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.

MY I.T. TOOLBOX, NOW AND BACK THEN

When I first started in the Information Technology business, MS-DOS was the standard interface.  Sure the Mac already came out but Microsoft was already the king of the hill and most businesses use DOS-based applications, clunky as they were.  The nice thing with working with MS-DOS was that I was able to walk around with a few floppy disks containing some tools of the trade.  I am sure I still have those disks in the attic somewhere, finding them is another story.  I wish I write this particular post sooner, as now my memory of those tools are vague.  For sure I know there was Norton Utilities.  Recall that this was the DOS era, command line stuff.  You can type some command (NU ?) to launch Norton Utilities with a quasi-graphical interface, kinda like two Windows Explorer window so you can copy things left to right or vice versa, among other things that at the time would take many kludgy commands to execute.  However, you can also type some two-characters commands to do a bunch of other wonderful things.  I think it was TS (text search?) to scan through the entire 20-megabyte hard drive (whoa!) to find a certain series of characters.  Some other commands allow changing the date of a file, something that couldn't be done before!  Outside of the Norton Util bundle I recall two other commands.  BAC from Byte Magazine (or was it PC Magazine?) lets me backup files from the hard drive to multiple floppy disks.  The program would pause to wait for a new, empty floppy disk when one is full.  The other was some kind of print screen command.  Maybe it was one of those Terminate-and-Stay-Resident thingy that lives in RAM and comes to the foreground when you press certain key sequences.  Sheesh, I really forgot much of this stuff, not that they are needed any more, just something from a simpler time.

The toolbox for my current work are mostly hardware.  Sure I have access to some network drives where there are certain scripts or utilities but I think of them separately.  As I go from sites to sites, or projects to projects, to setup new computers, printers, etc I find it very helpful to have the following items handy.

Wireless service is nice but when it comes to imaging of computers via pulling files over the network, a physical Ethernet cable is still needed.  From time to time, I would need to borrow some existing computer's network connection to do my work.  On more than one occasion, it was much easier to disconnect the cable from the lender computer, snap it to a Ethernet coupler, connect the other end of the coupler to the computer I need to build.  The alternative would be try to trace the cable back to some jack that may require moving tons of stuff.  Back when Internet access involved dial-up service over regular phone lines, I used to have a few couplers for telephone cables.  Same idea with Ethernet couplers.  I got mine from Micro Computers in Queens, NY on Kissena Boulevard but they can be bought in most stores catering to technicians, so I would rule out Best Buy and such, unless you go through their web site.

If I have my way, I wouldn't need to drive to my work sites.  All my work sites would be reachable by NYC subway, or maybe even by PATH trains, so I wouldn't have to deal with traffic jam, parking, and other drivers.  But the nice thing with driving is I can keep in the car a bunch of things that I might need for work.  Like network cables, VGA cables, DP-to-VGA adapter, power cables, printer USB cables, etc.  I even have a keyboard with a PS/2 connection.  There was a time when the computer image I used did not have the proper driver loaded and mouse or keyboard connected via USB wouldn't be recognized.  Luckily the computer had a PS/2 connection and I was able to make it work with the PS/2 keyboard I keep in the car.  Sometimes old technology works better than the new ones!

Last but not least, attached to the lanyard that holds my work ID I have a pair of screwdrivers, Philip and slot.  They are useful most of the times, but occasionally I need to use something like the Eclipse Enterprise 20-in-1 Telescoping Magnetic Screwdriver, http://www.microcenter.com/product/206265/20-in-1_Telescoping_Magnetic_Screwdriver .  Call me Inspector Gadget if you wish, but I like to be prepared.  There's only so much MacGyvering one can do, in real life anyway.