Richard Huff's Seattle Social Blog

You might suffer from an addiction to latte art or roller coasters, but I have an addiction to a certain category of gadgets. My particular "fix" comes in the form of gadgets that perform an automated data acquisition task. (Geek Alert!) An example is the real time temperature monitor I recently installed at our data center. The latest "kick", however, is Garmin's new Forerunner 305. Having previously owned two of Timex's Ironman speed + distance systems (one with, and one without heart rate monitoring) and several other handheld GPS units, I can authoritatively state that Garmin has finally succeeded in an odyssey strewn with antecedent carcasses.

"Such strong words," you say? I'll let you in on a couple dirty little secrets about most portable GPS units. After spending between $300 and $500 on each, you'll learn to your chagrin that they only work in the middle of a desert on a clear day for the ten minutes that their double "A" batteries hold out. That's right. They're so pathetic that trees and clouds will reduce them to nothing but a battery consumption apparatus (which, ironically, they are exceedingly good at). Did I mention high-tension power lines? How about outside tall city buildings?

Don't get me wrong. GPS has held enormous potential. It's just that those of you, like me, who have purchased model after model need to start being honest about their shortcomings. Or, like me, you need to toss the lot of them and buy the Garmin Forerunner 305. (No, I'm not being paid my Garmin.) It's compact, easy to use, and reliable. I'm searching for something I don't like about it.

Let me explain.

The Forerunner 305 is an oversized wristwatch combined with a traditional heart rate monitor chest strap and, optional, cadence sensor (for cycling). I've been using it for running, cycling and hiking. In those activities, I most often have the unit's display set to indicate event duration, distance, pace or speed, and heart rate. Unlike pedometers or bike computers, GPS provides truly accurate speed and distance measurements. (Elevation calculation is a bonus that pedometers don't even pretend to deliver.) The advantages, however, aren't limited to the course or trail. A provided computer interface enables transfer of the acquired data to a web-based training log and analysis service (subscription required: www.motionbased.com). That's where the trifecta of GPS, data acquisition and Web Services reach a mesmerizing crescendo.

Take, for example, the following log of the past three running events at Greenlake. They were all fairly slow and short runs, but you can begin to image how such a log would aid in training over the season.

Motion Based logs all of the data acquired by the Forerunner, and combines it with weather data, a graphing system, and a handful of mapping systems. For instance, I can see that this morning's Greenlake run weather was noted as "scattered clouds at 1000 feet" (from the Boeing Field weather station). The average, low and high temperatures, relative humidity and wind speed were also recorded. Sitting like a maraschino cherry on the top of all this delicious data acquisition dessert is the Google Earth feature. (Your jaw will drop when you first see a Google Earth tour of an event recorded with the Forerunner.)

The image to your left is just a still photo of the Google Earth tour. If you want to experience the real thing, here are a couple Google Earth files from my training log: Greenlake (running), Lake Washington (cycling), and Rattlesnake Ledge (hiking). [You'll have to right-click on the links and save the files to your computer. You will also need to download the Google Earth software from http://earth.google.com.]

I'm not even scratching the surfice of Motion Based's data analysis features with this blog post. You can combine the data in several different ways to produce line, distribution and pie charts. Here's a simple one showing heart rate and elevation of this afternoon's hike to Rattlesnake Ledge.

The Garmin Forerunner 305 receives my strongest endorsement.

As China is a regular topic for discussion among my friends, I thought that the following quote from the Grolier series of books, Lands and People, would be decidedly interesting:

Western experts are inclined to believe, even allowing for communist exaggeration, that China’s yearly rate of growth reached 8 or 9 per cent during 1952-57. The rate may be even higher today. Should this tremendous expansion continue the Chinese Communists may begin to threaten American and Russian industrial supremacy by 1970 or 1980. (1961:248-9)

I picked this series of books up many years ago at a secondhand bookstore. It is a complete, seven book set, in mint condition, offering a glimpse of what the world was like close to the middle of the twentieth century. There’s no Afghan war to report. There’s no war in Vietnam. What has held true is China’s economic growth, averaging about three times the annual US economic growth during the same period.

If you haven’t already done so, I recommend that you hop on over to Radio Open Source and listen to the April 18th, 2006 podcast, China vs. India – The Next 100 Years. We will surely speak of China again.

By the way, tasseography is the art of reading tea leaves. It's possibly an apt metaphor of our musings on China.

Finally having a break in the wet and gray weather this morning gave me a chance to take a short (2.68 mile) hike through my South Lake Union neighborhood. Although we're almost a month into Spring, I'm not yet willing to testify to its arrival in Seattle. It sure feels slow this year. The one thing that does seem to support Spring's arrival is the rhododendron (Washington state flower). It is in bloom at every corner.

I started my hike at Denny Park, Seattle's very first park, established in 1884. Trivia fact: it was once a cemetery. As parks go it's rather tiny. I appreciate its existence in my neighborhood, but rarely find reason to visit. That will likely change as the residential population increases with the opening of several, new condo and apartment building in the neighborhood.

From Denny Park, I walked to South Lake Union Park on the Lake Union waterfront. The park is home to the Center for Wooden Boats. If your interested in maritime history or sailing, I would recommend visiting the CWB. They offer youth and adult sailing classes, rent boats for use on Lake Union, and hold workshops on the craft of wooden boat building and maintenance, including a bronze casting workshop this next weekend (April 22nd and 23rd). Had I not already made plans for Earth Day I would have signed up for the bronze casting workshop.

My return trip was much less glamorous. With all the construction in South Lake Union tearing up the landscape, and the high volume traffic of Mercer Street and Denny Way, I stayed off the beaten path. The side streets of Terry Avenue North and Boren Avenue North are very industrial, but contain gems such as the Open Circle Theater and Consolidated Works.

Confab moved to Wednesday nights because of various scheduling conflicts. This did not, however, slow us down. We had another packed house, with Mollie Bradley-Martin and Sarah Lingafelter joining us for the first time. Mollie, you may know, is a regular contributor on Podcasting Liberally. Sarah is a lawyer at Preston|Gates|Ellis, LLP who just happens to have worked with both Gavin Shearer and me during the dotcom era.

Purportedly, the main thread of this week's show was globalization. We wandered, as usual. Seven participants really pushes the limits of what a podcast can safely manage. At one point Keith Vaitkus has to exclaim that, "This is lively! I've been raising my hand and I can't get a turn!" So many simultaneous voices must make the podcast difficult to follow. We've since agreed to keep future shows down to five participants (maybe six in rare cases).

The best quote award for the April 12, 2006 show goes to Will Kelley-Kamp for the quote, "Hold on a second! That cannot be true: Medicare part D. Why would the Republican Party put seven bullets in a six chamber gun, and pull the trigger twenty-five times!" You'll have to listen to the show to understand the context of that quote and why Brian Gaither will be blogging at www.brokenthumb.co.uk in the near future.

The next Confab show will be recorded on April 26, 2006.

Of all the cities I've had an opportunity to visit, London is easily my favorite. This status might have something to do with the fact that I usually end up in London following a less than spectacular experience in another European region. Despite the potential for a comparative bias, there are still plenty of unbiased attributes that keep London at the top of my list. For one, I've always felt completely safe while in London. That's quite an accomplishment for a city with a population of 7.5 million (2005 estimate). Not once have I been approached by strangers asking for monetary handouts, which I can't seem to avoid while walking a few blocks in downtown Seattle. I'm sure there is crime in London, but the city feels so much more civilized than Seattle (where you might, regularly, have to step over the beggars and homeless on the sidewalks).

On my way back from Italy, I stopped in London for a few days to see Gavin while he was visiting high-profile Microsoft customers. It's not every day that both Gavin and I find ourselves in Europe at the same exact time. We took the chance to spend one of the days touring the city with Eric (another Microsoftie).

Take a look at my photos from London.

My day in Pisa was the most pleasant of my whole trip. (It was the first chance I had to explore Italy at my own pace.) The Italians are, as claimed in most travel books, very friendly towards Americans. The friendliness is sincere -- not that sort of tourism friendliness you might find in some other tourist destinations. The woman at the airport information desk, the bus drivers, and the young luggage storage woman planning a trip of her own to study in New York, were just plain nice.

Pisa is an ancient city by almost any account. The archaeological record indicates that Etruscans (precursors to the Romans) settled in the same area during the 5th century BCE.

My exploration started at the Piazza dei Miracoli (where the leaning tower sits). From there, I walked to the Piazza dei Cavalieri, then on to the Corsa Italia (shopping district street), the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, and finished at the Piazza della Stazione (where I caught the bus back to the aeroporto). This route took me across most of the city. The Wikipedia has an excellent entry covering Pisa, so I won't try to duplicate that same information here.

Take a look at my photos from Pisa.