Category Archives: Products

1-2013-03-16 Yorkshire Three peaks walk

Three Peaks & Three Gadgets

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Moves storylineLast saturday Sally and I did the Yorkshire Three Peaks walk. A great walk it was too, especially tagging along behind two members of the LDWA who specialise in 100mile non stop walks. So we moved had a brisker pace and had fewer shorter stops than we are accustomed to with The Cambridge Rambling Club :-) The weather was very low cloud with 12″ or so of freshish snow on all three peaks.

The gadgets I was carrying where an iPhone5 with the Moves app running & the route in the Viewranger app (although not tracking). I also had the route stored in my Garmin etrex 20 which was also storing our track as we walked it. Finally I was wearing my trusty Fitbit Ultra.

I’m pleased to say they all worked flawlessly and all their batteries stayed live for the 11 or so hours we were out. I was also carrying my Canon 550D with a 18-135mm lens.

Moves

This is a very nifty app that automatically works out if you are walking, cycling or just sat in a vehicle! It works by using the internal GPS (battery only lasts a few hours) and also the various internal motion sensors. At the end of the day it produces a summary and storyline (see left image). For this walk (and to and froing  before & after) it gave a result of 58,499 steps, 25.7 miles in 10hours 29mins. You can also see the times we summited and the little stops we had.

I now use this app everyday the biggest disadvantage (apart from battery life – which to me is OKish)is that you cannot easily create a database of activity.

I kept the iPhone in an Aquapac case to stop water damage & also took a TeckNeti EP387 7000mAh external battery pack with cable. (Total weight 368gm)

 

 

 

Fitbit

Fitbit data March 16th

As anyone knows both Sally and I are obsessed with this amazing device.

This gave a reading of 60,600 steps, 28.6 miles. 523 floors climbed (5230 feet in normal speak) and 5340 calories burned over about 12.5 hours .  So it agrees very closely to Moves.

 

 

 

 


GPS

Using Ascent OSX app we get the profile and speed as:Screenshot_22_03_2013_14_47

Screenshot_22_03_2013_14_45

This worked out we had walked 24.8 miles in a moving time of 8hr 45min (average speed 2.8mph) with an ascent of 5,579 feet. So the other devices had a pretty good correlation. So the Fitbit really does work :-)

All my photos of the days walk can be found here.

IMG_8415.JPG IMG_8418.JPG IMG_8427.JPG IMG_8429.JPG IMG_8444.JPG IMG_8466.JPG IMG_8469.JPG IMG_8480.JPG IMG_8494.JPG IMG_8519.JPG IMG_8531.JPG IMG_8533.JPG IMG_8534.JPG IMG_8544.JPG IMG_8546.JPG

 

 

 

 

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My year on Fitbit (Part 2)

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Fitbit on Amazon

I at to smile at this twitter from Fitbit:

Since I’ve already accomplished this and more by using the excellent Fitbit API and the  script written by John McLaughlin aka @loghound for Google docs. Ernesto Ramirez also made an  how to video on Vimeo which easily explained the process, so that even I could do it!

The results can be found in this google spreadsheet (It may take a while to download, it’s rather big.

In my case the answer is 8,867,720 steps or 7,161Km (4,449 miles) which took 1,226.982 Kcals of energy (more or less I did lose just over 1kg in weight through the year). My weight chart is here

Time wise I spent:-

  • 32% in bed, asleep for 30% + 2100 awakenings :-(
  • 36% sedentary
  • 14% lightly active
  • 7% very active
  • Using google charts I produced this rather nifty chart of my daily steps.

 

So an interesting year for me.

9 Jan 2013 update. Here is the email:

Fitbit annual stats email

 

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A year with a Fitbit

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Fitbit with lanyard & carabiner

Fitbit with lanyard & carabiner

Today marks my first aniversary with a Fitbit, well two of them as one broke getting on the plane in Geneva. The replacement one, kindly supplied FOC by Fitbit eventually got caught up in a washing machine cycle :-( Fortunately, by then I had fixed the original one with superglu, the second one has now dried out and I think shows every sign of working. So I have been able to monitor my steps for the full year. In marked contrast to the Silva ones which could only hack a million steps before packing up.

The grand total for 201/12 is:

8,874,488 steps which they reckon is 4,498.23 miles walked.

Here is the steps per month:

Steps per month

The total floors climbed in the year is:

34,480 floors or about 344800 feet climbed about 65 miles! or about one Everest a month :-)

Here is the monthly floors chart.

Of course I have to sleep as well:

For calories I get ¨This stat is unavailable while we tune a couple things. Don’t worry, your data is safe. Be back soon – Team Fitbit.¨ and the weight will have to wait till I return home.

I will add fun graphs etc to this page as I get them

All my Fitbit stuff is public at http://www.fitbit.com/user/229JTZ

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Scarpa Terra GTX Boots at 1.5 million steps 680 miles

40 days of wear on Scarpa Hiking Boots

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Final update! I returned the boots to Open Air who sent them onto Scarpa’s UK agent (Mountain Boot Company). on June 8th they refunded me the full purchase price with an admonishment from Open Air that they won’t supply me another pair of this boot model!

This an update to the disappointing saga of my  latest pair of Scarpa Terra GTX boots, purchased from Open Air in Cambridge, UK on the 7th April 2012 for over £120.

Scarpa Terra GTX Boots at 1.5 million steps 680 milesFrom my first post you can see the heels started to wear very badly after only 127 miles and started to leak water at 307 miles.  I’ve now completed the 676 miles of The South West Coast Path. This is a pic of the boots today after about 1.5 million steps or 680 miles (1000Km) or so. As you can see both heels are totally  worn down (making them lethal in wet conditions), the toes are also close to their limits. Most of the walking was over pretty soft terrain (you can see the rubber isn’t shredded at all).

Whilst away, I entered into some email correspondence with Scarpa which turned out very disappointing. Nathan Fullwood, Ast. General Manager of the UK distributors, The Mountain Boot Company, promised to call but none came :-(   In an email to Open Air their response was:

“The wear rate of an outsole is linked to a number of factors including rubber shore. However Factors such as the midsole ( be it pu, Eva etc ) and the internal midsole ( texon, nylon internal board) will have a bearing even before one considers terrain, walking style and consumer abrasion.
The terra construction is overall designed to be light and cushioned, with an upper and sole that perform/ wear in tandem As the boot is close to impossible to resole effectivly. One could increase the durability of the sole by adding more rubber, but this would increase weight.
In our experience of the terra having sold over 50,000 pairs in the uk over the last 4 years, we are comfortable with its components and performance for its intended use. If we have seen a return on the product, it has almost always been linked to a more experienced and serious user expecting more from the product than it was really designed to do.
As such as per our initial feedback we would propose to trade your customer up into a product such as the ranger gtx or perhaps even a delta gtx. ” (my emphasis)

So they expect £120 to only buy you a pair of boots not designed for serious walking? Their website clearly says something different:

THE SCARPA® TERRA GTX WALKING BOOTS ARE IDEAL FOR HILL WALKERS LOOKING FOR COMPLETE WATERPROOF PROTECTION AND COMFORT

So it’s back to Open Air who say they will return them to Scarpa for me, maybe I should get the family Italian connection’s to give someone at Scarpa head office a call :-)

It’s amazing to me that no one seems to make boots with easily replaceable heels, I would have thought they could be made to bolt on, rather like the bindings on my snow board. then I could carry spare heels on my trips :-)

 


 

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Postcard index for my South West Coast Path Walk

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Last night the Jones design team did a great graphic design of my walk complete with interesting facts. The design is currently been made into a physical postcard by VistaPrint.

I intend sending a copy to every b&b I stayed at, as a lot of the owners expressed an interest in knowing whether I finished I not :-) and virtually none of them are web natives. (If you would like a FREE copy of the postcard please email me or fill in the form below).

Using ThingLink I made the postcard into a clickable index of the stages:-

Contact form removed due to spammers

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How long should a pair of hiking boots last?

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I bought my latest pair of Scarpa Terra GTX boots, from Open Air in Cambridge, UK on the 7th April 2012 for over £120 (the price has rocketed recently since they moved production back to Italy from Romania) , in preparation for walking the whole of The South West Coast Path which is just over 1000km or 630 miles. Here are snapshots of the boot over the past 14 days:-

Scarpa Boot after two weeksThe first image is with zero steps, centre image after 279,604 steps (127 miles) and the right hand image after  533,415 steps (243 miles)

As you can see the heel is getting worn out very quickly , now down to the core material with the toe rapidly catching up. The terrain is not particularly harsh mainly grass / mud /sand /tarmac but no granite limestone etc.

So will they last the 630 miles? It would be interesting to hear what Scarpa have to say about their boot life!  In fact the first pair only lasted 1 hour as there was a broken needle stuck in the leather :-) but Open Air replaced those straight away.

Update: 30 April 2012

The left boot leaked really badly today from somewhere at the front of the boot, thats 680,000 steps, 102 hours of walking, 307 miles. Pretty poor show


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Oregon & Eee display

Geoff’s Weather Station

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Sally bought me a Oregon WMR88 weather station with anemometer, wind direction, outside temperature and rainfall gauges. I’ve finally have it working with the Asus Eee running XP Pro in its 8GB of memory and uploading the data through my WiFi to Wunderground. Giving the lovely chart above.

Next job is to mount the anemometer onto the TV aerial above the house to minimize ground effects. That can wait for the warmer weather though.

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