Cycling Training Log Spreadsheet
Since 1995, I've been tracking every mile I rode on the bike in an Excel spreadsheet. This has proven to be an excellent training tool and helped me notice trends and (sometimes) avoid over training. Five years ago I set out to find an automated way to compute my average speed and embarrassingly, I couldn't figure out how to do this in Excel so I wrote my first JavaScript application and published it over at : http://www.raincitystory.com/mph.htm. Since that time, I've averaged almost 10,000 hits per month on that page (the other pages on my entire site get less than 1,000 hits per month COMBINED) and I often get e-mails from people asking for more help to automate the aggregation of their training data.
Since I started 12 years ago, the log has gone through some serious evolution and I now think it's ready from prime time. Here are some major features:
1) All days including leap years for 2008 through 2012 are accounted for
2) Average speed automatically calculated and summed on a daily, monthly and annual basis
3) Space to record and average body weight, average heart rate, maximum heart rate, calories burned, temperature, elevation gain, cadence and time of day
4) Automatic monthly summary of number of rides, time spent on the bike, distance, and average speed
5) GRAPHS!
6) Much, much more
License: GPL v2 (improvements appreciated!)
Available Formats:
Microsoft Excel 2000/2003/2007
Open Office Calc
Google Docs (recommended so you don't have to worry about backing up! * Be sure to copy to your own Google account)
I've put a sample entry in the first row so please be sure to delete that when using. Any columns and rows can be deleted so enjoy!
Yay For Rev A
I'm supposed to be at the 2 hour waiting lot at Denver International Airport to pick Amy up but instead, I'm stuck on I-25 North just south of Castle Rock, CO. There was a huge accident and all northbound lanes are closed. Instead of doing nothing, I can watch Amy's approaching flight on Flightview 
and check my e-mail. The problem is that her flight is now somewhere over southwestern Idaho with less than an hour remaining. A trooper told the car in front of me that it's going to be quite a while and with guardrails on both sides, there's no way to move the existing traffic onto local roads.
So I'm pretty screwed and I feel bad for Amy because DIA pretty much shuts down after midnight (it's a pretty good airport to be stuck in when the stores are open. There's also good Wi-Fi but I doubt she brought her Mac Book Pro.
At least I have broadband here on the road courtesy of my Sprint EVDO Rev A service. I've loved it so far but this is the first time I've really been able to use it. Even this far out of Colorado Springs and Denver, I'm still able to get about 970k down and 310k up. Ok, not much substance in this post but at least it will cover my ass :)
[EDIT: A few seconds after I pressed "publish" a large crane moved one of the semis enough to allow one lane of traffic to pass and I'm now waiting at the DIA short term arriving flight wait lot for Amy to call. It all worked out and I got a real excuse to use my Sprint mobile broadband service. All is well tonight.]
Pantech PX-500 EVDO Rev A Card on Linux
Yes, you can use that Sprint EVDO Rev A Pantech PX-500 card on Ubuntu! Network credentials are stored on the card so all we need to do is make sure we have a couple of kernel modules loaded and write two simple scripts to get it all working. The PX-card has an OHCI compatible USB bridge internally off of which hangs the CDC serial port so it's pretty easy.
First make sure you're running a recent kernel by running uname -r and a terminal prompt.
Then, insert the card and let's make sure you have the necessary kernel modules loaded:
michael@feisty:~$ sudo lsmod | grep cdc
cdc_acm 15904 0
usbcore 134280 7 cdc_acm,ohci_hcd,xpad,usbhid,uhci_hcd,echi_hcd
If your output matches the above, you already have the cdc_acm and ohci_hcd kernel modules loaded automatically.
1) Install the Sprint Connection software on Windows XP or Vista
2) Insert the card, choose yes to update the firmware and activate the card by calling Sprint and providing the necessary information.
3) Reboot into Linux and insert the card into a free PCMCIA slot. This tutorial will be done on Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn with kernel 2.6.20-16-generic. If you use the the 2.6.20 kernel, you won't have to compile in any additonal modules.
4) We've already confirmed that we have the correct kernel modules above so now you'll need to create two extra files using these steps:
michael@feisty:~$ sudo vi /etc/ppp/peers/Sprint_EVDO
noauth
# Connection Script
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chatscripts/sprint-evdo"
defaultroute
replacedefaultroute
usepeerdns
/dev/ttyACM0
230400
local
novjmichael@feisty:~$ sudo mkdir /etc/ppp/chatscripts
michael@feisty:~$ cd /etc/ppp/chatscripts
michael@fesity:~$ sudo vi sprint-evdo
TIMEOUT 5
ABORT '\nBUSY\r'
ABORT '\nERROR\r'
ABORT '\nNO ANSWER\r'
ABORT '\nNO CARRIER\r'
ABORT '\nNO DIALTONE\r'
ABORT '\nRINGING\r\n\r\nRINGING\r'
'' \rAT
TIMEOUT 3
OK ATE0V1&F&D2&C1S0=0
TIMEOUT 3
OK ATS0=0
TIMEOUT 3
OK ATDT#777
TIMEOUT 20
CONNECT ""
5) run this command to start the connection:
michael@feisty:~$ /usr/sbin/pppd call Sprint_EVDO updetach
And you're good to go. Interestingly, I saw about 25% faster speeds consistently under Linux and XP compared to Vista. I know the card hasn't been officially certified under Vista, but it's not certified on Linux either and 25% is a huge difference. Test your speed over at Speedtest.net
P.S. You might get different results with another distribution (especially Suse) and kernel but if you are still having problems, drop me a line at mikebuckingham at gmail dot com and I'll try and help.
Microsoft Surface
I'd been working on this great post about Microsoft's revolutionary new interface, Surface until I realized that Luke had written a much better preview and commentary than I could come up with. You check it out, complete with an amazing video here.
I can't remember the last time I saw something so revolutionary and cool.
Oh, just for full disclosure, Luke writing a pro Microsoft post is one of the seven signs of the apocalypse, just fyi...
