• Garmin: Time In Heart Rate Zone

    Posted on by Don

    I guess the honeymoon is over, I’m starting to find things I don’t like about my Edge 830. In its defense, I think that this was actually caused by a Garmin update…

    I noticed this a little while ago: when I rode with my heart rate monitor, the data would be recorded correctly, except that “time in heart rate zones” would be completely off.

    (Heart rate zones are pretty much what they sound like: intervals of heart rate beats per minute, like 80-105 BPM, 105-130, etc, that indicate exercise intensity. There are typically five zones, which is how have mine set up: Zones 1 and 2 are for warming up and easier riding, I spend most of my time in Zone 3 just below my anaerobic threshold, Zone 4 is when I’m pushing it, and I don’t hit Zone 5 unless I’m going all out. So, mostly in Zone 3, a bit in Zones 4, 2, and 1, and almost nothing in Zone 5.)

    That’s how it is usually — but what I’d been seeing lately was almost all of the ride in Zone 5, with maybe a few seconds in some of the others. When I hovered over the time in zones on the Garmin Connect website — hovering should reveal the high and low heart rates defining each zone — I found that Zone 5 was set as anything over 3 beats per minute, and the rest were basically set to nonsense.

    I checked Garmin Connect on my phone — for Linux, GC on the web is sort of crippled so I use the phone app to access the device — and heart rate zones were set correctly for both generic sports and also for cycling. I looked up, on the Garmin site, how to set heart rate, and I could have sworn that the only way to do it was through Garmin Connect, but they had instructions for doing it directly on the unit. I follow those instructions, and sure enough, there’s a setting for heart rate zones; there is only the one option, no separate sets of zones for different sports, and the zones in the setting are the nonsense I saw before.

    I set those zones correctly, and they worked fine on tonight’s ride.

    I’m not sure what happened, but I’d guess that Garmin pushed some update that added the heart rate zones setting to the unit, but screwed up the implementation so that the unit no longer sync’ed with the data on Garmin Connect.


    📂This entry was posted in tech talk

  • The Long Transition

    Posted on by Don

    Well, the new laptop has been here for over a week now, long enough for me to make some first impressions, while moving myself over to the new machine and customizing it (as well as I can) to fit my needs…

    The first thing I did was mess with the desktop. At first I tried to live with the original desktop environment, which is based on the Gnome environment but built by System76 as part of their own Pop!-OS distribution. I managed to get a few things the way I like them, but it still just seemed unpleasant so I installed Cinnamon. A whole bunch of customizations later… it’s not 100% where I want it, but I’m pretty close.

    My next step was to install the programs I use (that don’t come automatically installed), like PostgGIS, QGIS, R, GRAMPS and Eclipse. That was pretty easy, actually, and actually was done before I finished setting up my desktop. (I may never “finish setting up my desktop.”) I got Dropbox working, which is nice to have again — it stopped supporting my old laptop’s filesystem a while ago — and that brought me into the next phase of the transition on its own.

    That next phase was moving my data files – QGIS and GRASS projects, documents and spreadsheets, programs I wrote, photos, music, my databases (yikes!) — over to the new computer. Dropbox started by synchronizing with my new laptop, meaning it had to put several gigabytes onto my new machine; it did this automatically but the process took days at our slow internet connection rate, especially since I kept pausing it so we could watch movies or do other internet things.

    As for the manual transfers: I moved over my PostgreSQL databases as a big first step, thinking it would be the most difficult thing. It really wasn’t; the backup and restore utilities worked flawlessly, even with all the PostGIS extensions. Once the databases were moved over, I moved all the GIS stuff that I intend to keep working on. QGIS needed a little help finding my data resources in their new locations, but that also went pretty well. Moving the Eclipse projects, and my music, and my GRAMPS family tree data, were also fairly easy. I have yet to try moving the photos, with all their metadata, but that’s coming. (I have other databases running on MySql, but I have not even installed MySQL on this machine yet.)

    Much of what’s on the old laptop I don’t really want on the new one, so once this data-transfer process is done, I will do one final backup from there to the NAS drive, then shut the laptop down and put it in a closet somewhere.

    Actually using my stuff on the new machine? That’s been its own set of problems, mostly having to do with how far behind I had been with upgrades on the old one. I had been planning to make the jump from Python 2 to Python 3, which means rewriting my old Python scripts to suit the changes. That’s a bit tedious but the process is not too hard, for purely Python things at least. For QGIS, which made that transition (and a lot of other changes) as part of their major upgrade to version 3, my algorithm scripts were no longer even recognizable as scripts by the program — the system is completely different. I buckled down and ported one script over to the new system — and it worked! — but I see I have my work cut out for me.

    The new laptop, as a physical thing, is awesome: it’s good-looking, and light (though it seems a bit flimsy compared to the older, heavier laptop), and it seems really fast, especially loading software. I was worried about the keyboard, but it seems fine — I’m still getting used to it though, and now when I go back to the Dell I’m not good with that anymore either. Transitions…


    📂This entry was posted in tech talk

  • Pigbag? Pigbag!

    Posted on by Don

    I remember, mid-eighties or so, whenever I went into an unfamiliar NYC club, there were a few songs I might hear when walking in that would immediately let me know that it was the right kind of place. One song in particular was ubiquitous, but I never knew the name, haven’t heard it in years — I expected to never find what it was. They just played it on the radio: the band was called Pigbag, and the song: “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag.”

    Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! And may all your dreams come true…


    📂This entry was posted in cultural ramblings

  • Some Recent Books

    Posted on by Don

    The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

    This was the first book by the author of Stiletto (my review here), and set in the same story world: a secret British agency, whose supernaturally gifted and specially-trained agents battle supernatural threats, is itself under attack. The protagonist, Myfawny Thomas, is a low-level member of the agency leadership who wakes up in a park in ominous circumstances, but with no memory of who she is. She never does recover her memory, but a letter in her pocket (written by her “old self”) helps her put her life back together and track down who, or what, is threatening her and the agency. Like the sequel, this was another fast-paced thriller, but it seemed darker, more serious and thriller-like, than Stiletto. I think I liked it better.

    The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

    This is the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, which depressed me no end when I read it. I found The Testaments to start the same depressing way — the world that’s built here is not a pleasant or happy one — but the book slowly morphs into an action/suspense/thriller. The first half took a while, but I finished the second half in about a day. I’d recommend this to anyone who liked the first book, or who liked the TV series, or Margaret Atwood’s writing.


    📂This entry was posted in cultural ramblings

  • I Heard You Paint Houses

    Posted on by Don

    We saw The Irishman on Saturday night. More than three hours long, but we (with the exception of my bladder) hardly even noticed — when we got out of the theater we were amazed to find that it was midnight. Great movie.

    The story itself was compelling: Frank Sheeran, aged and living in a nursing home, tells his story through many flashbacks, how he went from trucker, to hit man, to being Jimmy Hoffa’s bodyguard/enforcer, and eventually to being Hoffa’s murderer. A true story, or mostly true — it’s based on a biography of Sheeran, a sort of “as told to” kind of thing written just after his death, and though many of the historic events were real, his involvement in them may have been embellished or fabricated. Compelling, but controversial — let’s just call it “historical fiction.”

    This story was supported by some great acting too: Robert DeNiro as Sheeran, Joe Pesci as his mentor Russel Bufalino, Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa, and a bunch of really solid supporting actors. (Frank’s daughter Peggy has a role in the movie, and the actress — Lucy Gallina — who played her as a child looked so familiar… I looked her up, but she’s not been in anything I’ve ever seen. It was also kind of unnerving to see, and hear, these characters: they all seemed weirdly familiar to me, since many of them had backgrounds similar to, and reminded me of, the parents of grade-school friends back in Manalapan.)

    Anyway, two thumbs up. Plan your fluids, but go see this.


    📂This entry was posted in cultural ramblings

  • Infrastructure Week

    Posted on by Don

    Busy week:

    • I’m writing this on my new laptop, which came Wednesday — I’ve been setting it up and transferring files ever since.
    • Last Sunday we looked at new ranges, and bought one Monday, which should arrive tomorrow.
    • Tuesday we bought a new storm door, which Mark D will be installing when he gets the chance.
    • I also looked into the stereo and got it working (or, at least, “working,” since one whole side just does not produce sound), but it probably could use replacing. That’s going to have to wait for more research.
    • Also up on deck: our switch to new cable, but that also has to hold for more research — if we go with our own modem and router, another purchase.

    But things are happening on the infrastructure front!

    Next up this afternoon is brewing.


    📂This entry was posted in day by day tech talk

  • Tech Updates

    Posted on by Don

    I just thought I’d post an update on my new computer: it’s been assembled, it’s been shipped and it’s due to arrive here this Wednesday. I can’t wait!

    Meantime, I was looking into what was going wrong with my GeoPackages, and I found out that there are problems with (my now slightly outdated versions of) QGIS and Spatialite that prevent GeoPackage spatial queries from working. So it wasn’t me!


    📂This entry was posted in tech talk

  • Columbus

    Posted on by Don

    Anne and Lorraine went to Columbus for a knitter’s convention, and then (last Sunday, after the convention was over) Ray and I drove out to meet them so we could all spend a few days checking out the city. We were in the part of town called Short North, which was one of several quaint sections, all brick houses and cobblestones — we stayed in a converted loft in a former Wonder Bread factory, just on the edge of the neighborhood. The area was ideal for walkability, and for restaurants, and night clubs and coffee shops and bookstores…

    There’s not really much to say about what we did: we got breakfast, we walked around, seeing the sights and visiting bookstores etc, and in the evening we grabbed dinner and drinks. Nothing particularly notable, it was just a pleasant visit. Ray had gone to college in Columbus, and lived pretty close to our AirBnb for a number of years, and so we visited some of his old neighborhoods in our walks. In between all these things, we read the books we bought.

    We did visit two major attractions while we were there: the Botanical Gardens and the Art Museum. I only took pictures at the Botanical Gardens (and maybe I’ll post some soon), but both were really fun.


    📂This entry was posted in day by day

  • Project Drift

    Posted on by Don

    I’ve done a few more Road Scholar gigs this year, and my co-guide and I both feel that the ride choices could be improved, mainly by doing more bike paths and rail-trails, and doing less actual road riding. This would avoid the biggest issues we face (traffic and hills), and maybe allow the rides to be a bit longer and more enjoyable.

    Meantime, I’d noticed a tendency, among our van drivers, to use Google Maps to navigate our pick-up, drop-off and other van access points. This is I think a good thing, but it’s led to map searches finding the wrong drop-off point — nearby features rather than the specific location we use. It works well enough that “OK, turn left here and pull into that parking lot” will get us there once we’re close enough, but navigating to an actual position (a given latitude and longitude, for instance) would work much better.

    Finally, I thought it would be good to have an official repository somewhere, of the rides: their official routes (I use GPS to navigate on the rides) as well as waypoints, like lunch spots, points of interest along the ride, and those pick-up and drop-off points. Ideally, I would be able to load a ride into my GPS and have all info for the ride at my fingertips.

    These all coalesced in my mind into the Great Big Ride Database GIS Project. The project would be made of three parts: storage of rides (official or otherwise) and waypoints into a ride database, transfer of rides/waypoints to and from my GPS, and analysis of the ride data.

    First Steps, and Revolting Developments

    I started by keeping “official versions” of our rides on RideWithGPS, and I would download them as GPX files onto my Garmin when I needed them. This would only take care of the route itself, however; I thought that there was also a need to maintain a list of waypoints associated with each route, so I decided to build some kind of database to hold routes and their waypoints.

    Since I would like to be able to just hand over the ride information in some file format, my first attempt was to build the database as a GeoPackage file. This actually worked pretty well, when my plan was just to stuff the data into storage. But then, my plans started to morph: I needed to actually analyze the data (with a spatial query) to generate info I needed. The GeoPackage file should have been able to handle this, but I think I must have done something wrong back when I installed the underlying GeoPackage/SpatiaLite libraries, or I was doing something wrong now, but I just couldn’t get any spatial functions to work. After frustrating myself for a while I just moved the database over to PostGIS. My project was changing, but at least it worked.

    So at this point, I started looking at the problem of getting the point data to places where I could use it — like onto and off of my Garmin. I collected a bunch of the waypoints as “saved locations” on my GPS, but then I couldn’t find any good way to export or upload them. (The Google tells me that Garmin apparently has some Windows programs that can manage waypoints, but that does me no good.)

    I eventually dropped back and punted by writing a Python script. I scrounged around inside my Garmin and found a file called Locations.fit that seemed to be where the saved locations were stored, and used that fitparse library to rummage inside the FIT file, eventually figuring out the (undocumented) structure used to store waypoints. I could now export the waypoints into a QGIS layer, then I managed to realize that I could import the waypoints to my GPS via a GPX file in the same way I could import rides via GPX, and could even combine waypoints with the ride trackpoints in the same file for importing. Major breakthrough! — though the Garmin seemingly ignores all waypoint information (symbology, comment) except the name.

    So things are now a bit different than how I first planned it, but I have a system that works. Next up: evaluating potential routes.


    📂This entry was posted in tech talk 📎and tagged

  • New Purchase

    Posted on by Don

    The laptop is starting to really show ominous signs of impending demise — screen frequently goes static-ey or blank on startup, wi-fi and bluetooth unexpectedly crap out, and it no longer can wake up from sleep mode — things that started happening a few months ago but are now getting to be almost constant, or at least daily, occurrences.

    I’ve had my laptop (a Dell XPS M1530) for 10 years now; it was cutting edge when I bought, it but a decade of advancement has left it so far behind that some software can’t even be updated anymore. But I love this computer even so, and if it weren’t on the verge of crapping out I wouldn’t even think of replacement. It’s lasted probably twice as long as it should though, and owes me nothing at this point, as long as it lasts until the new one shows up…

    So anyway, I went online yesterday and bought my new one, a System76 Darter Pro. I wanted another 15.6″ screen, I think that’s the sweet spot for laptops, and I also wanted Linux pre-installed. I was also looking for reasonable battery life, light weight etc, and I also wanted something with a bit of pep, even by current standards. I think I compromised a bit by getting an i5 rather than an i7 chip, but I turned around and upgraded to 16G of RAM and a 500G NVMe solid-state drive, improvements at the likely performance bottlenecks, so I think I’ll get a good bang for my buck. It should arrive in just under two weeks.


    📂This entry was posted in tech talk