400m freestyle in 6:14 - Yippee
I still am aiming at getting under 6:00 (fresh water, no wetsuit) at least once.
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
400m PB
Well I wasn't expecting it this morning as I had had a bit of a cold earlier in the week but I did a 400m personal best this morning.
400m freestyle in 6:14 - Yippee
I still am aiming at getting under 6:00 (fresh water, no wetsuit) at least once.
400m freestyle in 6:14 - Yippee
I still am aiming at getting under 6:00 (fresh water, no wetsuit) at least once.
Geocaching and SMS
Last month one of the guys at work told me about some open source software that could be used for making SMS or TXT applications. It called kannel and can act as a SMS gateway (and also a WAP proxy, but I'm not interested in that). All that was needed to get a simple SMS application going was a cell phone with a serial connection.. This was a bit of a challenge, but I got an old Nokia 6210 from Kevin and bought a serial cable off the internet and it worked.
My original though was to make an enhanced Geocache where you get a set of co-ordinates and a question, you go to the co-ords and TXT the answer to the cell phone attached to my server, e.g. if the question is "What's the colour of the letter box?", you could text back "Green". When the system receives the right answer it sends the next co-ords and question. The final co-ords would be the physical geocache.
However the main dudes at GroundSpeak, the company that runs geocaching.com the most popular geocaching web site decided they weren't going to allow this kind of cache as it was too similar to sending an email. I posted a forum topic here to try and drum up some support from the geocaching community and received some interesting feedback My takeout from the comments were:
Megan showed some interest in using this as a treasure hunt game that could be played with her friends. Could do it is a mall or shopping centre and would not use GPS co-ord to move you around. I will think about changing the programs to accommodate this.
I have also run a quiz at work that seemed to work and may use it for a fun work activity some time.
My Wiki entry on this is here
My original though was to make an enhanced Geocache where you get a set of co-ordinates and a question, you go to the co-ords and TXT the answer to the cell phone attached to my server, e.g. if the question is "What's the colour of the letter box?", you could text back "Green". When the system receives the right answer it sends the next co-ords and question. The final co-ords would be the physical geocache.
However the main dudes at GroundSpeak, the company that runs geocaching.com the most popular geocaching web site decided they weren't going to allow this kind of cache as it was too similar to sending an email. I posted a forum topic here to try and drum up some support from the geocaching community and received some interesting feedback My takeout from the comments were:
- Most geocachers seem to be American, very few comments from Europe and other places. Maybe it's just Americans who go into the forums, other nations just do the caches.
- Quite a bit of concern about privacy, although I'm not sure people have thought it through. All I would end up with is a series of mobile numbers that have done the cache, but no info as to who holds them. I suppose I could check my logs and see when people log their visit, which means I may be able to link a mobile number to a geocahing identity, but still wouldn't see real names.
- Lots of people who dislike cell phones, possibly only when they are geocaching.
- A number of people who didn't like something new, especially if it involved technology. Quite bizarre when you consider that GPS is a really serious new technology and that Geocaching has only started since GPS capabilities have been made available outside the military in the last 10 years.
Megan showed some interest in using this as a treasure hunt game that could be played with her friends. Could do it is a mall or shopping centre and would not use GPS co-ord to move you around. I will think about changing the programs to accommodate this.
I have also run a quiz at work that seemed to work and may use it for a fun work activity some time.
My Wiki entry on this is here
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
Beautiful spring weekend
A second great weekend, the sun is shining and the weather is definately warming up. I swam yesterday at Takapuna beach and while the water is still cold, once you get going it's fine and you warm up fast once you are dressed.
Life's been a bit hectic recently. Alison was sick this week so I've been doing the cooking, and going to scouts, one or two nights a week, and I'm training the last of the rookies to be lifeguards two nights a week at the moment. I'm still swimming at 5:30 two mornings a week and going to the gym on the other days so there is not much time left for discretionary activities. But one more week to school hols and then there will be less kid related activities.
I'm off shortly for another swim with Vic, Rothsay bay to Mairangi, where there are hot showers, and then North Harbour rugby game with Duncan & Kevin at 2:30 this afternoon. So I'm in the dog box for not doing enough around the house, I'll still try and dig a drainage ditch so the proposed veggie patch does not continue to get waterlogged.
Life's been a bit hectic recently. Alison was sick this week so I've been doing the cooking, and going to scouts, one or two nights a week, and I'm training the last of the rookies to be lifeguards two nights a week at the moment. I'm still swimming at 5:30 two mornings a week and going to the gym on the other days so there is not much time left for discretionary activities. But one more week to school hols and then there will be less kid related activities.
I'm off shortly for another swim with Vic, Rothsay bay to Mairangi, where there are hot showers, and then North Harbour rugby game with Duncan & Kevin at 2:30 this afternoon. So I'm in the dog box for not doing enough around the house, I'll still try and dig a drainage ditch so the proposed veggie patch does not continue to get waterlogged.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
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