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Mapping wifi availability easily

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Wifi is something that should be ubiquitous so that our digital lifestyle may not be limited to being online at home or at work. It should include, bars, restaurants and city squares. In some cities wifi is easy to find but in others that’s not the case.
The lazy way to do wifi mapping could be with the geo loc software on the n95, a flickr account and free wifi. Everytime you find free wifi, get the GPS co-ordinates, include them in the exif and upload them to twitter. Once that’s done get the rss feed of the geo tagged images and feed them to google earth.

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The High Tech World is not making us weak and weird.

Byrichard

The High Tech world is not making us weak and weird. I believe that the opposite is true. According to Patrick Mustain in his article “Welcome to the Devolution: The High-Tech World Is Making Us Weak and Weird” for The Daily Beast he worries that modern technology and conveniences have taken the physical aspects out of our daily routine. We don’t need to clean clothes by beating them against a rock and we no longer need to clean dishes manually. We take the car from point A to point B and we take a lift to go up a floor or two.

“We find ourselves interacting with chairs and doors and walkways, and as a result, we get used to bending only forwards. Almost never backwards, never to the side, we don’t really rotate our hips very much.

This premise is false. This article ignores that there are a growing amount of climbing and bouldering gyms. This article ignores that there are an increasing number of via ferratas being built and that crossfit gyms are common. “But our evolutionary drive for acquiring cheap energy also makes us loath to unnecessarily spend it.” is a fallacy. Look at Strava, Sports Tracker, Movescount, Runkeeper, fitbit, Withings and other products. Each one of these not only tracks the effort that people are making on a weekly basis but congregates that data so that people can compare their workout to that of others. This implies that technology is encouraging people to move, to compete with friends, family or other sports enthusiasts.

There is some humour in the article. “I think any change in the direction of just moving more is better. You don’t have to take off your shirt and go climb a tree to get value.” It is not simply about moving more but about moving more energetically, more enthusiastically. If you’re walking down the street increase your stride length just a little and you will increase your heart rate and energy expenditure. When I walk up to the base of the Val De Tière via ferrata and when I walk up to the base of the Tour D’Aï via ferrata I am usually the first one, leading the way. I love endurance training so I forget about the group and I enjoy the hike. Once I am at the base I relax, I look at the landscape and I take photographs.

As a camera operator/photographer I need to be at least as fit as everyone else and if possible I need to have more energy. By having more energy I can go ahead of the group and document their effort as they make their way up or down a mountain.

Since I owned the Nokia N95 8GB model I have tracked more than a thousand sports activities. I have tracked skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, hiking, cycling, climbing, via ferrata, indoor training, sailing and swimming. It is thanks to the high tech world that I can track my progress and assess how well I am doing. It allows me to set goals and exceed them and it allows me to evaluate when to take breaks and when to continue pushing forwards.

I love technology but I still walked up five floors to get to my office. I almost never sit in public transport and I usually take the stairs or walk up escalators rather than stand around. Movement is an integral part of my daily routine so I do not accept the premise that high tech world makes us weak and weird.

 

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Mountain streams

Byrichard

Whilst some people are perfectly happy sitting at a desk chatting to others via webcams I prefer to be out and about streaming daily life. Today was one example of what I like to do. I went up to La Dole for a walk with the n95 and streamed a few landscapes for people following me on twitter to see.



We finally got caught out by some hail and thunder but my phone survived.

I want more people to do this type of thing. Come out and have fun, stream life as it happens. Show us what’s outside your living room or home office.

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Three percent of people in Europe use maps on their mobile phone

Byrichard

According to the report, the majority of users — 73% in the United States and 57% in Europe — accessed mobile maps via the handset’s browser. Less than a third of customers in these markets used a downloaded application.

Source

In a town like Lausanne it would make sense to use google maps paired with the phone’s gps because there’s municipal wifi you don’t need to agree to for use. As a result it’d be much faster simply to load the appplication.

With time and as dat costs go down the trend of using Nokia’s in built maps will evolve…

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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.

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Audible books and Kindle Unlimited

Byrichard

This year I have set myself the goal of reading 30 books. I am currently on track to reaching that goal. Most of my reading material comes from two sources. Audible.com and amazon.de. What I like about reading books via Audible.com is the freedom it gives me to do something at the same time as people are telling me stories.

This habit was born from listening to podcasts while I went for hour long walks. Over time podcasts went down in quality and my time was taken up by other activities. As a result of the scarcity of time I moved towards audible books. Audible books provide me with an opportunity to listen to stories and learn whilst I do other things. I can listen to them while I commute, while I go for hikes or while I mow the lawn. As a result of this ability to multitask I have finished many more books than I would finish if I was only reading.

I am an audible platinum member and I pay in advance. This gives me the option to buy 23 books a year. Audio books are not cheap when you buy them individually so buying a subscription makes sense. Below a certain price I buy the books and use credit when the value justifies it. For at least two years I have felt justified in keeping the subscription.

I am lucky because I like to read on electronic devices. I have used iphones, android phones, iPads, iPad Mini, Tablets and a kindle for reading. As a result of this I always have several books with me at all times. I have a tendency to buy many more books than I have the time to read. This is especially true of books when they cost less than an airport coke. Eventually I will get to read them.

Today I took a step which may make conventional book readers envious. I will test Kindle Unlimited for the next month. I can “borrow” up to ten books simultaneously per month. I can be as uncommitted as ever with books. I am working through the James Bond Collection and reading three history volumes at the same time.  I “read” the history volumes as audio books and this allows me to enjoy the nice weather we have had. When I am in a fixed location I can read James Bon books on the kindle.

At the end of the trial month we will see whether I keep using Kindle unlimited.

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A gorge and a Railway tunnel

Byrichard

Today I went exploring the French Jura in the hope of capturing some of the Autumnal colours. I drove an hour into the Jura and arrived at this place. They say that it’s a one hour walk but it took me less than that to cover. There is information along the path for children to learn about features of Gorges and how they’re formed.

What I found more interesting was a sign for the Tram Jurasienne railway line. In June there is a race along the path where the railway line once passed. Like Julia Bradbury in her British Railway walks I walked over a viaduct and along some lines until I arrived at a tunnel. I enjoyed that documentary series and as a result I would like to follow the line further.

It will require some research. So far I see that it was the first Jurassic tram. I also know that the race with the same name is 29 km long. What I don’t know is where it starts and where it ends. I also don’t know how much of the path is walkable. That is part of the time.

More information
Some more information
Aerial view of the line

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157628003227616″]

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