I tried and failed with a few approaches. Manual exercise recording with fatsecret.com isn’t granular enough. I did have some success with Runkeeper on the iPhone, but battled with GPS sensitivity, and ironically (if you’ve been following me on Twitter), lack of multitasking – not to mention the inability to track heart rate information. Carrying some bulky GPS device in addition to my iPhone isn’t an option.

Not a giant wrist computer

Chris, quite the unreasonably fit geek, suggested a Garmin Forerunner. I remembered these as bulky wrist-computers that even the most unabashed geek would have trouble living down. Imagine my surprise when the Garmin Forerunner 405 arrived on my doorstep.

The 405 looks nothing like a GPS device. I’d be quite happy wearing it as a regular sports watch, if it weren’t for constant recharging required due to the 2-week standby time. Kick it into full GPS training mode, and the battery will be chewed up in 10 hours. It does seem quite power hungry, but I guess this is fine for all but the most advanced endurance athletes.

When you consider what Garmin have packed into the 405, you can understand why it needs so much power. At its heart the 405 is a 1000-lap stopwatch with a sensitive GPS receiver that will track your speed and distance. The watch supports the ANT+ protocol, so any compatible devices can be paired with the device to add their own data. It comes with a heart monitor as standard, and you can purchase add a cadence meter if you’re a cyclist.

Using the touch-sensitive bezel, you can pull up any information during training in the form of customisable screens. Pretty much any combination of speed, pace, distance and heart rate are available. There’s also a “virtual partner” mode that tells you if you are behind or ahead of a set pace or previous recording.

Online Magic

When you get back to your PC, the real magic happens. After pairing (yes, Bluetooth users will find the process familiar) with the ANT+ USB stick, the Garmin 405 will send its information up to the Garmin Connect service.

This is more like it. There’s all that data I was talking about, laid out in gorgeous infographics. You can see a track of your run, along with speed, elevation, and heart rate. You can even play back your training event and see how these measurements correlate.

Regardless of your measure, I am not an athlete. I have heard that these bizarre humans do in fact use this information to improve their ability to inflict pain on themselves. You may have felt like you were going to die running up that hill, but if the stats show you that you had 10 more bpm in your heart muscle, then you’d better go out there again and punish yourself.

Get one

You can get the Garmin Forerunner 405 for around NZ$450 from a number of different places, including here and here.

Snap Internet offered to help, and in a comedy of errors, Chorus ended up connecting us to Snap today incorrectly (it should have been via a second line). The upshot is, about 30 minutes ago our line was switched from Snap back to Orcon. I managed to start a test just before the line was switched.

Below is a picture of the speed graph from uTorrent. Let’s summarise:

• Same copper pair.
• Same ADSL router.
• Same jackpoint.
• Same computer.
• Same file.
• Same bittorrent peers.
• Different ISP termination in the Te Atatu Exchange.

You make your own conclusion:

Click to Enlarge

Don’t be distracted by the higher speed on Orcon. Yes this implies a lower SNR, but we’ve tried changing the Orcon ADSL profile to reduce the speed and increase the SNR, but the disconnect behaviour is identical.

I believe there is a bigger story behind this, but I need to get Orcon’s opinion before I go to print with it.

The problem is, to track something over a period of time, you need to measure and record it religiously. For weight, this means hopping on the scales daily, and remembering to go and enter the numbers into your recording device each time. There are websites that will help with the tracking – I love fatsecret.com and livestrong.com – but they don’t magically suck the data out of your scales.

What we need here are some scales with, I dunno, WiFi or something. “Hrmm,” he says, scratching his enormous belly, “if only there was such a thing available.”

Hark! The WiFi Scales from Withings.com. Once you’ve set these up with a bit of your standard jiggery-pokery, you simply stand on them once a day, and everything else is taken care of. A few minutes after weighing yourself, you’ll find a new entry recorded at the Withings.com website, complete with a sexy graph. The data can be made public if you choose, and you can even use their iPhone app to show your friends how heavy you are.

Ed's note: this is not my weight

The scales also measure your body fat percentage – albeit using a somewhat inaccurate method. The important thing is that the measurement is consistent, which does give you a useful long-term trend.

The Withings Scales are incredibly easy to use. My current digital scales require me to tap them, then wait for a zero measurement, and only then can I weigh myself. With the Withings, I can jump straight on the scales and get an immediately depressing measurement. Brilliant!

The only things missing from Withings are an API for data access, and – ironically – a weighted moving average on their default graph. You can export your data in CSV, but I’d like to see an API so I can pump data into a more complete third-party health site like fatsecret.com.

What are you weighting for?

Currently the only way to get these scales in New Zealand is via the Australian reseller. They do support a 1 year warranty, but will add a shipping charge onto your purchase, which means the scales will cost you AU$295, or about $370 kiwi. Fairly steep, but what price convenience?

Pricing & Availability
iPad will be available in late March worldwide for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, $599 (US) for the 32GB model, $699 (US) for the 64GB model. The Wi-Fi + 3G models of iPad will be available in April in the US and selected countries for a suggested retail price of $629 (US) for the 16GB model, $729 (US) for the 32GB model and $829 (US) for the 64GB model. International pricing and worldwide availability will be announced at a later date. iBookstore will be available in the US at launch.

It takes a bit of decoding, but I read it like this:

• WiFi models available everywhere at launch
• WiFi + 3G “US and selected countries” at launch
• iBookstore “US at launch”

This does not bode well for iBookstore availability in New Zealand, especially when we consider that the Kindle is still not available in New Zealand. What the heck is going on with New Zealand book publishers? Care to comment?

As with the iPod, this means neither the demise of old distribution, nor the rise of new. It does, however, provide another compelling platform for consumers to spend freely on more content. Like the App Store before it, Apple’s new distribution platform creates a near-frictionless method to part consumers with their money in return for content. Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent more on music and applications using my iPhone than any physical products. Similarly, I can see myself buying more subscriptions, applications, and premium content than ever before.

But wait, there’s more (and more of the same)

Apple knows when it is on to a good thing. The iPad enlarges the familiar iPhone interface, and also builds on their massively successful iTunes music and application stores. You can use all the same applications, music, and podcasts that have been available for the iPod and iPhone. But of course the increased size and resolution of the iPad will lend itself to larger-format applications – some of which Apple demonstrated during their announcement.

Apple has also finally leveraged their purchase of PA Semi, producing the “A4″ chip: a custom 1GHz processor with combined graphics processing. We can assume from this that the iPad will have 3D gaming graphics far in excess of the iPhone and iPod. Electronic Arts leveraged this, and demonstrated some rather stunning 3D games.

Then there’s iWork. Apple’s existing suite of Office applications have been tweaked to run on the iPad. Apple has deeply integrated multi-touch, creating an almost Minority Report interface for the various applications. iWork on iPad is not an addendum to your desktop or notebook PC – each US$9.99 application is a complete standalone product. If you’re a hard-core road warrior, you might want to grab the matching keyboard dock.

Shine a light on us

And what of New Zealand? Are we left out in the Kindle-like cold? Not entirely. The iPad is available to buy worldwide in 60 days time (3G models will follow 30 days after that). However, the pre-pay data plans (US$14.99 for 250MB and US$29.99 for unlimited) are only available in the USA. But there should be nothing stopping you putting a Vodafone or XT sim card in the iPad, because they are carrier unlocked by default. Word of warning: like the iPhone, the iPad’s 3G will work ok on Vodafone in cities, and great on XT everywhere (when XT isn’t offline of course).

Here’s how much you’re going to pay for an iPad in US$:

And you know you’re going to. Like many Apple products, the features matter less than the fashion. When you see these devices in cafes and buses, you’ll want one. What are you waiting for? You don’t want to be left alone in the dark now do you?

[Image credits: GDGT]

Full details on the Konus reflector and the Leica binoculars can be found here. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.

Scott Guthrie has put up a corker of a post dissecting technical debates in general. It’s intended to defuse some of the specific angst around WebForms vs ASP.NET MVC, but the initial section should be compulsory reading for anyone intending to push their platform of choice.

But I’m more interested in the comments. Rob Conery (in a wonderfully recursive technical debate within the comments of a post on technical debates) has this to say*:

When you abstract a webpage into a stateful form experience it’s like abstracting spinach and broccoli into mac and cheese for your kids [...]

Bottom line: MS web developers are the only ones who think of the web in terms of “stateful forms” with very little knowledge of how the sausage is made . This puts them at a bit of a disadvantage in their career – they (for the most part) don’t need to worry about the core issues of the industry (what HTML 5 means, compression issues, standards compliance, semantic issues, etc).

*I’m unable to link to the comment because Scott’s comments don’t have named bookmarks

Cue gospel music, dancing, and much shouting of “Amen brother!” from me.

Like it or not, I’ve hung my hat on the Microsoft platform. It is a good platform. It pays my mortgage. I find the development tools wonderfully productive.

But yes, I have witnessed first-hand the sheer mayhem that can be wrought by a good developer working on a framework that abstracts them from the platform. I have witnessed 1.5MB web pages with no less than 120 linked resources. I have seen pages with multiple <head> and <html> blocks. I have witnessed pages being posted-back to themselves, re-rendered to the client, then prepended with a 301 header for redirection to the next “form”.

And we wonder why so many “real” web designers and developers dismiss ASP.NET as a valid web platform.

I’m thankful that it’s part of my job to address these issues with developers. There’s nothing I enjoy more than taking developers for a wander down HTTP lane. Showing them the actual GETs and redirects that happen when they make a web request; and showing them exactly how the ASP.NET page model generates HTML code in memory and streams it to the client. I like to think they use that knowledge to construct graceful code, or at the very least think twice before relying on a gigantic ASP.NET viewstate.

A man can dream can’t he?

Konusmotor 130 F.1000mm

First up, the chunky Konusmotor 130 reflector telescope [switch to english!] from Konus. A reflector scope like this one is ideal for night-sky viewing. It uses the same method as the gigantic domed telescopes you see on hilltops, (and the same as the Hubble telescope): a fat tube with a mirror at the bottom and a eyepiece in the side. The result is amazing light sensitivity and clarity. The photo at right is a very clunky image taken with my camera pointing into the viewfinder, using a 17mm eye piece. It really doesn’t do justice to the clarity and size of the moon as viewed in person. I sat for 30 minutes last night just staring at the moon, amazed at the visible detail in the craters and plains.

The scope is supplied with 17mm and 10mm eyepieces, which give 60x and 100x magnification. With a 1000mm focal length, the Konus can provide up to 250x magnification with a 4mm eyepiece. That would be more than enough to see Saturn as a small disc with rings (under the right sky conditions), but the field of view will require constant adjustment of the scope. Thankfully, this scope comes with a motorised mount with a speed adjustment to track objects as the Earth rotates.

You should be able to grab one for NZ$600 from any decent camera shop.

Leica Ultravid 10×42

If you want to view non-celestial objects, a pair of binoculars is often more appropriate than a telescope. These Leica Ultravid binoculars are the pure embodiment of “you get what you pay for”. It’s almost impossible to explain just how incredible these binoculars are, but perhaps “three thousand, three hundred New Zealand dollars” will go some way to doing so. That amount of money buys you some incredible Leica glass, a robust nitrogen-filled housing, precision focussing, and adjustable eye-relief cups; all precision-assembled by the undisputed leader in optics.

I’m not surprised at the anecdotes of hunters and spotters finding animals that simply aren’t visible to the naked eye using these binoculars. They appear to gather every photon emitted from your subject, resulting in incredible light sensitivity. Viewing at dusk or into shadow is no problem, and the clarity makes the subject look almost more 3D than reality, if that’s possible. I could put more words here that try to explain what looking through the Leica binoculars feels like, but I don’t have the vocabulary.

The event is booked for 10am Pacific time on the 27th, which WolframAlpha incorrectly tells me is 6am NZDT on the 28th (it’s actually 7am NZDT). I’ll be tracking it live, and doing my damndest to get my hands on a review version of whatever is announced.

Of course I will laugh my head off when it turns out to just be multi-coloured iPhones or something like that.