STRAVA MULTIPLE RIDE MAPPER

I love technology, things like computers, smartphone, and programming.  I also enjoy long distance running as a form of exercise.  It's wonderful when the two areas of my life converge.  Through a blog comment, I learned about the tool called Strava Multiple Ride Mapper (SMRM), http://www.jonathanokeeffe.com/strava/map.php .  It's a web form that lets you specify a range of dates to load your Strava activities and put them all on a map.  It works for most Strava activities, like running and walking, not just bicycle rides.  My first use for it was to make a word without having connecting lines between the letters.  It can be done but it's tedious.  You have to end a run after each letter.  Three-letter word would mean three separate runs.  I think the system that I have in place, whereby most of the time the letters are linked at the bottom, works fine for me.  It does save time, like if you make the letter U you can just end at the upper right corner instead of having to run back down to the bottom of the letter.  But as I said, it is too much work, from my point of view.  I also don't like to monopolize people's Strava feed.  For example, if I spell Strava with SMRM, that's six separate runs, or six entries in the Strava feed of people who follow me there.  I just don't like it.  I regularly unfollow people on Facebook who regularly post nothing but links to YouTube videos, one after another.

What SMRM is great for is to make phrases and I put it to use with my latest three runs.  The phrase is Live Laugh Love, that cheesy phrase seen all over Etsy.  I planned the words so that they are kinda strung together but not on the same baseline.  I like to work with rectangular grids but there is not enough room to spell all three words across.  It may be possible to stack them but I really like how the phrase turned out.  It's irregular, less boring, somewhat whimsical.

A few tips on using SMRM:

• You do have to grant SMRM access to your Strava account.  If you are hiding from The Man, or working for The Man on a secret mission, this is not for you.  You probably shouldn't be using Strava in the first place anyway.  Or something like that, you know what I mean.
• Have patient once you click that Load button.  It takes a while to parse through your Strava activities to find matching info.  Not only can you specify the date range, you can also select type of activity, whether to ignore Commuting entries, etc.  Give it some time.
• While the tool works on smartphones, it's best used on a desktop or laptop computer.  If you have to do it on a smartphone, put the phone in landscape mode first.

A wish-list:

• Strava recently switched to OpenStreetMap and while there are some downside to it, a welcomed change is the lack of all these local businesses clogging the map.  Google makes some money with all that info, not the open-sourced OpenStreetMap.  I wish SMRM would get away from GoogleMap too.
• There's a link called Download KVM but it doesn't work.  I love to explore all the features of a given app or tool, but clicking that link only produces the error message There was a problem generating the KML file, please try again.
• Similarly, if you try to give the author feedback, the link for that gives me the error Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress. I don't know what that means and don't want to go through the trouble of "fixing" my system just to leave a comment.

The author, Jonathan Okeeffe, actually has a few Strava tools offered.  I find SMRM useful and made a donation.  Check it out and donate if you agree it's a good tool to support.

THE LAST TIME WE...

On Facebook, many people post a lot of useless stuff.  However, someone recently posted something that I got very emotional thinking about it.  It was a quote that goes like, "One time you had fun with your friends but did not know that it would be the last time you would be together."  I am not much of a party animal but I suppose the scenario can apply to any gathering.  Maybe just a simple dinner with loved ones.  More recently, on Mac Geek Gab podcast I heard about an iOS app called Last Time.  Supposedly you make an entry in the app and it keeps a running count of whatever that you just entered.  Looking at the app some time later, you would learn that you have a certain pair of shoes for so many months, you last had dinner at some place so many weeks, and so on.  In my emotional state, I am not sure I want to install the app but I think eventually I will.

This week I learned of the sudden death of an elderly friend.  He is older than me by some twenty years.  He was a young medic during the Vietnam War while I was still a toddler.  Vietnam is a big country and we never met there but some forty years later in Brooklyn, NY we did, through a run club.  He took up long-distance running late in his life but he was good.  I am not fast to begin with but he was indeed faster than me.  I used to think that when I get to his age I would be happy to still be able to run like him.  One time he paced me at a Summer Series 5K and it was one of my best times.  I was in much pain, since on my own I usually don't run that hard, but I was very happy too.  He was a good friend and a good coach.  A very nice guy overall.

For me, his sudden death left two unfinished businesses.  I am not 100% sure, but I think he once mentioned he had this letter he found on a wounded enemy combatant.  Recall that he was a medic in the Vietnam War.  He wanted me to translate the letter, just out of curiosity.  He never got that letter to me.

The other unfinished business is that at one time I wanted to make a route-art, StravaArt if you will, for him.  Since he was in the armed force, I thought it would be appropriate to use his last name.  At the end of his name, I would add a red cross, to signify his role in the war as a medic.  Maybe I thought that I better run the idea by him first, but never got around to it, nothing ever came out of my StravaArt idea.  I may still be able to do that one of these days.  I do plan to resume running regularly so it's a good possibility.