He ain't heavy, he's my brother -actually it's me

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As you have seen from my other posts I have been trying to get my ballooning weight under control recently. My fitbit devices have been really integral as part of my attempt. The Aria and the Flex have been my daily companions. The Aria greets me every morning once I wake up. Visually reminding me to step on and get the result. It displays weight plus body fat as a percentage. I try to do it every day, same time, same place. Lately while the actual kilogram figure is yoyoing, the body fat as a percentage has been shrinking - interesting today is the lowest. This morning displaying 24% tonight in the 23% range. ( see below). Because the aria is connected to my wifi network it automatically uploads the results to my fitbit account which my iPhone app pulls down and displays.

I am by no means athletic.

This all started while trying to pass my fitness test for my work. I have never been a runner. Running usually induced two types of pain - shins hurting almost immediately and my throat acting like I am taking my last breath.

Stopping by my local shoe shop with the gait tracking and balance measuring gadgety in store it was identified that my arches are falling ( don't quote me, I think that's right). The sales person kindly offered to sell me $220 worth of the ugliest shoes available. Politely declining, I opted for the ever sexy orthotics. I have to say the change was instant and amazing. Since losing a tiny bit of weight the throat stopped burning weeks ago. But the shins continued. The orthotics had an immediate effect. The first day I kept wanting to stop where I remember my shins hurting onto regular route. Only this time I didn't hurt.

A week later, I am feeling great. I have an appointment with a podiatrist tomorrow to hopefully measure and custom make orthotics rather than off the shelf numbers I have now.

Wish me luck

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Run run as fast as you can !!!

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This week had been a big week for me in the fitness / jogging side. Every night this week I have been out walking and jogging in Darwin - how could you not. The whether has been sublime. I usually run at night. Later the better. Averaging 6-8kms. The nights here don't drop below 22 degrees C.

My fitbit flex has really changed the way I view activity. It's right there on my wrist. It's blinking lights shaming me into activity. The more lights the more active you have been. It has 5 lights that break your goal into 5ths. My daily goal is currently 10,000 steps ( roughly 5kms) so each light is 2000 steps. The nature of my current role at work means that I am largely sedentary (desk bound) during the day - I would be lucky to pass 2000 steps at work. But by bed time I am usually clocking up between 12000 & 16000. My walking partner who can walk to work recently scored 24kms in a single day with only a normal day activity with a night walk.

Weight wise I am still hovering between 76-78kgs. But body fat as a percentage is dropping from 26% to as low as 24% this morning.

How far do you usually run per day?

Packing list for Burma (Myanmar) and Malaysia (Redang Island)

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As the count down begins to the big trip (roughly 30 days) through Burma (Myanmar) and Malaysia – Kuala Lumpur and Redang Island, I am putting together my packing list. As you will see most of my packing is actually mostly gadgets & electronics. I LOVE THEM.

Packs

Kathmandu 70L convertible ( roller with hidden backpack straps)

Kathmandu 15L Backpack ( day pack) – came with the 70L

I am still tossing up whether to get the Kathmandu 30L ‘Transit’ Day pack and use it as carry on. Additionally it has a secret compartment for my MacBook Air. The lady at Kathmandu kindly talked me out of buying it on the weekend, instead to wait until September when the 40% member discount starts.

Clothes

2 x neutral coloured ‘zip off’ travel pants for comfort.

3 x T-shirts

3 x singlets

3 x shorts

1 x Swimming Shorts

7 x Underwear

2 x socks

1 x boat shoes ( these are my every day, go anywhere, comfortable traveling shoes- I hate thongs / flip-flops )

1 x pair decent going out shoes (never know when a club night calls)

Cameras

Go Pro Hero 3 Black

Go Pro Hero 3 Silver

Samsung NX1000

Laptop

MacBook Air 11in Mid 2011 128gb

Phone / Communications

iPhone 5 64gig in Lifeproof Fre Waterproof Case

Delorme InReach enabled GPS tracker and 2 way communicator

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This is really just gear nerd porn, I want to be able to update my family and friends (and you through this blog) on our adventures. Also it would allow me to fire off a SMS style message to my parents who are meeting us for part of the trip, if any plans change. I am still working through some bugs on the posting map locations here. At this stage posting by email is my only option – this does not produce a ‘sexy’ post – more a quick and dirty text only post with links to an external map.

Where possibly I will endeavour to get a local sim – hopefully with prepaid data – in Malaysia this is no problem, Burma I think will be a different story.

Tablet

iPad Mini 64gig in folio case

Power

Solar

Goal Zero Guide 7 Solar panel

Goal Zero Guide 10+ AA Battery Pack with 4 x AA batteries x 2

Portable Power

In addition to the the Goal Zero Guide10+ I have a PLOX 6000mAh battery pack

PIXO USB Camera Battery Charger from Goal Zero – can charge the NX1000 battery from Solar, USB port or via a wall socket.

I know it sounds like a lot of power, but the guiding premise of my whole kit is that it can all be charged from the wall or from the Goal Zero Panels on the road. I am never quite sure of power availability, reliability or how safe it is (spikes). The only item I can not charge by solar from the above kit is the MacBook Air. Goal Zero does have products that could do it easily, but my budget and weight allowance doe not stretch that far this time. Their Sherpa 50 would be great with some folding panels, I just can’t convince the other half to allow me to get that one.

Have I forgotten anything? Comments ??

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Berry Springs - NT

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Recently I wanted to try my new Go Pro 3 in the water just in time for a quick trip to some warm water springs near Darwin NT.

 

Below are some pictures from Berry Springs NT.

Quantifying self - Fitness / life tracking

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I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 program about Life tracking ( they had a fancy title, Quantifying self). While listening I was thinking HOLY CRAP, thats me.. my whole life is recorded - whether pictorially through Facebook or Instagram, textually through here or tumblr and fitness wise I will go into below. I recently have been trying to shift some KGs after hitting my highest weight without much effort! (mid 80kgs)

As you are probably aware, I am a gadget man, the first item that grabbed my eye was the new Fitbit Flex.

Basically its a Bluetooth Enabled Pedometer which doubles as a sleep tracker.

The wrist based device 'gameifies' the process of basically moving your body. In default setting of 10000 steps as a goal per day the device shows one single light per 2000 steps, providing vibration feedback when the 10000 is reached. The crowning glory of the divide in my opinion is back end - the app tracking and recording.

More recently I have added the Aria - the wifi enabled scale that perfectly couples with the Flex and the Fitbit app, not just measuring KGs but also lean body mass.

For the record - am now in the 70kg range.

Fitbit Flex:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/viZsv2kMZeo]

Fitbit Aria:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Pap8wqbKqIM]

Adding runkeeper to my arsonal has really helped to, I am finding I am racing my own personal best minutes per KM rate.
Runkeeper
I have recently found a new service that claims to link / sync everything together - I am still testing this:
Sync Metrics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02mfzrw

New Toys

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Since our last holiday a few new electronic toys have been added to my pack.

  • We sold our 2 x GoPro 2s
    • Replaced them with 1 x Go Pro 3 black and 1 x Go Pro Silver.
  • Sold our Spot Tracker
    • Replaced with a Delorme InReach 2 way GPS tracker / communicator
  • My underwater point and shoot was lost during our trip to Penguin Island, off the Western Australian Coast.
    • Point and shoot replaced with a combination of my iPhone 5 (now in waterproof LifeProof Fre case) and my new Samsung NX1000 Mirrorless 2/3rd DLSR
  • iPad 2 given to my partner as I updated
    • Updated to iPad Mini

A note for any one who uses @gopro and #iPads

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As we are in the testing stage for our upcoming trip to Burma and Malaysia, I was testing our new GoPro3 Black on the weekend. It is planned that after we use our cameras (GoPro included) we would use our iPads as quick offload of photos and videos and then using FTP upload to our wireless HDD. I managed to procure a SanDisk 64GB Micro SDXC, knowing the battery on the GoPro would die long before the card was full.

All fine and well UNTIL I plugged the card into my iPad mini. You get the following errors “Contents Unavailable.  The connected storage media may be damaged” or “Contents not Available.  Cannot read the connected storage media.” which as you can imagine a pain in the bum. But glad to have found it out now.

I do have Micro SDHC and they don’t suffer from the same issues thankfully but they are only 16GB.

Here is some further info:

http://www.simondean.org/2012/12/gopro-hero3-ipad/

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Samsung Galaxy S3 i9305 But with Vanilla Jelly Bean 4.2

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Have I made the wrong decision ? I have flirting the idea of moving away from my iPhone5 to an android device. My preference ever since I tried the HTC One X for a month was that it was good but the skin over the top of the Android experience really killed it.

I am the type of person that if I want a product I go online and buy it that night and expect maybe a week shipping at most. The Nexus 4 is exactly what I want. But they are rare and hard to get in Australia. The Google Play Store is error-ing out for the past week, and the only bricks and mortar store selling it is Hardly Normal with a mark up of a few hundred bucks.

So I bit the bullet and purchased a Samsung Galaxy S3 i9305. Because I am stuck using a  MacBook Air and on a daily limit of 400mb of internet in my hotel. Add to the fact I know what I want but I don’t know how to root my device nor put a Vanilla ROM on my device ( Vanilla = Andriod Operating System exactly as Google designed. No HTC skin, no Samsung Skin just pure - exact like the Nexus 4).

Thank fully I have found a phone repair shop where one of the guys said he can do it for me.

Fingers crossed.

Until then I will be on my iPhone 5

UPDATE:

HATED THE PHONE..

Major issue is that i9305 - hardly any ROMs available for them yet… SOLD ON EBAY FOLLOWING DAY