progress on various goals, see the path that I actually took during the walk, see my heartrate and how it varied, as well as seeing the elevation, and my walking cadence. I can take those results and export them to Google Earth format and do other things with the data as well.

One of the things that the device is also recording is the number of calories burned. It counts calories in one of two ways. With the first method, you supply a fairly simple profile to the watch. This profile includes age, gender, and weight. With that data, it can calculate calories with a certain degree of accuracy. If you strap on the heart rate monitor, the watch is able to add that data to the equation and the calorie results are supposedly even more accurate.

You can view my workouts on the Garmin Connect website at http://connect.garmin.com/explore?owner=erayboul.

The Garmin Forerunner 405CX has two primary sport modes, the running mode and the bicycling mode. Of course, I'm using the 405CX in running mode, but I'm currently walking instead of jogging or running. I hope to get back into bicycling sometime soon. When I do, I will budget a decent amount of money for a good bike and go from there, but I already know what cycling computer to put on it, the Garmin Edge 705 (or its successor). The Edge 705 can record all of the same data as the 405CX, but instead of step cadence, it records pedal RPMs (an important number when cycling). It can also record power with the right equipment installed on the bike. Plus the Edge 705 accepts a MicroSD card which can be loaded with street maps for the entire U.S.

Anyway, I'll probably have more to share about my 405CX. I'll post more later.

Ned

Adding Another Blog

I'm adding a third blog.  There are times when the topic is not amateur radio or photography, so I've created a miscellaneous blog for those posts.  It is located at http://nedsmisc.blogspot.com/.

New Photography Blog

I have decided to create a new blog devoted to photography. I'll be able to keep my amateur radio topics separate from my photography topics. If a post happens to involve both, then I will probably post in both. I'm going to try to move my photography posts from the amateur radio blog over to here. We'll see how that goes.

Visit it at http://nedphotoblog.blogspot.com/.

Ned

Marietta High School (Ohio) Class of 1984: 25th Reunion

This is not my normal photography or amateur radio post. However, the other day I received an email invitation to attend my 25-year class reunion. I haven't decided whether I will attend or not. I have a couple of months to decide. In the meantime, I will do my part to spread the word and will post the announcement here, and Google (and other search engines) will pick it up in short order.

Since Google can't index the artwork below (give 'em time), I will provide some of the details.

July 3, 2009, 7:00pm: informal gathering, back room of the Marietta Brewing Company.
July 4, 2009, 6:00pm: mixer, Marietta Country Club Ballroom; buffet dinner and DJ at 7:00pm, with cash bar. $25 per person.
RSVP (and payment) by May 15 w/ cash or money order to Mike Walsh, 7291 Waterford Rd, Marietta OH 45750.



PDF of invitation

Ned Raybould

Time to Purchase a New Cell Phone

I've had my current cell phone, a Motorola E815, for about 2-1/2 years. That is probably the longest that I have held onto a cell phone. It's time to get a new one. I've been on the Verizon network, and since I've been happy with it, I plan to stay put. I quickly narrowed down my choices to the Venus, the EnV, and the Voyager. I played with the Venus and the EnV (I think) in the Verizon Store a couple of months ago. For some reason I don't think that the Voyager was powered up or available to look at. Although I consider my current phone to have quite a few great features such as Mobile Web, Get It Now, and VCast, there are a few new features out there that my Motorola can't support such as Mobile TV and VZNavigator. The Voyager (also known as the LG VX10000) supports all of them. Therefore my research is now concentrating solely on the Voyager. At this point, I am only figuring out if there is any reason to disqualify it. I doubt I will, but we'll see. During my research, I wanted to learn more about Verizon's Mobile TV service. Apparently Verizon is using Qualcomm's technology known as MediaFLO. In some ways, Mobile TV is a lot like the digital TV that the US will supposedly be switching entirely to on February 17, 2009. Mobile TV is a broadcast-based service. The "FLO" in MediaFLO stands for Forward Link Only. This means that the cell phone does not report back to the broadcaster to indicate the data was successfully received or not. Another way they are similar is that they used advanced compression techniques for the video. Mobile TV uses AVC/H.264. I believe that HDTV settled on MPEG-2 (but I could be wrong). Also, if I am not mistaken both Mobile TV and digital TV pad the data with a bunch of extra data. This is known as Forward Error Correction.

I'll probably order this phone in a few days and have it a few days after that. I'll let you know what I think of it.

First post

Just bringing over an old post from N8OIF.net, as I will be turning off that one-post blog. Blogger works much better.
Today, I was visiting Garmin’s website and noticed that they have updated the Rino series of two-way radios. The Rino’s are GPS receivers combined with an FRS/GMRS radio. The two features are combined in that it is possible to send your position to another Rino, or have your Rino poll another one for its position. It would appear that the two new features to enter the Rino line are the expandable memory on microSD cards and the high-sensitivity receiver.
My friend and I might each get one and make them available to loan to the other for camping or horseback riding. The polling feature will allow my friend to remain at the camp while his wife is riding on the trails. Should she become injured, she could send her position, or if something more serious happens my friend could poll her radio every so often.

Haven't blogged for a while

Just like the title says, I haven't blogged for about seven months. In my blogs, just like on my website, I spend most of the time talking about my hobbies. My hobbies tend to go in cycles. Currently, I would have to say that I am spending the most time with my computer programming hobby and my videography hobby.

My hobbies are intertwined though. For example, when I am doing computer programming, I am typically programming something with an amateur radio influence. I am presently trying to learn ASP.NET 2.0, which is a Microsoft technology. Once, I have some of the basics down, I hope to develop a page on my website where people can type in a ham radio callsign and get results such as name, address, license class, and so on. That type of page, however, is nothing new. There are probably a couple of dozen "lookup" pages on the web, but I want to develop a lookup page that is accessible from a web-capable cellphone. I think that there is currently only one other lookup like that in existence. Together our lookups can share the bandwidth for that sort of lookup. The other thing that I hope to develop is a web service for this lookup. That, I believe, would be unique. A web service gets its name from the fact that it uses the world wide web to communicate the data (specifically the HTTP hypertext transfer/transport protocol), but it doesn't necessarily use a web browser. Another programmer, could design a Windows or Mac OS application and call the web service to get the license details about a particular ham. Perhaps that functionality could be added to a contact logging program.

Videography is the other hobby near the top of my list currently. A couple of weeks ago, Adobe just announced their new Production Studio bundle. I think that I am going to upgrade my individual Adobe applications to the new versions. My videography pursuits many times are related to amateur radio, but I haven't been involved with any amateur radio events lately to videotape. The most recent videotaping that I was involved with was a acquaintances' wedding. Now I have volunteered my services for another wedding in June ('06). Actually at the upcoming wedding and the recent wedding, I was shooting the pictures and my best friend was shooting the video. In either case, however, I am processing the video afterwards. Mainly I am bringing the video into the computer and then burning it to DVD. With the pictures, I am copying them to the computer and tweaking things such as brightness and sharpness and burning them to CD. After this wedding in June is complete, I think that I am going to concentrate on organizing a portfolio of my work. I don't plan to quit my day job, but I think that I could make some extra money on the side by shooting weddings. I have come to realize that good money can be made once a creative effort has been put forth. That is where I need to concentrate. I seem to be able to understand how the software works (Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing, for example), but I am not very good at making a decent video. My videos will look good from a technical standpoint (low noise, little to no artifacting from the MPEG compression), but I won't have the appropriate transitions in the video, or use the right music (of course, you have to be careful about the music you use in a video). I need to work on my creativity.

That's all for now. I hope to blog again soon (less than seven months).

MZ-RH10

Well, I didn't buy the MZ-RH10 after all. I suppose one of the main reasons was that at the time of my purchase the MZ-RH10 was not yet available. I decided to buy the MZ-NH1, Sony's top of the line Hi-MD model. This was my first foray into Hi-MD and so far I haven't been disappointed. I think I will still get the MZ-RH10, though. I have several reasons. First, I'm still attracted to the OLED display. Second, the OLED display on the RH10 should allow me to use the recorder once in a while without the remote. For those of you that own a NH1, you already know that it is very difficult to operate this recorder without the remote. There just isn't much data presented on the NH1's tiny display. Finally, I like the idea that the RH10 should be able to play MP3 files directly from MiniDisc. A majority of my CD collection is already ripped to MP3 format in support of a couple of hard-drived based players that I own. To make disks for the RH10, I won't have to rip those same albums to ATRAC3 or ATRAC3plus.

I'm also thinking about buying a second-hand DAT recorder before those things disappear entirely. My thoughts on DAT will be for another article.

MiniDisc recorders

I'm currently in the process of researching MiniDisc recorders.  I have owned several different Sony models over the past five years, including the MZ-R55 (great non-MDLP, non-Hi-MD recorder, but has a short battery life), the MZ-N707 (great overall MDLP recorder, but the remote lacks a display), and the MZ-N10 (Sony's MD tenth anniversary model, which seems to have quit working).  I am looking to buy one of the new Hi-MD models and I'm going to try and hold out until April when the second generation Sony Hi-MD models hit the U.S. market.  The unit that I am concentrating my research on is the MZ-RH10.  The most intriguing feature to me on that model is the organic LED (OLED) front-panel display.

For those unfamiliar with MiniDisc, you should visit the MiniDisc pages at http://www.minidisc.org . 

Although I own a couple of hard-drive based MP3/WMA players (the Creative Zen Micro 5 GB model and the Creative Zen 60 GB model), the MiniDisc models, such as the Sony MZ-RH10, represent a way to carry an impressive amount of music or other audio on a small virtually indestructible magneto-optical disc.  One 1-GB Hi-MD can hold up to 45 hours of music at a 48 kbps ATRAC3plus setting.  However, I'll probably use a setting that allows about 20 hours per disc.

I plan to post more in the future on which model I ended up choosing.  By the way, expect to see my MZ-R55 and MZ-N707 on eBay soon, under the seller ID of erayboul.

My first blog

Well, I'm new to this whole blogging thing. I figured that I might as well start it sometime. One of the first things that I have set up is the RSS feed. My personal favorite as far as news aggregators go is NewsGator. It integrates quite well with Outlook 2003.

I'll still need to decide how often to blog and what kinds of things I'm going to talk about.

Till next time.