Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
The Garmin Forerunner 405: A Great Fitness Gadget!
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog, Reviews on March 4th, 2009
As my wife, Jan, and progressed further along in our Beachbody fitness journey, we thought it would be a good idea to get a heart rate monitor to see how hard our hearts were working, and – hopefully! – how well we were recovering.
We went out and bought a heart rate monitor at a local sporting good store. It wasn’t fancy (but wasn’t cheap, either), but was one of the kinds that you have to hold your finger down against one of the buttons for it to measure your heart rate. That was really inconvenient in the middle of our P90 Sweat workouts, and to top things off the silly thing stopped working about two weeks after we got it.
Our Beachbody coach, Doris, had just bought a Garmin Forerunner 405 and was telling folks in her club about it, and it sounded really good. I thought at first it was probably over the top for our needs, but since we had done a bit of running (and planned to do more), having something that could not only monitor our heart rate, but could also keep track of our distance and speed, was an appealing idea. I did some additional research, and finally we decided to order one.
I have to say, the Forerunner 405 is pretty darn slick. It does a really good job of monitoring our heart rates, and measures not only the current rate, but keeps tracks of the maximum and average rates, can be programmed for up to five zones (if you happen to use that), and can even display a graph of your heart rate on the watch display. The downside is that you have to wear a heart monitor strap; that’s not a big deal, but you have to make sure to moisten the contact points so it gets good conductivity against your skin, and make sure that it’s tight enough (but not too tight).
The Forerunner 405 also has a built-in GPS to keep track of your running or bicycling. From what I’ve been able to tell, it seems to be quite accurate, although mine takes a while (maybe a minute or so) to lock up enough satellites. It’s not a big deal, just a minor inconvenience when you’re ready to start running!
The 405 has a ton of other features that I’m not going to try and cover here, except for a couple of my favorites. One is the pace keeper: you can set your pace in minutes per mile, and it shows you a little graphic of how far ahead or behind you are from your target pace. So you can see at a glance while you’re running how far off your pace you are (which, being a slooow runner, is usually quite a bit for me!) without having to even read the numbers.
The other feature is the Garmin Connect site and their Training Center software. The Mac version of the Training Center software doesn’t seem to work with the 405 (yet, at least), but they did just release the ANT Agent software for Mac that allows you to transfer the data from the wrist unit to your computer and upload it to your Garmin Connect account (which is free); there is, of course, a Windows version of both the ANT Agent software and the Training Center. Both Garmin Connect and the Training Center display stats for all the information the Garmin collects, and also allow you to enter and track goals. The only downside is that it’s very heavily oriented toward running (I’d like to see some more options for strength training, for example), but for a free application, I certainly can’t complain!
As for downsides, the biggest one is that it’s not cheap: new Forerunner 405s with heart rate monitors (be careful, as some are sold without the heart monitor strap) are currently running at $349 new at Amazon. That’s a lot to spend, but if you’re serious about your fitness – or you just enjoy cool gadgets – I think it’s a good investment. So good, in fact, that we bought two (his and hers).
Another thing to consider – particularly if you have a small wrist – is that the unit is fairly bulky, about the size of a large men’s watch. That’s not necessarily a showstopper, but is something to keep in mind.
The last thing that a number of people commented on in the Amazon reviews was about the bezel. It’s touch-sensitive, and most of the settings and adjustments you make are by tapping, touching and holding, or scrolling your finger on the bezel. It takes some getting used to, but be advised that if your finger is wet it won’t work. Also, any time you set it down or something comes in contact with it, it can “click” something. But there is an easy way to prevent all that: by pushing the two buttons on the unit simultaneously, you can lock and unlock the bezel. So that’s no big deal.
The bottom line for us, as I mentioned, was that we liked the Forerunner 405 enough to buy two. For me, it’s not only something to help me keep track of how well I’m doing, but it’s also proved to be a motivational factor, as well, by setting and monitoring my goals and progress.
Corporate Gibberish Generator
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Reviews on February 27th, 2009
If you’ve worked in corporate America or for the government, you’ve no doubt encountered your fair share of corporate buzzwords. Where I work, it was so bad at one point that during our (informal) morning meetings, I used to hand out bingo cards so we could play that classic game of “corporate buzzword bingo” (no, I’m not making this up).
Well, somebody tipped off my wife to a site that has a “corporate gibberish generator” that just has to be seen to be believed! You type in a company name and it spits out – as the name implies – corporate gibberish. Here’s just a short sample:
MyCompany practically invented the term “paradigms”. It comes off as unbelievable, but it’s true! Without applications, you will lack versioning. Your budget for synthesizing should be at least one-third of your budget for enabling. We will morph the term “C2B2B”. We understand that if you embrace intuitively then you may also mesh intuitively. We think that most value-added entry pages use far too much SVG, and not enough CSS. We pride ourselves not only on our feature set, but our simple administration and newbie-proof operation. We have come to know that it is better to redefine virally than to iterate magnetically. Without research and development, you will lack iteration. A company that can implement correctly will (at some point) be able to engage faithfully.
And I’ve read actual documents that are almost exactly that ridiculous! The corporate gibberish generator – check it out!
Amazon’s Kindle 2: To Upgrade Or Not?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Reviews on February 13th, 2009
It’s finally available for preorder: the Amazon Kindle 2! The good news is that it has some nice new features, but it presents a few conundrums depending on where you are in the Kindle spectrum.
First, the high points of what’s new. Externally, the biggest differences are that it’s slimmer, not as angular, and the page turn buttons have been made smaller. The battery is no longer removeable by the user, so there’s no backplate to remove (or fall off).
In terms of function, page turning is 20 percent faster, and it displays sharper images and text, now showing sixteen shades of gray instead of the original four. It has built-in storage of 2 GB, and no on-board expansion card slots.
So, the big question is whether you should consider getting one. Like everything else, that all depends!
If you already have a Kindle 1, chances are you fall into one of two categories. The first is that you really like the latest and greatest things, and spending another $359 doesn’t turn you off. If that’s the case, heck – buy one! However, if you’re like me – the Kindle 1 is perfectly fine and I have other things to spend the money on – stick with it until it croaks. By that time the Kindle 3 (or 4) will be out, and you can just leapfrog ahead.
If you’ve ordered a Kindle 1 and your order is still backlogged, you’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of canceling the order and ordering a Kindle 2. Another option would be to cancel the order and snap up a bargain on a Kindle 1 from the folks who are selling them off and buying Kindle 2’s.
If you don’t have a Kindle yet, but have been thinking of getting one, now is probably a great time to do it, either going straight to the Kindle 2, or saving some money and getting pretty much the same reading experience (which is what it’s all about!) with a used or on-sale Kindle 1.
For myself, I’ve got a Kindle 1, and plan to stick with it until it croaks. I think the Kindle 2 is cool, but I don’t think it’s $359 cool. I’m hoping that by the time mine gives up the ghost, the Kindle 3 or 4 will be out, and I can leapfrog ahead! But that’s just me – check out the Kindle 2 and see what you think, or save some bucks and grab up a Kindle 1.
Star Trek 2009 – Oh, Yeah!
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Reviews on February 3rd, 2009
Okay, I know that I’ve been living under a rock: only yesterday did I discover that there’s a new Star Trek movie coming out this year! Yee-haaa!
Aside from confirming that I’m completely oblivious to things going on around me, this is really exciting news, particularly since this movie appears to be a prequel to the original Star Trek series. With all due respect to the fans of the various spinoffs, the original series with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and the others will always – to me – be the real Star Trek.
Anyway, I just wanted to help pass the word!
httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=uiHeviygXw8
Find Your Household Energy Hogs With the Kill-a-Watt Meter
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Being Green, Reviews on February 3rd, 2009
One of the things a lot of folks wonder when they look at their electric bill is, “Where the heck is all my money going?” Which appliances are using more than they should, or just more than you think they do? How can you tell?
I found an answer in the Kill-a-Watt meter by P3 International. This thing costs about $26, but could save you some serious money by pointing out the electricity hogs in your house. This is also an extremely valuable tool for anyone trying to figure out the wattage requirements for a backup generator.
When the price for electricity shot up last year and we decided we needed to do something about it, I started looking for a tool to tell me how much power the various things in our house were really using. Some things, like the light bulbs, weren’t a big problem because they have a rated wattage and I’m willing to take those at face value.
But other things in the house, like our refrigerator and freezer, the computers, and so on, aren’t so easy. Take the refrigerator: you can read the spec sheet and see how many watts it pulls when it’s running. But how long does it run during the day? How many watts does it use overall, or on average? The manual can’t tell you that, because it’s going to vary depending on what setting the refrigerator’s on, the temperature in your house, etc.
So, after digging around on the internet, I found the Kill-a-Watt meter by P3 International.
Using the Kill-a-Watt is absurdly simple: unplug the device you want to check, plug the Kill-a-Watt into the outlet, then plug the device into the Kill-a-Watt. The meter will then start keeping track of how many watts are currently being drawn, how long the device has been plugged in, and the total watts used (so you can figure out the watts/hour by dividing the total watts by the time).
It will also tell you some other good information, like the exact voltage from the outlet. But the main part for me is counting watts, which translates directly to how much money that device costs per month.
My wife just shook her head and muttered as I went around the house testing things. And just a tip for testing devices that may have hard to reach plugs or outlets in tight quarters: plug a 3-prong extension cord into a convenient outlet, plug the Kill-a-Watt into that, then plug in your device.
While I still have to test some things, I made a couple of interesting discoveries. For one thing, I found out that the refrigerator and freezer didn’t use nearly as much electricity as I thought they would: over a 24 hour period, the fridge uses 70 watts/hour, and the freezer uses 80. So that works out to a bit over 50 kWh for the refrigerator per month (or around $5, depending on the cost of your electricity), and about 60 kWh for the freezer (or around $6 per month). Not too bad, and a lot better than I thought!
I checked our Econo-Heat radiant panel heaters, which are rated at 425 watts. However, when I checked them with the Kill-a-Watt, they actually came out to 395, which was nice.
The computer we use as a home office server was another surprise: this thing has four hard drives, half a dozen cooling fans, a pretty powerful AMD CPU and ATI graphics card, and a 21″ CRT monitor (not one of the newer LED/LCD models), and it was only pulling 250 watts (the power supply is rated at 500 watts)! So, that was the good news. But for a variety of reasons, we often leave the machine on overnight, so I figure it’s costing us somewhere around $20/month to run. The solution: make sure I get my butt downstairs every night to shut it down!
By comparison, our laptops use about 25 watts, which is a surprise in a way since they’re as powerful CPU-wise as the server machine, just without the extra hard drives and big CRT monitor. So when you’re shopping for a computer, add power consumption to your list of considerations: I figure each of our laptops costs about $1 in electricity each month! And that savings can definitely add up over time.
And as I mentioned earlier, if you’re looking into getting a backup generator for your home, it’s very important to know just how much power you really need. The Kill-a-Watt can tell you: you no longer have to rely on estimates that may be way off for your particular needs.
The best part of the Kill-a-Watt is that it’s cheap! It’s only about $26, but can potentially save you a lot more than that by pointing out energy hogs in your house.
The only real downside to it is that you can’t use it on the biggest electricity users in your home: your air conditioning, furnace, hot water heater, or stove (it doesn’t handle 240V appliances).
But still, the Kill-a-Watt can help you bring some of your other energy hogs under control, and for me the price was well worth the peace of mind.
Blogging: Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Reviews on January 31st, 2009
This isn’t news if you’ve been blogging for a while, but I’m fairly new at this (while an old hand with web sites in general), and one of the confusing things for me was these oddball things called pingbacks and trackbacks.
After a bit of googling and poking around, a found a nice site that has a lot of information on blogging in general – optiniche – that had a very helpful post about pingbacks and trackbacks.
I’m not going to repeat the whole explanation here, but the bottom line is that if you make a blog post that happens to have a link to someone else’s blog post, a comment will magically appear on their blog post that links back to your blog post.
So, in a way, it’s almost like an automatic link exchange feature, which is awesome because exchanging links is one of the best ways to increase web traffic to your site. So understanding pingbacks and trackbacks was important for me because it seems to be getting harder and harder to do link exchanges the old-fashioned way, particularly because there are so many blogs out there now.
Now for a couple of caveats and observations:
- Trackbacks are a more “manual” method of making these links between blog posts. You actually have to cut and past the URL you want to point to and put it in the trackback field in your blog post.
- Pingbacks handle the “exchange” automatically. If there’s a link in your post to someone else’s blog post, the pingback software will automatically communicate between the blogs and put the comment on the other person’s post.
- The pingback and/or trackback function has to be enabled on both blogs for it to work.
- If you have pingbacks enabled, don’t make a manual trackback, too, or you might wind up with double comments on the other person’s blog post.
So, please do check out optiniche and take a look at some of the information the author has there on blogging and marketing!
