As you might have guessed, I like keeping track of my fitness. On my bike, I use the Garmin Edge 1030, on the trainer I use Zwift.
I also like to keep track of my steps. Being a programmer, my job is mostly sedentary, so being aware of how much I’m walking and moving in general.
To this end, I wear a Garmin Vivoactive 3 smart watch.
Continue readingA few more of my favorites…
There are two types of people in the world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
… and …
Any working regular expression is indistinguishable from magic.
We all agree that email is crucial to modern life.
But what email should you use?
Everyone gets email when they sign up for high speed internet service … the problem is that you’re tied to that internet service for that email address. If you switch service providers, you could lose the address. Even worse, if your provider goes out of business, you could loose access entirely. Sometimes the email provider charges a fee for better service and/or removing advertising.
Yes, you could use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL, but you’re still tired to the provider. Plus, you don’t often get to choose the best address (johnsmith5734563@xyz.com just isn’t that sexy).
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get an email address that belongs to you forever?
Continue readingThis post is as much to help me remember as it is to help other people.
Below is a list (not comprehensive) of the postmaster resource pages for some of the major email providers.
| Microsoft / Outlook | https://postmaster.outlook.com |
| https://postmaster.google.com/ | |
| Yahoo | https://help.yahoo.com/kb/postmaster |
| Comcast | https://postmaster.comcast.net/ |
| AOL | https://postmaster.aol.com/ |
On these sites you can get information about how the provider handles spam, feedback loops, blacklists, whitelists, etc.
Very useful for those managing mailing list servers.
As part of my migration to the cloud, I terminated the Comcast Business internet service and switched to Xfinity internet.
When I initially signed up for the Xfinity service, I got their cable modem / router / wifi appliance. My plan was to get my own cable modem eventually because Xfinity charges $13 / month to lease the appliance.
I was at Best Buy and saw that cable modems weren’t expensive, so I decided to purchase a mid-level model (Netgear CM600) so I could save the lease fee. The CM600 would pay for itself in about 8 months.
It took a while to get setup … and there were a few false starts, but eventually I got it working connected directly to my MacBook.
I ran into a problem when I switched the CM600 over to my ASUS RT-5300 wifi router.
I kept getting the message “Your ISP’s DHCP does not function properly” on the ASUS network map page.
Continue readingOne of the things I’ve struggled with since I started seriously cycling was eyewear.
I normally wear glasses … but, occasionally, wear contact lenses.
The problem is, with contact lenses, I’m far sighted … but can’t read anything up close (specifically maps, cue sheets, and my bike computer to a certain extent). I also find it hard to drive with contacts in (The dash board & GPS display are just out of the clearly visible range). If I wore reader glasses (+1.5), I was able to see stuff close up.
Continue readingWith my recent migration of servers from my basement to Amazon cloud servers, I had to rework how my email filtering was setup.
One of the challenges was how to handle the numerous mailing lists I participate in. Especially since I’m the list administrator for many of them.
After a bit of research, and experimentation, I found a pretty good formula for handling the filtering.
Continue reading
The Wahoo Headwind is a ‘smart’ fan specifically designed for cycling.
When I first heard about this product, I was quite dubious. First, and foremost, it’s expensive. $250 for a fan is pretty high. Also, for some reason, my initial though twas that they were trying to reproduce the experience of a headwind while cycling.
Well, cost aside, most of the reviews of the fan I saw were pretty positive. With the holidays upon us, this is what I decided I wanted
Continue reading
I’ve got a fair number of smart home devices here …
Some time ago I posted about my general dissatisfaction with the 4iiii Viiva heart rate monitor.
In a nutshell, in addition to being a ANT+ and Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) heart rate monitor, it also acts as a bridge between ANT+ devices that don’t offer BTLE functionality. In my original review of the Viiva, I complained because few software offerings provided support for it and the data is sent to apps wasn’t accurate.
Well, I need to revise my opinion of the Viiva … it has gained adoption and now appears to be quite useful.
Those who use training programs (such as Zwift) with Apple TV have already learned that the Apple TV only supports 3 total BTLE devices connected. One of those devices slots is already taken by the remote control. That leaves only 2 more slots.
If you’re using a training program, you’ll need at least 3 devices connected (possibly more) …
Continue reading