iPhone a Sauze d’Oulx

Questo finesettimana ho fatto una delle mie solite improvvisate; sveglia alle 8, tempo indecente, cosa faccio allora: vado in Piemonte a controllare se li’ invece il tempo e’ buono. Piemonte significa Sauze d’Oulx, che non ho idea di come si pronunci quindi a voce direi “Salice d’Ulzio” (traduzione ufficiale). Significa anche: September Fest, una sorta di manifestazione di mountain bike con impianti di risalita aperti durante tutto il weekend, stand espositivi di varie marche, eccetera eccetera.

Ho fatto dei fanghi molto salutari; ho passato piu’ tempo a scivolare giu’ per le discese che altro. Ma lo scopo di questo post e’ semplicemente di raccontare quanto mi e’ stato utile il mio nuovo iPhone (courtesy of my brother).

• durante il viaggio in auto, ascolto dei Kinks (Wish I Could Fly Like Superman, Low Budget,) e Woody Allen (The Moose, Oral Contraception) e qualche podcast (NPR’s Science, Berkeley Groks);
• qualche foto, di quelle tipiche da macchinetta usa e getta che si sa, l’iPhone e’ un po’ scarso da questo punto di vista; ma il piu’ delle volte quando sei da qualche parte tutto infangato, impegnato solo a fare discese con la bici, portarsi dietro telefonino e macchina fotografica (anche la minuscola Ixus 60 che uso abitualmente) e’ un po’ troppo. In tal caso, trovo che la possibilita’ di fare ‘istantanee’ al volo col telefonino e’ sufficiente per placare l’animo; e non dimentichiamoci la possibilita’ di inviarle tramite email al volo, mentre sei sulla seggiovia ad esempio !
• guardare un film la sera in albergo (Seasons e Virtuous; ovviamente di mountain bike);
• leggere le news la mattina durante la colazione sul miglior sito ‘mobile’ in circolazione, quello del New York Times;
• controllare la email, ovviamente.

Fatemi sapere come utilizzate il vostro iPhone; usate il modulo qui sotto se volete raccontarmi una vostra giornata tipo in cui avete sfruttato intensamente il giocattolino. I migliori racconti saranno pubblicati su queste pagine (wow).

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cheap GPS for motorbikes

Draft Draft Draft Draft Draft Draft Draft Draft Draft Draft

Introduction

The Garmin Edge 205 is one of the best GPS for biking; it’s small, lightweight (only 88g !), and it’s specifically designed for cyclists/mountain bikers. It doesn’t have any mapping capabilities, featuring only a small (128×160 pixel) grayscale lcd display; but on a mountain bike you really don’t want to bring a flashy, bulkier, battery-devouring gadget while traversing valleys, ascending peaks and freeriding your way down on your typical all-day long mountain epic.

But I was thinking: can I use this little thing also on a motorbike ? Because the cool thing of this Garmin is that it allows you to follow a pre-loaded route; that’s the main use for me when cycling, so I don’t spend too much time on routefinding, and concentrate on riding the technical bits of the trail.

So after scouting around on the internet I have come up with this recipe to study an itinerary on Google Maps, load it onto your Edge, and also add specific location of interests as ‘waypoints’. And all that with free software ! How cool is that ?

The recipe

1. get driving direction in Google Maps
2. export it to KML or GPX format (see below for details on how to do this)
3. use TCX Converter to load the KML (or GPX) file and then save it as .TCX
4. use Garmin Training Center (free software download for all Garmin GPS devices) to upload the .trk to
5. Edge

6. go to bed
7. …
8. …
9. wake up ! the sun is shining and the roads are empty !
10. mount the Edge somewhere on your motorbike.
11. go to “Training”, Do Course.
12. follow the course

How to save Google Maps driving directions as a KML/GPX file

Option A

Straight from this cool post:

• Get your driving directions the way you want in Google Maps
• Click on the “Link to this page” in the upper right of Google Maps. You should get a little window with a long URL. Copy the URL by right-clicking on it.
• Simply append “&output=kml” to the end of the URL
• Select the entire URL and copy it to your paste buffer (CTRL-C for example)
• Paste the URL it into your browser’s location URL pane at the top; append “&output=kml” to the end of the URL, then hit ENTER. This should bring up a window asking what to do with the file; save it somewhere on your computer

Option B

Go to this site: http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx/ and follow the instructions.

Additional notes

I don’t really like map-based GPS devices: they make us lazier, people follow the indications of the little machine and have no fuckin idea where in the world are they, where’s the north and where’s home; tell me what happens when the battery dies. Still, I understand that (at least here in Italy), it’s pretty difficult to get lost, at least on our normal backcountry roads. And I understand that not everybody cares too much about basic orienteering skills.

My point is: always have a map with you; it’s the most dependable orienteering device you can have.

I realize that not everybody will go and buy a GPS designed for bycicles for their motorbike trips; not everybody will go though the hassle of preparing their itineraries the day before; so I guess this is a solution for all the nerds out there, Nerds like me that profoundly dislike pre-packaged food.

Also think about this: the retail price for the Edge 205 is EUR250 as of today. I’ve bought mine on ebay for EUR100. All the software that I’ve used is free. I don’t think GPS solutions come cheaper than this.

It’s not probably the way of things that you guys with the BMW will enjoy; too cheap. But I’m thinking to the people riding Suzuki DR350, or Yamaha Tricker, or any type of offroad bike; or people that do touring on a budget; or the maniacs doing the Valentino Rossi on the passes — think about this, you can also skip the preparation part, mount the Edge on the [piastra di sterzo] of your 999, hit the start button, and then ride the 50km of the ss67 from [...] up to the Muraglione pass; then you export the track back home, email it to your friend that will load it as a route to follow. He will then have also a shadow of you, pulling away because you’re obviously faster than him. And while he tries to catch the little white arrow on the tiny display of the GPS he crashes into a truck. Ok, one biker down, who’s next ?

There’s actually two models of the Edge; the 205 and the 305. The 305 is exactly the same, but also has a heartrate monitor (and is more expensive). Pretty useless if the exercise you’re doing it’s just opening the throttle.

References

• very useful FAQ (in italian) on the Garmin Edge here:
  http://www.bike-board.net/community/forum/showthread.php?t=84541

• TCX Converter by DDAAXX (both windows and mac versions available):
  http://www.visivaworld.it/blog.php/tcx-converter-by-ddaaxx/album/download

isight

Playing with my iSight.
Have a look at this set on flickr for a few more (some funny ones, some angry ones):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aadm/sets/72157594415951730/

lightroom workflow

Introduction
Thanks to Lightroom and its beta status (which for me translates as ‘free’) I now have finally found a nice way to organize all my photos.
This is an attempt to illustrate my workflow; I will tray to add in the future some more things with a litte bit more detail.
I shoot with a Nikon D70s, and I’ve set up the color mode II (i.e., Adobe RGB color space).
In this way all the jpegs and raw images that I shoot are tagged as being in Adobe RGB color space, but there is actually no color profile attached to the files. So I have to manually attach the proper color profile once I download the files to my computer.

Hardware
The computer I’m using is an iMac with intel core duo processor 1.83Ghz with 1.5Gb of ram; I use an external 200Gb lacie firewire hard disc for backups.

Software
I’ve always tried to stick with non-commercial software, even though I have to admit it’s hard not to use Photoshop. Gimpshop is a free alternative to Photoshop; it’s the well-known gimp (which many linux users may be familiar with) but with a redesigned interface which makes it similar to Photoshop; it’s also intel-native for mac users, so I think it’s a good alternative to Photoshop even if it’s not as polished as the real thing.
Other nice command-line applications are Imagemagick and jhead. They could be perfect for fast batch processing, but I’d like something more visual.
Of course all the macs have iPhoto installed, and even if it’s a nice piece of software especially in the latest release, I still find it too basic for my needs.

So here comes this new product from Adobe, Lightroom; as far as I’m concerned this is the best piece of software to quickly sort, organize, rank a long shooting session; and on top of this it has some basic retouch capabilities which are everything that the average Photoshop user might ever need.

It also feels lively with my hardware configuration (which is not exactly top of world); having struggled with an old G3 iBook and a mere 384Mb of ram first, then with a G4 macmini 1.25Ghz, this is by far the best system that I’ve ever had, which allows me to really work through a 100+ shoots in a breeze.

The workflow
1) import with image capture, I’ve set the option to automatically assign to all the downloaded files the Adobe RGB profile.

2) copy all the files in an appropriate directory under the Pictures folder. I have setup a directory structure which I’m comfortable with, but not sure whether it’s worth sharing. Let me know if somebody wants to know.

3) Import photos in Lightroom referencing from their original location; I usually assign the same shoot name of the subfolder name created in step (2).

4) in the library module I quickly scan all the photos, marking with 1 star (key “1″) the photo that I want to keep. At the end I activate the filter to show only the pics with 0 stars, select everything and then delete them all. At the emd I have only the 1-star rated photos (1 star means for me: worth keeping it !).

5) I go through the remaining photos a second time now, shifting between the library and the develop module (alt-1, alt-2) if I need to straighten or crop the photo or fix the colours, brightness etc. At the same time I also increase the star rating to the pics that I really like (but so far I tend to use as little stars as possible; 2 stars are for the ones that I want to upload to flickr o print, 3 for the really good ones).

6) I move back to the library module and now I assign some keywords; the following is an example of the keywords that I’m using — you may notice that even here I tend not to over-create (too many keywords are just plain useless, and you may be better off finding your photo just by scrolling through the library).

d70s –> photos taken with my Nikon D70s
coolpix –> photos taken with the small Coolpix
moto –> everything related with motorbikes
ale –> photos featuring me !
panorama, water, rocks, climbing –> self-explanatory
flickr –> the ones that I want to upload on flickr
print –> the ones to print

And then I’m ready to export the photos; I should add a few notes on the only bit of processing done externally (the evergreen Unsharp Mask, folks !), but since I’m still experimenting with a way to automate it with gimpshop, that’s gonna be for the next time.

espansione ram macmini

Metti che vuoi potenziare il tuo macmini che hai comprato con quattro soldi (G4 1.25ghz con 512Mb di ram).
La cosa migliore ? Aumentare la ram. Al massimo possibile, cioe’ 1Gb.
Pero’ ti hanno detto che aprire il macmini non e’ cosa proprio facilissima, insomma non serve semplicemente smollare 4 viti come con quei vecchi pc con cui giocavi.

Allora telefoni al negozio a Milano che ti pare il migliore, anche perche’ i tipi che ci lavorano dentro sono simpatici e sembrano piu’ competenti di quelli che trovi da Mondadori Informatica. Il negozio e’ mac@work, diciamolo.
Chiami, chiedi il costo totale (della ram piu’ “manodopera”): ti sparano centonovanta euro.
Dopo il mezzo infarto, provi la via economica, che all’inizio avevi deciso di scartare per vari motivi (timore di spaccare il mac, pigrizia, il ricordo di tutte le altre volte che volendo fare da solo hai distrutto/rovinato/scartavetrato i tuoi giocattoli).

La via economica e’ questa: vai da un punto vendita di essedi.it, ti compri la ram da 1Gb (una DIMM da 184 pin PC3200) a 99 euro, poi vai da bricorama a prendere una spatolina da muratore (costo: 80 centesimi di euro),
Torni a casa, ti guardi il video che hai trovato da qualche parte sulla rete, fai la punta alla spatolina con della carta vetrata e con
un po’ di accortezza apri il mini, levi la ram da 512Mb e ci metti quella da 1Gb.
Rimonti il tutto, hai perso circa mezz’ora ma risparmiato cento euro.

Per curiosita’, riporto anche i prezzi migliori che avevo trovato in giro: €137 da crucial.com, €87 su ebay, entrambi incluse spese di spedizione.

no more safari ?

Ho appena scaricato flock, il nuovo “social browser” sviluppato sulla base di Firefox/Mozilla, e sono davvero senza parole: integrazione totale tra web browsing, blogging e photoblogging !

No more Safari or Firefox ?

Sembrerebbe il destino di Flock… peccato che tutti i browser basati su Mozilla siano un po’ troppo pesanti per il mio vecchio iBook G3 (che continuo a usare per scrivere, mentre il macmini e’ diventato un mediamulo).

Questo era tanto tempo fa… adesso (agosto 2006) uso con gran piacere Camino; nonostante abbia un iMac intel e quindi potrei usare tranquillamente anche un browser piu’ pesante, preferisco avere un browser che faccia il browser e il resto lo faccio online.

update 2008: ho smesso con gli esperimenti… ormai sono fisso con Firefox !

to convert ‘ape’ audio files

Lots of sites nowadays offer digital music as .ape or .flac files; what’s wrong with mp3s ?

I should include a technical note here together with a bit of history, but since I’m not the most qualified for this sort of thing I’ll keep it short and simple: mp3 is a format that stores music in compressed format, therefore with some quality degradation (high compression=high degradation=low quality music=small file); wav/aiff is the format that is used for audio CDs, highest quality, uncompressed, large files (size ratio is 10:1 for CD-quality files versus mp3 files). So a bunch of people came up with some new formats for digital music, such as ape and flac. These are lossless compression formats; which means that they have exactly the same quality of the input CD music, but they’re half the size.
So if you don’t want to trade on quality, go for ape/flac.

What if you just want to play this music and convert it in mp3, add it to iTunes, etc ? The answer is xACT. This is a little Mac OS X wrapper for a set of command-line tools available also for Linux and Windows..

So here we go:

1. make sure you have both the music.ape and the music.ape.cue file (the .cue file contains the split points and the name of the tracks).
2. launch xACT, go to the “shntool” tab
3. select the “split” option; select the output format (usually I’d use aiff, then leave the conversion to mp3/aac format to iTunes)
4. drag the music.ape file in the drop area on the left
5. click the “Call Shntool” button; the app will now ask for the location of the file with split point data; that’s you music.ape.cue file ! Just select the .cue file, choose an output folder and the splitting/conversion process will begin.

A few notes to finish up:

• the cue file should begin with the “FILE” line; if it doesn’t then delete the first lines (they could have other information such as performer and title of the album).
• there’s very little information about what xACT is doing; if you’re worried that it might be stuck just have a look at the output folder, where you should see the output aiff files being created. Or just fire up the Activity Monitor, and look at processes called “sox”, or “mac” (usually with a fairly high degree of cpu usage).

xACT has lots of other options which can be helpful (you can, for example, create an .ape file with its .cue info sheet), but unfortunately has no automatic file renaming tool based on the cue files. So you’re kinda stuck with a set of music files called “split-track001.aiff”, “split-track002.aiff”, etc.
It should be simple enough to put together a perl or ruby script which has as input the cue file and does the job for you.

italian gtd

Some time ago I stumbled upon this thing, the Getting Things Done thing, aka GTD.
How do you wanna call it ? A geekish obsession ? A lifestyle idea for nerds ?
Anyway, the Hipster PDA post was pretty cool (and fun to read). I have experienced myself the pleasure of having a toy like a palm (used to have the transparent Palm IIIe, upgraded with a IIIx motherboard, then switched to a Sony Clie), only to realize it was a useless and timewasting piece of equipment, and switched back to post-it notes and my trusty old mobile (6310i) to keep the phone numbers and passwords.
Now I read all these things on GTD (I’ll give you only a link where to look at: 43folders, enough said !), and even though I’ll never plan my life according to a book, I still like some of the ideas that float around the GTD concept..

Just for the purpose of sharing, here’s a list of my tools to do the lowlevel italian implementation of GTD, let’s call it iGTnD (italian’s getting things nearly done):

1. gmail: invaluable to keep my personal ife separated from my work. I always have my browser opened on gmail even when I’m in the office, so I can distinguish between work and pleasureand when I’m back home I wait 8pm (my broadband flat rate goes from 8pm to 8am), launch BitTorrent, then Safari, point to gmail, zap.
   I use labels a lot: have some filters to automatically label ebay messages and emails from my best buddies, others that archive the rss feeds coming from novatorrent so I’m updated on the new torrents available; an “info” label is for messages with information on my online accounts (forums, photo.net passwords etc.), “foto” is for emails containing photographs, “banking” is for my e-banking needs, “blog” to hold the posts that Blogger automatically sends me whenever I update this site.
   I then use the Drafts to keep a series of messages with to do things, blog drafts, web links to follow, and so on. To create these posts you only need to compose a new mail, leave the to-field empty, write a descriptive subject (e.g., “blog: my own gtd implementation”, or “movies to check” and then fill in the body).
2. gigantic todo.txt: following something read on an O’Reilly weblog, I decided to get rid of my HTMLs, my tiddlywiki, my sticky notes, my info stored as Excel or Word documents, and get back to text files. At the same time I also deleted all the fancy power-user text editors that I was trying (Textforge, BBEdit and so on), and rely on the very basic Text Editor that is part of OS X (same thing as Notepad, for you Windows folks out there). So now I have one todo.txt to keep everything, and I’m thinking to keep information already consolidated in separate files (e.g., unix.txt for everything related to the command line, such as scripts, tricks and hints). Other useful discussion about the big-ass text file:
   • discussion on 43folders
   • about remind, geektool and text files on macosxhints.com
3. mini hipster pda and assorted pieces of paper: I’ve absorbed the idea of collecting together pieces of paper with a paper clip and then tear the notes off when I’ve completed the tasks, that’s right. Since it’s difficult to get hold of the 3×5 sheets as originally suggested in 43folders, I use either a stack of my old business cards, or something similar which I usually “borrow” from my office. The good thing is to lay these papers on my table back home and “fill in the blanks” (inserisci la foto qui).
4. post-it: well, difficult to get rid of these yellow things ! The grocery list is for example something that invariably comes up in my mind while at work, so I write down on a post-it which I then put into my wallet for later use.

All of this is pretty simple and straightforward stuff, but to actually read how many people are bothered by these side-issues and the way they deal with them was a little revelation and a big help to sort out my problematic approach to “do things”.