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August 10, 2009#

Couch to 5K

It’s no secret that over the past few years, I have put on weight. It all started when I moved to Windsor and started to work in an office that brought in pasta lunches almost daily in an effort to keep us at our desks working. It’s been 5 years since I’ve left that job, and still I continue to put on weight. Now, I don’t live an active lifestyle at all, the most fitness I get is running after the kids.

It came to a shock to me that when we were completing our physical for life insurance that when they weighed me, I was 200lbs. Never in my life would I think that I would be pushing 2 bills. But years of plain laziness has caught up with me.

Niagara Falls - 2001

Me in 2000 (not that I ever want to get this skinny again)

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Me Now (weight:gain :: hair :loss)

So, now I’ve decided to make a change, and start getting active, for myself, my wife and my kids. I don’t want to be 40 years old and out of breath keeping up with them.

Today, I did my first installment in the “Couch to 5K” program. C25K, is a program that’s been designed to get just about anyone from the couch to running 5 kilometers or 30 minutes in just 9 weeks.

After my first run, all I can say is wow, I am out of shape.  Going into this i was thinking “How hard can it be to run for 60 seconds?” Boy was I wrong.  At the end of the 30 mins, I was dying around the 45 second mark of the running portion, and really had to push to complete.

Being a tech geek, I’ve armed myself with the following tools:

Nike+ iPod sensor + iPhone 3GS.
I don’t have a pair of Nike+ compatible shoes, or the extra $ right now to buy any, so after some research.  I completed this modification to fit the Nike+ sensor to my Adidas shoes:

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I undid all of the laces and cut a little piece of two sided fabric tape to the bottom of the sensor and attached it to the tongue, then redid the laces up overtop of the sensor.  In reading about modding the sensor this way, it said that it was important the the sensor be as stable as possible to keep up accuracy.

I’ve been using the Nike+iPod application on my iPhone 3GS to keep up my progress.  My NikePlus profile page is here:

http://my.nike.com/eplatero

Couch to 5K iPhone App: iTunes Link

I will try and keep this up after every week to update my progress.


March 4, 2009#

Podcasts on the go with CastRoller & RSSPlayer.

Last week, my complimentary 1 year subscription to Sirius radio had expired.  Prior to my new vehicle purchase with Sirius radio, I was a very heavy Podcast listener, but Chrysler gave me 1 year to try out Sirius.  At first I dismissed it thinking that I would rarely listen, but after time, I found that I was splitting my listening between Sirius (mostly Howard Stern) and Podcasts.  Now that I’ve chosen not to renew my subscription, until they come out with an iPhone client, I’m back to listening to Podcasts.

Now, I very rarely sync my iPhone with my mac.  I sync my contacts & calendar over the air with Google Sync, and add new music to my iPhone once every couple of weeks.  My MacPro is my main source of my iTunes music (over 80GB), so i use SimplifyMedia to access my entire collection over the air, and keep around 3GB of music on my iPhone for quick listening.  So with the bulk of my content being streamed over the air, this was leaving me behind on my Podcasts, or after a few days on the road, I would burn through all of my podcasts quickly.

In iPhone software update 2.2.1, Apple introduced the ability to download Podcasts over the air via the iTunes mobile app.  I was very intrigued by this feature…. then I used it.  First off, It won’t download any podcasts over 10MB, so about 95% of the podcasts that I listen to.  So my next option is to stream the podcast over the air.  Well, after giving it a spin a couple of times, the results left something to be deisired.  I would be 30 mins into a 1 hour podcast, an incoming call would come in and inturrupt playback.  From there, the podcast would fail to resume, or would spend a couple of minutes rebuffering.  Very frustrating to say the least.

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Apple's Podcast Player choking on a 2 hour Podcast

Add to the fact that Apple’s OTA Podcast solution does not allow me to bookmark any of my favorite podcasts,  or us my existing OPML file, has rendered this option useless for me.

So my solution now.  Castroller + RSSPlayer.

From CastRoller’s Site: “CastRoller is an online podcast subscription tool. Users can add their favorite podcasts and will receive personalized recommendations for podcasts they might enjoy. They can add their friends and see the podcasts that their friends are listening to and share episodes with them. With CastRoller, you can manage your podcast subscriptions in once place and use the RSS feeds to have the episodes delivered to all of your devices automatically.”

RSSPLayer is a iPhone/Touch application that allows you to listen to or download podcasts on the go by adding their feed location into the app.

I’ve been using CastRoller over iTunes now since it’s launch, and find it a great resource to organize and share your podcasts, but mainly I’ve been using it as an aggregator for all of my podcasts so I have a single feed in iTunes or on my iPhone.

What I love about CastRoller is that I can simply add a podcast, it shows up in my episode feed, I can a keep separate feed for my favorite eps.

Now on the go, this is where CastRoller really shines for me.  This is the situation where I found the value in CastRoller:  I was in Burlington the day after the premiere of LOST and one of the podcasts that I listen to about the show, ‘The LOST podcast with Jay & Jack” publishes their podcast the same night that the episode airs.  I don’t listen to the podcast when the show is on hiatus, so I delete it out of my iTunes.  While I was on the road, on my iPhone, I was able to login to CastRoller, find the podcast and add it to my collection.  From there I opened up RssPlayer, refreshed my feeds and there was the newest episode of Jay & Jack waiting for me.  This was even before CastRoller had added RssPlayer integration.

Now how is RssPlayer at streaming?  Pretty good, but i don’t really care because I can now download my episodes to my iPhone with NO SIZE LIMIT! Over 3G I was able to download a 76MB episode of Smodcast in about 8 minutes.  This is the way that things should be, simple and straight forward.

Smodcast in RssPlayer (Notice that it picks up the artwork)

Smodcast in RssPlayer (Notice that it picks up the artwork)

It is no secret that I am an Apple Fanboy, but they really have a thing or two to learn about how to make OTA podcast work.  Hats off to Will at CastRoller and the RssPlayer team for the excellent work.

My CastRoller Podcast Collection.

The Channel that I have created on CastRoller – Pro Audio/Video Production

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December 13, 2008#

iPhone Screens: December 12

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As a follow up to my iPhone screen post in September, I have posted my screens again.

Changes:  I have switched my twitter client from Twinkle to TwitterFon as I prefer the UI.  I have added the iPhone Geocaching app, Google Mobile App, RTM, ESPN NHL Scores.

I have removed most of my games as I find that I am not really using the iPhone as a gaming device.  Usually i will purchase a game, and play it for 15 mins then forget about it.

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