Pinkies up, full steam ahead.
Such a good show….
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I love Crashlands. It gives me all the warm and fuzzyies of Clash of Clans without the feeling that I need to quit to save my sanity.
I wish I didn’t have to wait until December for my Pebble Core, I want it now!
I’m currently reading The Tale of Tallest Rabbit by Roddrigo D. Lopez. It’s a nice easy read so far. Rodrigo is also part of the excellent Major Spoilers Crew who have several fun and entertaining podcasts such as Top Five and Critical Hit. I’m working harder to keep to my plan for reading more. It’s difficult to make time but worth the effort.
I am going to try out Pebble Health for a while to see how I like it. I am not one to obsess over tracking my number of steps each day but I am curious to see how well it monitors my sleep habits. If it starts to kill the battery… delete.
I always enjoy a train ride, followed by a bike ride. It doesn’t get much better than that! The Ohio Towpath is a really beautiful trail to bike or hike.
You can never read enough books…
“We need libraries. We need books. We need literate citizens.
I do not care — I do not believe it matters — whether these books are paper or digital, whether you are reading on a scroll or scrolling on a screen. The content is the important thing.
But a book is also the content, and that’s important.
Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.” - Neil Gaiman
I have a few preferences when it comes to listening to Audiobooks on the go. On Any Platform - I use Audible to play purchased books. I have lots of books I purchased through Audible over the years. It is a reliable app that works well. Downloading is easy right in the app. The only downside is that it won’t play my rather large library of books in MP3 or other formats. To do that, well, it depends on the platform… On iOS I have been very happy with Bookmobile, it is simple and just works very well. On Android there are several options, including free ones. I chose Listen Audiobook Player for it’s ease of use and clean way it handles files. There are a few others that work well such as Mort and Smart AudioBook Player. I rarely listen to books on the PC but when I do it is usually in VLC.
While it still has some bugs to work out, the Pebble is a nice watch overall. It was nice to only charge it once during our 9 day trip. I am looking forward to seeing the larger screen of the upcoming Pebble Time 2.
This is a short time lapse video of us breaking down camp along the GAP trail.
So I thought I’d write down some of my thoughts now that the big bike trip is over. Several people have asked me if I would do it again. Yes, absolutely. Even though the heat was at times very hard to deal with, the ride was very beautiful. I had a great time spending time and talking with Stefani who didn’t complain a bit.
What surprised me on the trip? I was not as sore as I thought I would be. That is not to say that I was not fully ready to get off the bike nearing the end of the day’s ride, I definitely was. And I was sore for a while after getting off the bike but usualy by the next morning I was good to go. My rear was a little sore every day but the biking shorts did help with that. It was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. The thing I had the most trouble with is pain in my hands and to some extent my shoulders. I constantly tried to shift my hand positions while riding but even so my palms hurt every day. Wearing the gloves did make it bearable but I would like to research a little to see if other people have similar issues and how they deal with it. Stopping to rest and get water at regular intervals was a great way to alieviate some of the discomfort and fatigue. The shoulders did not hurt until later in the week, I think it was mostly because of the posture on the bike for such long periods of time.
What would I do different? If I knew if was going to be so hot every day I would make plans to alternate each camp night with a hotel or B&B. I think I would rig up another water botle or two to take with me because there were a few stretches of path where there was no easy access to water. Sometimes it was not obvious when stopping at a “town” if there were any stores there. It might be a good idea to check the maps closer at intervals along the way for places to get water and mark how close to the trailhead they are. I would also practice a few longer rides with full weight on the bike. Time just didn’t permit us to really do that easily. Front panniers would be nice to more evenly distribute the weight on the bike. Both of our bikes were back heavy which made it a little more difficult to lift the bike over things or push them up very steep inclines. Fortunately we did not have to do that much on this trail. One thing I was irritated with was the Sporks that came with my Dualist cookset, they are very flimsy. A better set of silverware would have been nice. Using the MSR Pocket Rocket was awesome, it boils water in no time flat. I would also recommend Good To Go Meals for interesting and tasty dehydrated meals. We had the Pad Thai and the Indian Vegetable Korma and both were good. That is not to say you need to buy dehydrated meals though, you can certainly get by a little cheaper by improvising. We also had Hummus-Tuna wraps that we created ourselves for lunch. Tuna in Foil packs mixed with a little hummus (Casbah packaged, just add water) were pretty good. We occasinally bought some fresh fruit to snack on, and stored it in a insulated lunch bag we got at a dollar store. We had a bunch of the Don’t Go Nuts Granola Bars which were fantastic snacks. Did we take to much stuff? Yes and no, we could have done without things but overall I think we did pretty well. I think I would trade out the cookset for a simpler metal cup that could be used to boil the water. My sleeping bag was a cheap flannel one which really would not have been enough if the temperature would have been cooler. I would like to invest someday in a little nicer down bag, something that would compact well. The polar bottles worked well, it was very refreshing to have cold water to drink.
How was the milage? I am not a world class biker, I am probably below average and more on the slow side but I thought 45-65 miles a day was a great choice. More than that would have been very rough. If you want to do more sight seeing at stops along the way, I would cut the milage down some. We did most of our sight seeing on the trail itself. I think I calculated about 380 miles total, the trail itself is 330 miles. Several of the towns have difficult hills to get to places. Getting to the Divide was a tiring uphill ride but that downhill right after it was heaven. The trail would be more difficult northbound I think…
Stef and I played games and chatted on the train ride back. I really love riding the train, as long add you are not in a hurry to get somewhere. A tip to remember though, if you want a full meal selection, don’t take the last dinner reservation. The views are nice up until it gets dark. It will be so nice to sleep in my own bed again!
Had a delicious dinner at Nando’s Peri Peri with the awesome Jeff Kress who then took us to tour the botanical garden to see the famous corpse flower. Interesting. Off to get a good nights sleep before the train ride home. We couldn’t have had a successful trip with out support on the home front, thanks Dan, Kellie and everyone!
Got an early start today, which was a good thing because the trail was busy. Mile marker zero was way too tough to find! We did finally locate the little white marker right behind Thompson Boats. We then went and suited our bikes at the hotel and used their bathrooms to get the worst of the trail grime washed off. We are now having brunch at Bus Boys and Poets. Sweet potato pancakes, yum!
Yesterday was a pretty long day. We started off slow trying as best we could to avoid mud. After a really slow 15 miles or so the pace was able to pickup. We did have beautiful scenery again which has been a constant on this trip. We have seen deer every day on the trail usually multiple times. Lots of squirrels, a big girls and more than our share of midges. We got to Horsepen Branch where we were supposed to camp and didn’t like how close to the trail it was so we pressed on to Swains Lock which was much nicer and only leaves us 17 miles to D.C. Ate delicious IndianVegetable Korma we brought with us.
After such a promising start and a few delicious smoothies at Desert Rose, about five miles out a thunderstorm hit. Twenty miles in a down pour, through mud and silt was not a good time. I made an executive decision (since more storms are predicted) and got us a hotel in Shepardstown. There was no shelter for that span of the trail and it was really slow going because of the ruts in this section. Fortunately the hotel had a hose and we were able to clean us and our gear up. Most everything is wet and we have things strewn all over our room in an attempt to dry out. We did do a full load of laundry which was sorely needed. The storms should be done tomorrow by around 9am, so we may get a late start. We did about 53 miles today, only 72 more trail miles to go! Off to play some games…
Our Wednesday night stay at the C&O Cycle Bunk House. Met a young girl traveling North solo here. There was a Sheetz a few blocks away so I got several large waters and two large chocolate milks for our late night snack.
A nice ride from Hancock to Williamsport about half done for the day. Having lunch and smoothies at the Desert Rose Cafe.
Lil Ben’s Milk Stout at Buddy Lou’s. Waiting on my Crabcake Sandwich and Brussels sprouts. Yum!
58 miles in to our longest ride and I’m spent and ready to keel over when up ahead I hear Stefani…. singing. :-)
Another rough day complete. We ate our lunch by the Paw Paw tunnel after we were chased away from our fist stop by little flying bugs. The tunnel was not fun, muggy, narrow and bumpy. We had to walk the whole thing and we were both dripping wet by the end. Nothing like the previous tunnels. 210 down.
We had a great night’s sleep at The Bruce House Inn and we can smell something delicious in the air while finish packing. We played a few games last night and then hit the sack early as we were both very tired.
We had Pad Thai from Good To Go meals on our first camping night which was very good and easy to make. Tonight we are having our Mountain House Raspberry Crumble with some fresh bananas we picked up at a Save A Lot for dessert. The crumble was good, just a little too sweet for me. We are both looking forward to a good nights sleep in air conditioning.
We made it to the Divide!
Woke up early and rode to Meyersdale. Having breakfast at the G.I. Dayroom. We have about 8 miles to go to the Divide. Overcast and humid but much cooler ride!
Lots of beautiful bridges and scenic views. Today was much better weather wise but the millage was still very difficult. We stopped at the Lucky Dog Cafe in Confluence for lunch which was delicious. Staying the night in Rockwood and thankful to get a shower. I really thought I was in better shape! Riding with all that weight is very tiring. Stef is awesome, no complaints, and keeps the pace consistent.
Yesterday was brutal. Hot, humid headwind in the sun. By the time we got to Roundbottom camp we were both exhausted. I had cramps in my legs while riding, mostly from the heat. Beautiful scenery though, absolutely gorgeous along the river. We got a late start with a little confusion on which trail we were on so we did about 55 miles for the day. The camp was very primitive but we got there just before a brief thunderstorm and the three sided shelter kept us dry. We setup the tent without the fly to keep the bugs off. The late start did let us vs have s delicious lunch at the Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe.
On our way.
Why does any vacation start with the feeling that you have forgotten something?
Prep day!
Thoughts on the Pebble Time - Year 2… While it still has some bugs to work out, the Pebble is a fantastic watch overall. My most missed feature is compatibility with MapMyFitness apps. (this was also my most used feature of the original Pebble. I do like the Voice text message response quite a lot more than I thought I would. Not having to charge my battery for several days… priceless!
HanDbase usage as a check-list is very good. You can set-up a single page list on a tablet and eliminate horizontal scrolling. Comparison of HanDbase to Memento Pro on Android: HanDbase lets you tap check boxes while in list view, Memento sort of lets you do the same thing in a less flexible way. Are either of them needed by the average user since Sheets and Google Keep?
I love Pathfinder ACG, it has fun RPG elements with loads of options during play. This game has quickly made it to my number one “want to play it” game. Setup time is average and there are tons of things to keep track of which makes it easy to get things wrong or miss rules. I still am not sure we have played it completeley by the book yet. One big negative is that the card backs from the latest adventure sets are distincively different from my original set. Not a deal breaker but could slightly affect game play.
Skulls is a fun, quick game that is easy to teach. We tried it out over the weekend. It was also the loudest game played at game day!
The one thing I do miss on the iPhone is the Drafts app. I have yet to find an Android replacement. It makes working with any kind of text easy and really shines when combined with other apps. I have used it for years and I’m still not using the app to its full potential.
Interesting article on privacy and where we are headed.
Soon I will be riding from Pittsburgh to D.C. on two trails, The Great Allegheny Passage and the C&O Canal Trail. At around 330 miles, the plan is to bike from Sunday to Saturday and then take Amtrak back to Cleveland. I hope to Journal a little each day about how things are going as well as post tips for anyone who is thinking of taking a similar trip.
Yes, Pokemon Go is a fun little pass time, can we please have something else in the news now? Anything?
Sigh.
Stefani and I rode 32 miles this morning to start getting in shape for the big trip.
So far I’m not too sore, let’s hope it stays that way.
“If you can’t run, you crawl. If you can’t crawl– you find someone to carry you.”
― Joss Whedon
Just finished reading All Star Superman again. What a fantastic story. One of my all time favorites.
I gave up on the new Pebble Time this past weekend. Although I really love the Pebble watches, two frustrations with the new Time model have pushed me back to the original Pebble. The main issue is that I can’t control MapMyFitness from the watch. The original Pebble shows my mileage, time and lets me start and stop my workout with a touch of a button. I use that feature more than any other on the watch and that includes the nice SMS voice response on the Time. The other issue is a minor quibble, even though the color e-ink screen is pretty, it is slightly smaller and can be more difficult to read without my glasses. Both still have the 4-7 day battery life that I consider the minimum edge for me, any less and I would find myself with a dead watch at the most inopportune times. I guess I will just keep checking the forums to see if Under Armor adds support for the Time… until then, back to the drawing board.
I know I definitely have a love/hate relationship with Apple. Apple does so many things right, their products are generally easy to use and for the most part they are well made. It is the things they do wrong that infuriate me. The iOS walled garden makes it tough to exchange data between apps, also apps never “crash,” they just occasionally exit with no explanation :-(, over priced hardware with limited storage, planned obsolescence… and finally the bloated mess that is iTunes. There are two things I do miss however, Android Cut and Paste is not quite as easy as on iOS and I really miss the ability of double tapping on the top of the screen to go to the top of web pages! In general, I really don’t like the iPhone keyboard, it is not very user friendly. Multiple tapping to get keys and weird shifting, Swype is so much easier to use! Who knows, the next new Apple shiny might lure me back… for now though, Android is my daily driver.
One way you can use Cryptsync files with Android is with a combination of FolderSync and ZArchiver Pro. You can set the .cryptsync file extension to automatically open ZArchiver and then just use the encryption password you have set. With FolderSync, you can sync specific folders over to your Android device from a variety of sources such as, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or even a SFTP site. Then you extract the file to wherever you want. It’s a little round-about method but all of this work keeps your files more secure and in your control. Encryption take place on your device, not on your cloud service. This only works if you are using PKZip style encryption not GnuPG.
Wadsworth Library Book In 5k. Felt really good and took off almost 4 minutes from last years time…
Interesting.
This tool is now in my standard install for Windows machines. Tremendously useful and easy to pick up, this lets me do everything from automate quick text replaces to sticking a custom date stamp into my text files. I am keeping my scripts in Dropbox to share them between machines.
1) microSD card slot - Is expandable storage really that hard?
2) HDMI out
3) removable battery
4) 7"+ screen size
5) lightweight and speedy
6) No bloatware. Some extra software is fine, as long as I can remove it if I want to.
7) A physical Mute button would be a bonus
1) Reasonable size - This means roughly around the size of the iPhone 4 or Razr M
2) Removable battery with decent battery life - It has to make it through a full day!
3) Ability to completely backup my phone to a PC - This shouldn’t be that hard! Why can’t I just connect to a pc, run backup software and save all of my crap! The cloud is nice in theory but never gets everything, iTunes does who knows what (it is not a full backup, that’s for sure!) I can do this but it requires rooting/unlocking/jailbreak and I shouldn’t need to do that just to backup my phone.
4) Waterproof and gorilla glass (no, not actual glass, Apple do you hear me!?!?)
5) Customizable software - If I want to change my soft keyboard, let me, add a clipboard extension? No problem.
6) Stable
7) Removable storage - Yes, the cloud is nice, but I’d still like my data without downloading please.
Why is it so hard to quit Clash of Clans? I think it is difficult to delete that game and others like it because the time investment is so visible. Everytime you go into the game you see what you have built and are reminded of how long it took to get there. Ongoing “building” games differ than other games in that reguard, nostalgia sucks you back in so easily. You lie to yourself - Well, I can keep the game around just in case I want to go back to it sometime… Then over time the icon just sits there… mocking you. “Your town needs a leader!” whispers CoC. What, I thought I shut those notifications off? Well, maybe just a few minutes to clean up my town and re-arm my defenses. Sigh. Delete the app. It’s the only way to really be free.
One thing iOS does better is the way it handles text editing. I can never seem to position my cursor on Android devices without multiple tries. The tap and hold with magnifier method iOS uses is more accurate and easier to use. Android does have an edge when it comes to clip board add-ons . I would like to see more apps to enhance the clipboard.
Here are some thoughts on the HP Folio 9470m versus the original Folio. Why? HP, why did you put a useless slot on this laptop? Not only did you put a SC slot on this machine, you took away the SD Card slot! This makes no sense at all. The laptop itself is not bad, aalthoughthe original Folio tops it in many ways. The original had much better battery life, a SD Card slot, NO POINTER STICK (I just can’t get used to the darn thing), and a better size. The main advantage the 9740 has is one additional USB port. (Three USB ports on laptops should be standard on all laptops or *at least* put the two USB slots on the same side!) Both machines are plenty zippy with adequate storage space. They both have good screens, the 9740 is larger and has less screen glare because the original Folio has a more glossy finish. The 9740 has dedicated Page Up and Down keys which is nice but not critical. I prefered the HDMI port of the Original over the 9740’s Display Port. All in all, how to make the Original a perfect machine for me? Add one USB 3 port. Oh, and get HP to start selling it again.
Stefani and I rode 32 miles this morning to start getting in shape for the big trip.
So far I’m not too sore, let’s hope it stays that way.