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Sports tracker on the N95

Byrichard

It’s fun to walk fast and far, especially in the countryside where there are fewer people to avoid. I often walk for fourty minutes to an hour at the end of the day to think about the day and process all that’s happened. Recently though I realised one of the shorter walks is almost 3000 steps thanks to the N95 pedometer.

That’s because with the N95 you have a built in GPS and the ability to download applications. One of these is the sports tracker that allows you to track a number of variables across four to six screens. There’s the map view, map view with relevant details, co-ordinate view, speed view, pedometer and then three or four graphs, some for time in relation to speed, distance over time and height in relation to speed.

You can zoom in and out of the graphs as you’re walking. If you do this more than once it creates a series of tracks that you can easily translate to KML and importe to Google Earth so the world can see your walks. Of course keeping your privacy from some people may be desirable.

It’s a fun little addition to the n95 although the biggest drawback is you need to have it out in front of you to keep track of the satellites.

Eight things you didn’t know about me – Tagged by Nik and Neil

Byrichard

Both Nik and Neil have tagged me to talk about eight random things about myself and since I have some time tonight I’ll work on this.

1) I reached competition level as a skier in France after progressing through all the levels but have never bothered to compete. I love the sport and the sensations rather than comparing myself to others. It’s a year after I reached competition level that I moved on to learning snowboarding.

2) I studied film theory, montage theory and created shot lists long before I ever had access to an edit suite. As a result I had a very good theoretical background to editing and shooting before I did any work.For two to three years I would film every theatre production at school as a way to perfect my shooting style. It’s demanding when every minute you shoot must be of the highest qualities.

3) In 2003 when I applied to go back to University I was accepted for every course and university I applied to in England. That meant I had a real choice. It’s a great feeling. I knew where I wanted to go anyway.

4) In one year I went to Germany, Italy (twice) Poland, England and Switzerland both for pleasure and studies. I love to travel and have been to over 20 countries on three continents by now. It’s not much compared to some but it’s fun nonetheless.

5) Working at Geneva airport was a really fun job for two reasons. Firstly because it’s physically and secondly because it taught me about real teamwork. When you’re kneeling in an aircraft hold lifting 20 kilo suitcases 50-70 times within 25 minutes you soon develop physical strength. If someone appears lazy they will be made to work twice as hard. Occasionally those with experience would tell me to work at a slower pace.

I’m glad it’s not my career but I’m happy I had the experience

6) I dived the English channel in November when the air temperature was hovering around 11°C. For the first dive I felt like an idiot and was scared. The visibility was no more than 30 seconds and the water was freezing. I shivered for  at least three hours after the dives. A few months later I dived the same waters and I used a third of a tank in the time it took others to use two thirds 🙂

7) I have had content online since late 1996-97. I started by writing about the Romans and putting the content on iprolink, then geocities before finally putting it on main-vision.com. My extended essay was about information technology in a global society back pre 2000. I have always been among the early adopters because I enjoy new technology so much.

8) I hate when people use the word mate because of all the Natural history documentaries I’ve watched. When you hear about animals mating for a decade or more and people start calling you mate it just feels wrong, especially when it’s guys ;-). 8 years in England doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable with the term.

Now that I’ve done this I’m tagging the following 8 people:

Phil Campbell

Maggie

Amanda Gravel

Kosso

Shanzan

Marlooz

Foulbastard

Dacort 

Now I can get on with something else.

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Practice with the Canon XH A1

Byrichard

With a screen resolution of 1920*1080 interlaced this is one of the higher resolution cameras currently on the market at the moment. It’s beautifuly designed for camera men rather than engineers (unlike the red). I already wrote about earlier.The light wasn’t so interesting but here are 11 seconds of footage. (92 megs) Right click to save the footage as this will not behave properly in browser

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Valentine’s – a social media perspective

Byrichard

Valentine’s day is a day both dreaded and feared by most for two reasons, as a couple because of the pressure you’re under and as a single because you’re single. In the social media though it can be one of the most amusing times. My social media valentine consisted in two parts. The first on twitter and the second a net2meet (From online to offline meeting) with a fellow seesmicer.

The first one was fun thanks to it’s simplictiy. When you write @ username <3 it takes this to mean that you heart the other user. With maggie a fellow seesmicer we filled each other’s timelines as well as that of many others with this electronic sign of affection. It was amusing to see what a good mood it put both Maggie and I in as a result. The pressure Valentine’s day usually puts on people dissipated entirely.

I reached my 17,000th tweet yesterday and I dedicated it to all the girls I have frequently tweeted with. They’re what made valentine’s day so much fun. I love the idea that I have so many conversations on a daily basis. We’re a community based around twitter and our love of new methods of communication. It’s a good community and I’ll spend many more ours there.

I flew back to Switzerland and that’s where I met Pioupiounette a fellow seesmicer and within a few seconds we already felt comfortable with each other. That’s because in the social media we spend so much time chatting with and seeing people that when we meet in real life we’ve already got a collective experience. In french it’s “Un vécu commun”. As a little bonus I got to see the projection room of the cinema and the reels there. It was fun to hear the whirring away of the machine, seeing two arc lights, the cinema from another angle and such. In other words it was an adventure.

The socia media are a fun place to spend some time and this year was one of the most relaxed valentine’s days because technology meant that I had some good friends to have an enjoyable time with. Keep in mind that Valentine’s day is the day I got my driving license so whilst others celebrate love and relationships I celebrate mobility and frienships. Yesterday was a pleasure and I hope next year will be just as good.

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Yahoo live

Byrichard

Yahoo live is an interesting live video conferencing tool still in it’s early days. It allows you to stream video live from your webcam and watch up to four other streams at the same time. There’s a chatroom and you can see all the participants at once and select which ones you want in vision and which you’d prefer out of vision.

There are a few bugs at the moment. I haven’t found sound that easy to deal with, especially since there’s a five to ten second delay. Chatting with Msiou he told me that what he had done is use skype conference calls to keep the conversation going. Of course this is a makeshift solution and some better interaction should come.

My Channel, My live profile

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The Seesmeetup

Byrichard

It’s taken no more than a few days from the time I first saw Fred2baro on seesmic to our first meeting with Deek in London for the first Seesmeetup… so called. In fact it was both Sizemore that had the first meeting although more private in nature.

One of the questions that one of Fred2baro’s relatives asked was why would you want to be part of Seesmic? Aren’t people pretend and fake? Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?

My answer was the following: When you go to a bar or you meet people face to face rather than via twitter or Seesmic you’re quite often in a bar under the influence of a drink or two. As a result you’re not as genuine as you’d be if you met in another place. In other words Seesmic and twitter are a way of getting to know people before you meet them in the physical world.

What this means is that you can generate some great friendships, some strong ones. It’s also a new contemporary method of networking than the bar. We’ve got too many distractions at home. Whether it’s from the computer, the phone or the television to feel the absolute need to go out to bars where we’d sit and be bored anyway.

The point is the following. To me the social media, especially twitter and seesmic are a great way of creating new friendships in the physical world where limitations of time and travel distances are cancelled out. If’ we’re part of an international society why not meet people online and bring it to the physical world rather than the other way around. How many times have you been sad to see a friendship disintegrate because of distance?

I have, many times. Time to enjoy these new toys.

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Twittervox – as seen in central London

Byrichard

The film Juno was screened to a crowd of bloggers of which both Loudmouthman and I were part of. As a result it gave us the perfect opportunity to do a twittervox. The video can be found here for direct download.

After meeting with Nik Butler and others for the screening of the film Juno several tweeters meet up at the Union bar to discuss both the film and other topics

Those present were danacea of Forbidden Planet, Loudmouthman of Loudmouthman.com, Rupert Howe, Beth, Robert Croma, Sizemore, Jess and many more.

I will admit to liking the response I have had so far from my fellow seesmicers and twitter users. It was a good night and I look forward to more of them in the near future.

Quarterlife – created for the web, taken up by NBC

Byrichard

Quarterlife is a show about what life is like for those at the quarter life mark, in their mid twenties. Last week their first episode came out and already they’ve signed a deal with NBC for it to be broadcast on NBC. That’s an interesting development.  When you read the article you understand why the show has been successfully pitched and purchased.

Tomorrow is the next episode of the show.

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Learning more about Dziga Vertov and his views on cinema

Byrichard

Dziga Vertov is an interesting personality because of his ideas of the Cinema eye. His notion was that with the cinema eye, the Kino Glaz you could capture life unawares whilst being involved in the creative treatment of actuality. After making some quick money by answering some social networking questions I dropped by the apple store only to find that computer games are far too expensive for what they are. I dropped down via the usual streets and got to waterstone’s.

There is a small documentary section which I have visited on numerous occasions in the past and today I found an interesting book. It’s Dziga Vertov – Defining Documentary Film by Jeremy Hicks. It’s a translation of some of Vertov’s key texts so that the non russian speaking audience may understand his ideas more clearly. I only got as far as reading the introduction but I hope that through the reading of this book I may get some new views and opinions on the current media landscape.