It’s the offseason for Office 365, at least sort of– with no conferences until the fall, Tony and I had to take the opportunity of meetings at ENow to record this episode of Office 365 Exposed. Topics we covered included Delve Analytics, the contentious topic of mailbox anchoring, a bit about Skype for Business Online’s telephony features, and frequent mentions of Yammer for those of you who like to enjoy our podcast with a beverage in hand.
First impressions: flying the Avidyne IFD540
cShort version: The transplant was a success and the patient made it home.
Now, the longer version.
I originally dropped the plane off on 31 December at Sarasota Avionics at Tampa Executive (KVDF). The plan was to have the plane ready by late January. That didn’t happen. When I went to pick the plane up on February 10th, it wasn’t ready as promised: the GPS steering steered the plane in the opposite direction as commanded, the interconnection between the new GPS and our engine monitor didn’t work, and the plane failed its initial FAA ADS-B Out automated compliance report (ACR) check. I was really unhappy, flew back to Huntsville, and started firing off emails to get the problem fixed. Long story short, Kirk Fryar, the co-owner of Sarasota, moved the plane to their Venice location, fixed everything that was wrong, tested the plane thoroughly, and had it ready for me on the 25th. (I note with some irritation that I still haven’t ever had an experience with any aircraft maintenance shop that resulted in the plane being ready when it was promised.)
I met Leonard, Sarasota’s check pilot and flight instructor, at KVDF and we flew the plane down to KVNC, stopping along the way to hand-fly the ILS 32 at KSRQ. It was a windy, bumpy day and ATC was vectoring me all over the place (including nearly to the Gulf ADIZ). I was a little rusty, and it showed. Another thing that showed: the localizer flag on the NAV1 CDI (we’ll call this squawk #1). This little flag is supposed to pop out to indicate that the associated signal is unreliable. It’s definitely not supposed to appear in a brand-new avionics installation, especially not when my secondary nav radio didn’t show the flag. We flew a missed approach and then took the RNAV 5 approach into KVNC. This time I let the autopilot and GPSS fly the approach, which it did flawlessly.
While I barricaded myself in their conference room to get some work done, Kirk investigated the cause of the localizer flag problem. It turned out to be simple, stupid, and Avidyne’s fault. There’s a known compatibility issue between early hardware revisions of the IFD540 and the King KI209A CDI we have. Sarasota sent our original unit back to Avidyne to have the hardware modification installed– we needed mod 14 but, for some unknown reason, we got a unit back that only had mod 11. This means that we have to take the plane back to the shop to swap in the new IFD540 unit when it arrives, which is a hassle… but more on that later.
After a thorough preflight, during which I confirmed that the fuel flow data presented to the IFD540 was intermittent (and that’s squawk #2, but not a huge deal since there’s a workaround: power-cycle both the CGR30P and the IFD540), I took off and picked up my clearance to Grady County. They gave me a route out over the water: direct TABIR, then direct 70J. I plugged it in, climbed out, and engaged GPSS. It flew smoothly to TABIR. There’s a lot going on in the picture below:
- The magenta line is where I’m going. Note that at the TABIR intersection, the onward path changes to a “candy cane” stripe to indicate the next planned leg. Other legs further on show up as white. This makes it easy to see what the box is planning on doing at all times.
- The little blue diamonds are other airplanes, with their relative altitude shown and little up or down arrows indicating climbs or descents. The inner dashed ring has a 5nm radius, so I can clearly see where interesting targets are and what they’re doing.
- The blue flags indicate VMC at those reporting points. this is a bit of a change from Foreflight, which uses little green dots for VMC METARs. However, the FAA specifies the exact symbology and colors that have to be used in certified devices so we’re stuck with those.
- Just above the “FMS” button you can see a tiny label that says “Rgnl Rdr 9 Min”. That means I have relatively fresh radar data on screen; however, since the sky was completely cloudless when I took the picture, there’s nothing shown.
- The radio at the bottom of the stack “knows” that 119.275 is the AWOS frequency for Venice. Why? The GNC255 has an onboard frequency database, and now that Sarasota connected it to a GPS position source, it can look up the frequency and aircraft position and use that combination to label who you’re talking to.
There was a stiff (25+kt) headwind and I was burning fuel faster than I liked, so I decided instead to stop at 40J. I landed, took on 62 gallons (meaning I had 20gals left, or a little over an hour’s flying time, in reserve) and set out for home. Along the way, I customized the datablock display– one of the big features of the IFD540 is that you can extensively customize what data is displayed and where it appears, then save that configuration in your own profile. That way Derek and I can each set up things the way we like, then load our own profiles on demand. Here’s what I came up with:
datablocks set up the way I like them
- The left side top shows me the current communications and navigation frequencies I have tuned. Note that the unit automatically labels the frequency as soon as you tune it. (Not shown is the extremely useful FREQ button, which, when pushed, shows you a list of the frequencies you are most likely to need based on your location and phase of flight).
- Below the frequency datablocks, I see my destination, distance, and estimated time enroute. I will see fuel remaining on arrival once the fuel flow issue is fixed.
- The top line shows the current ETA to my destination, my groundspeed, and the current navigation mode. It says “GPS” in this picture, but it could also show other labels depending on whether I have an approach loaded, the type of approach, etc.
- The right side shows, in order, the destination and distance (which I’ll probably remove), the bearing and distance to the nearest airport, and the track, distance, fuel remaining, and ETE for the next waypoint (that info is shown in magenta, indicating that it’s tied to the current waypoint). Because I am going direct to my destination, this magenta block is the same as the destination data on the left. (You can also see the minimum safe altitude and flight timer, right over the traffic display thumbnail).
On the way home, I decided to do a couple of turns in the hold at the ATHEN intersection. This is normally part of the RNAV 36 approach to Decatur; I didn’t want to fly the whole procedure, but I wanted to see how the IFD540 handled a hold at an arbitrary waypoint. Turns out it’s just about as simple as you can imagine: you pick the waypoint (any one will do: airport, intersection, VOR, whatever), tell the box you want to fly a hold, and then watch it do its stuff. When you want to exit the hold, you sequence the next waypoint as direct and the magic happens. Thanks to GPSS, the plane happily flew the entire hold on its own, including compensating for the winds.
One more squawk: the IFD540 and the other devices are super-bright in their default night modes. I think the dimmer settings are wrong, because the panel light rheostat that controls all the other lighting (including the CGR30p) did nothing to change the brightness of the IFD540, so I had to manually adjust it. All of these squawks will be addressed when we take the plane back to Sarasota’s shop, this time the one in Tullahoma, just a short flight from here. It shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes or so to swap out the IFD540; fixing the other issues might take a bit longer.
First impressions of using the IFD540 for a cross-country IFR flight:
- I am very impressed with the display brightness and clarity and the overall build quality of the switches and knobs on all of the hardware. Being able to switch between items using the left/right rocker switches (labeled “FMS”, “MAP’, and “AUX”) is easy and intuitive. Touch response is fast, and multitouch for panning and zooming worked flawlessly.
- The UI is responsive and the graphics are clear and readable. The screen seems huge compared to my old KLN94.
- By default, the combination of land and navigation data presented on the map is cluttered, but it’s easy to declutter.
- Avidyne brags about their “hybrid touch” interface, in which nearly every action can either be performed directly on the touch screen or by using the knobs and buttons. That flexibility works very well and was most welcome during my bumpy flight home– aiming precisely at a touchscreen in moderate turbulence can be a challenge.
- Once you get used to the notion that there are sliding tabs (like the “DATA” tab visible next to the “minimum safe altitude” field in the picture above), it becomes very easy to flip between sets of data, such as the flight plan view when in FMS mode.
- The location awareness features of the IFD540 are a real time saver. The FREQ button knows what frequencies to present based on where you are, the unit can automatically tune (and ID) the next VOR in your flight path, and so on.
- Speaking of FMS: flight plan entry, approach management, and so on use a metaphor that’s close to, but still different from, the King/Garmin-style interface that most pilots are used to. It’s like the difference between Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese Portuguese: lots of common vocabulay and idiom, but some very important differences. I’ll have more to say about that once I have more time flying with it and learning the FMS way of doing things. (It’s interesting that Bendix King, whose KSN770 competes with the IFD540, has the same issue in that the KSN77o steals a lot of FMS-style behavior from BK’s jet FMS family.)
- The top-of-descent (TOD) marker is a really nifty feature; it tells you where to start your descent in order to hit an altitude constraint on the flight path. The audio cue, along with the audio cue for 500′ AGL, are very valuable prompts. I’d love to see Avidyne add an audio prompt indicating when you reached the missed approach point (MAP) for approaches that define them.
- I think, but have not confirmed, that the IFD540 should be able to drive the STEC PSS so that the autopilot can follow an LPV-generated glideslope. It will take a little knobology for me to figure out how to set this up, though.
- There are many things I learned to coax the KLN94 into doing that I don’t yet know how to do on the IFD540, so this learning process will take a little while. On the other hand, there are many, many things that the IFD540 can do that the KLN94 and Garmin GNS-x30 series can’t.
What about the rest of the stack? Well, the transponder just works… not much to say there. It transmits ADS-B Out like it’s supposed to, so I’m delighted. The AMX240 audio panel is a huge improvement in audio quality and functionality over the old KMA20 we had before. I’ll have more to say about those gadgets, and the GDC-31 roll steering converter, in the future. Overall, I’m delighted with the new stack and can’t wait to fly it a bunch more!
Filed under aviation
Training Tuesday: IoT insecurity, fitness division
There’s lots of hype about how the Internet of Things (IoT) will make our lives better, and much of it is true. For example, my house has two Internet-connected thermostats that I can use to see and change temperature settings— that way I can keep the house uncomfortably cool or warm when I’m not there and adjust the temperature remotely so it’s comfy when I get there. Fitness devices are definitely a well-established part of the IoT; companies such as BodyMedia and Garmin have been making devices that can connect, either on their own or through a PC or smartphone, to Internet services for a while. That market has been growing very rapidly over the last few years (some estimates put it as $3 billion in 2015), so some bright folks at Open Effect (funded in part by the Canadian government) decided to take a look at the security of IoT-connected fitness devices.
The results (full report here) are pretty horrifying:
- Many devices transmit their Bluetooth MAC IDs at all times that the device isn’t pried, and those IDs never change, so it’s easy to track someone through rudimentary Bluetooth beacon monitoring.
- The Jawbone and Withings fitness services don’t do a very good job of data validation; the researchers mention telling the Jawbone service that their test user walked 10,000,000,000 steps in one day, and the service happily accepted that. Worse still, they were able to inject fake data, generating records of “a person taking steps at a specific time when no such steps occurred.” Given that this data has been used in both criminal and civil trials in the US and Canada (see the extensive footnotes in section 1.4 of the report), this is pretty awful.
- Garmin and Withings don’t use HTTPS to protect data in transit. Given that I wear a Garmin watch and use a Withings scale daily, I have a problem with this. The researchers only studied the Garmin Connect app on iOS and Android, but if I had to bet, I’d guess that my Garmin watch (which has Wi-Fi) isn’t using HTTPS either.
Apart from calling Garmin to yell at them, I’m posting this mostly to point out yet another case where the rush to get things on the Internet may have unintended consequences. While my individual fitness data is not necessarily something I mind being visible, I don’t like that these manufacturers have been so sloppy. I can understand not wanting to implement HTTPS on a very low-power device but there’s no excuse not to implement it in a mobile app, for crying out loud.
Meanwhile, if I ever need to, now I know how to challenge any fitness-related data that may be introduced in court.
Filed under Fitness, General Tech Stuff, Security
Why I donated to the Sanders campaign
So here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: I just gave Bernie Sanders’ campaign some money, despite the fact that I disagree with many of his specific beliefs and policies. Why did I make a campaign contribution?
- Sanders has a high degree of personal integrity. I would rather have a person of character and integrity with whom I disagree as our President than someone who’s politically closer to me but lacks those attributes.
- Hilary Clinton is fundamentally, thoroughly, reflexively corrupt and dishonest. The thought of her becoming President, and thus sweeping her equally corrupt clique of advisors and hangers-on into positions of power, repels me. If giving Bernie money helps keep her out of office, I’m ready to write a check.
- If elected, I don’t believe that the non-interventionist Sanders will be actively dangerous to our country. I can’t say the same about Clinton or any of the Republican contenders except perhaps Rand Paul– and let’s face it, there is no chance in hell that Paul will win the nomination. Sanders’ economic policies are unlikely to get broad traction in a Republican Congress, so I’m not concerned that he is single-handledly going to destroy the economy and the American way of life.
- None of the existing Republicans have shown that they deserve my support. Most of them fail on points #1 and #2 above, and the few who don’t (Kasich and Paul, maybe the somnolent Carson) have no chance of beating Clinton in a general election.
- In fact, the entire Republican party leadership has shown that they don’t deserve my support as evidenced by their shameful failure to recruit and promote good candidates. If you could take the list of current Republican candidates and their resumes back in time and show it to Eisenhower, Reagan, Carter, Johnson, or Kennedy they would be horrified.
- Because of the way our electoral system is currently structured, early money has a bigger leverage effect. If Sanders wins Iowa and/or New Hampshire, that will make him much more competitive against Clinton on Super Tuesday.
I’m definitely soft on Bernie. I’d love to see a last-minute convention miracle on the GOP side (or a well deserved, but unlikely, federal indictment of Secretary Clinton for mishandling of classified information), in which case I’d reconsider my support. But until then, I’m in for Bernie.
Filed under General Stuff
Training Tuesday: “The Hybrid Athlete” (Viada) review
Fitness is a huge industry in part because it offers the promise of self-improvement. Look better! Be thinner! Run faster! There are low barriers to entry; anyone can hold themselves out as a fitness expert, and (much like weathermen or stock analysts) no one ever checks back to see if the promised results were actually delivered. One result of this combination is that there are a lot of people who uncritically accept some principles that turn out to be completely false. One example: “cardio kills your gains.” Another: “if I lift weights I’ll be too blocky and slow to run or cycle fast.”
Alex Viada has addressed this lack of knowledge rather neatly in The Hybrid Athlete. The book’s landing page defines a hybrid athlete as “a unique breed who can excel simultaneously in both strength and endurance activities.” Examples might include firefighters, members of military special operations forces, or even people like me who want to be unusually strong and have unusually good endurance. I bought the book sight unseen, although I had the benefit of being coached by Alex and the team at Complete Human Performance, and seeing his unique approach in action, for a few months before it came out. Sadly, I didn’t get around to finishing it until last night, but I’m glad I buckled down— I learned a ton. A few of the things I learned:
- what causes rigor mortis (page 34)
- the stomach isn’t an absorptive organ (page 170)
- swimming burns 10x as many calories per mile per pound compared to running (2.9 cal/mi/lb vs 0.29 cal/mi/lb, page 173)
- The average hard-training, non-steroid-taking man can gain between 1 and 1.5 lbs of lean body mass every 2 months— far below what I would have expected (p176)
- That thing you’re doing that you think is Tabata? It probably isn’t (page 66)
- Trappist ales are perhaps the finest recovery beer yet known to man. (page 232)
The book’s divided into 13 chapters. The first four are primary introductory material, covering hybrid training philosophy and the physiology of muscles and metabolic pathways. There are specific chapters for the critical components of strength and endurance training and chapters covering sport-specific training (along with an appendix listing sample hybrid programs for various combinations of sports, such as a powerlifter who wants to run marathons). To me, three of the chapters were particularly valuable, so I want to dig into those a little more.
First is chapter 7: “Cutting Out the Noise: Eliminating the Waste.” This might seem like an odd chapter title, but when you consider that consolidation of stressors is a fundamental part of hybrid training, it makes perfect sense. The question poses a simple question:
“Will performing this particular part of my workout routine improve my final performance more than any other potential component?”. If the answer is yes, include it then move on to the next. The answer will go from a firm “yes” to a more general “yeeeeeees” to, eventually, the dreaded “I think so”, or “the internet said so”. Any primary component of training should be both necessary and sufficient to improve sport performance in one particular component of a given sport. For a powerlifter, the squat, bench, and deadlift are all primary. For the triathlete, the tempo run or time trial. For the ultra runner, the long slow trail run. For the Weightlifter, the Snatch and C&J.
This is a really powerful concept once you understand and embrace it. Doing more miles on the bike, more time on the treadmill or road, or more laps in the pool will not necessarily lead to better sport performance. It sounds heretical, but Alex provides a really concrete example in the training template for powerlifting plus triathlon— the swim and bike distances are short relative to traditional triathlon training programs because swimming 5000-8000 meters are “very counterproductive to upper body power production.” Plus, they take a great deal of energy and focus, and it’s questionable whether swimming 8000m to prepare for a race distance of 3800m (in the Ironman-distance swim) is better preparation than spending the same amount of training time on other activities. Alex refers disparagingly sometimes to “junk miles,” referring to distance for distance’s sake, but intensity is a critical element too— for me, perhaps the most valuable single sentence in the book was found on page 66:
…many endurance athletes go entirely too hard on their “aerobic” or “low intensity” days, and end up gaining neither the discrete training benefits of higher intensity work nor recovery benefits of the lower intensity work.
He might as well have started that sentence like this: “HAY, PAUL, PAY ATTENTION BECAUSE THIS IS YOU:…”
Chapter 11, “Strength for the Endurance Athlete,” pulls no punches in calling out how awful most strength training routines in the fitness press are for triathletes. He points out, rightly, that no matter how much time you plank (to cite one example) it’s not going to help you stay aero on the bike as much as actual resistance training for your core muscles. This chapter (and its companion, “Conditioning for the Strength Athlete”) clearly lays out the specific adaptive benefits of strength training— improved ligament and tendon strength, better bone density, and improved sport-specific fitness.
Finally, Chapter 13, “Nutritional Support for Hybrid Training,” exploded a lot of false knowledge I (thought I) had about the process of feeding my body for the best possible performance. I haven’t worked all the way through the (simple) data gathering and associated math, but essentially I am eating roughly the right amount of calories but in the wrong proportion of macronutrients. This is easy to adjust and should give me better endurance and perhaps a little bit of weight loss.
Overall, this is a superb book. Alex’s writing style is clear and direct, with occasional flashes of his extremely dry wit. The degree of research he’s done, and knowledge he holds, is evident (and bolstered by the bibliography and recommended reading in appendix C). I strongly recommend this book for any triathlete or distance runner; I’d recommend it for powerlifters and Strongman competitors too, but all the ones I know are fellow CHP athletes and they know this stuff already. At $47, it’s cheaper than a jar of good protein powder or a new pair of bike shoes, and it will have much longer-lasting impact on your fitness, health, and performance.
My first in-flight emergency
Yesterday, I had my first in-flight emergency. That sounds more dramatic than it actually was but I thought writing up my experience might be helpful. This is to the best of my recollection; a lot happened in a short time, so I might have muffed some details.
With my plane in the shop, I wanted to get in a few instrument approaches, as well as work on my proficiency on the Cessna 182RG at Redstone. The 182RG is about 20kts faster than my plane, and it’s a great cross-country machine to have as a backup. It’s nicely equipped, with a Garmin GNS530 GPS (WAAS-capable, of course), an MX20 multifunction display, and two glideslope indicators. I called my pal John Blevins, an experienced instrument instructor, and we arranged to meet and go fly.
We briefed a simple instrument proficiency check (IPC) route– we’d fly from Redstone to Muscle Shoals, fly the ILS 29 approach, then turn around and fly the WAAS GPS 36 approach into Decatur, then the non-WAAS GPS 17 back into Redstone. The weather was just right– overcast at about 1900′, with a light wind.
The preflight and runup were normal; I contacted Huntsville departure and we were cleared to take off and head towards Muscle Shoals. I got the airplane to our assigned altitude, cleaned it up for cruise flight, engaged the autopilot, and briefed the approach with John. During that time, we were cleared to the HUPOK intersection and told to expect a straight-in approach to the ILS 29. Our instructions were to cross HUPOK at or above 2500′, so after I had the radios set up to my satisfaction, I started our descent.
A brief explanatory note: on an ILS approach, you tune your navigation radio to the frequency specified for the localizer so that you get lateral and vertical guidance for the approach on the course deviation indicator (CDI). If you tune the wrong frequency (or forget to tune it, which amounts to the same thing), you won’t get that guidance. For that reason, I make a habit of tuning the localizer on both my primary and backup navigation radios. I did that this time, too.
As we started our descent, I noticed that the GPS flickered, then went blank, then said “INITIALIZING SYSTEM” in the upper left corner. Simultaneously, the two guidance needles on the CDI started to bounce. The CDI in this plane looks like the picture below: the needles move independently, so as the GPS went online, it was driving the needles towards the center (where they belonged), but when it dropped offline again, the needles drifted towards the upper left corner. Distracting, but not critical. I immediately disconnected the autopilot and continued hand-flying the descent.
The GI106A course deviation indicator
This first failure was annoying but not critical– an ILS approach doesn’t depend on the GPS, and because I already had the localizer tuned on the other radio, it was a simple matter of looking at the other CDI. We broke out below the clouds, at which point the MFD went blank, along with the GPS. The transponder was flashing “FAIL” instead of the 4-digit code we had been assigned. Then it, and the backup nav radio, all quit. We still had electrical power, but all of our radio navigation instruments had crapped out.
I broke off the approach and turned away from the airport, reasoning that we needed to try troubleshooting the failure. First step: we determined that nothing was on fire and that we had plenty of fuel so there was no huge rush to take action. (There’s a saying, which I will explain another time, that the first thing you do in an emergency is wind the clock– rushing to DO SOMETHING can often be worse than taking no action at all.)
John wisely suggested that we shed some electrical load, so we turned off all the stuff that wasn’t working anyway, verified that the ammeter indicated normally and that no breakers were tripped, turned off the avionics master to do a bus reset, and then started turning things back on.
Nada.
While we were doing all that, I was heading the plane due east, back whence we came, staying at least 500′ below the overcast layer so we could maintain VFR. We spotted the Courtland airport (9A4) off to our south, and I decided to head towards it in case we wanted to make a precautionary landing. John was working through the verrrrry skimpy emergency checklists. I flew us for a straight-in approach to runway 31 at Courtland, but when I extended the gear we didn’t get the “gear down” light and couldn’t verify that the gear were locked– so I initiated a go-around and we started some more troubleshooting, this time with the “emergency gear extension” checklist. We decided it would be better to raise the gear to release any residual pressure in the accumulator, so we did. About this time COM2 started working again, so we called Huntsville to tell them we were heading back to Redstone.
Shortly after I turned us for home, the LOW VOLTAGE panel annunciator lit. I discovered that the alternator circuit breaker had popped, so I reset it. I have a one-and-done rule for circuit breakers in flight– for a critical system I’ll reset the breaker once, but if it pops again, it’s time to land. The light went out, and the breaker didn’t pop again.
Because we were below the clouds and knew where we were, it was easy to navigate visually to get us pointed in the right direction. On the way home, for no good reason that I could see, the GPS began working normally. We left the transponder off, since we were in radio contact with Huntsville and they could see our aircraft on radar.
The approach and landing were uneventful too, except that I didn’t use any flaps. The Cessna 182 flaps are electrically actuated and we agreed that there was no reason to crank them down, putting extra load on the electrical system.
Here’s a partial map of our flight route.
After we landed, John and I discussed what happened, how we reacted, and what we learned from it. On the positive side, we displayed excellent crew coordination, and I was glad to have an experienced pilot in the other seat. The multiple failures were annoying but not critical; the weather was tolerable, we were in a familiar area, and John and I both had iPads with GPS for backup. On the negative side, I wasn’t as familiar with the emergency procedures for this airplane as I should have been (although part of the flight’s purpose was for me to practice emergency procedures).
This morning, I filed an ASRS report; ASRS is a unique success story, and I plan to write about it for my next Flying Friday. Then I wrote this post. I’ll look forward to seeing what Redstone’s mechanic finds. I don’t think there were any telltale signs that I could have caught during the preflight or runup, but I will continue to keep my eyes very sharply peeled.
Garmin Fenix 3 drops data from Stages power meter
I’ve been ignoring this problem for a while, hoping that it would be fixed in a firmware update, but it persists, and I finally got aggravated enough with it to write this post (and to engage Garmin support). The problem is simple: my Garmin Fenix 3 triathlon watch will not reliably record data from the Stages power meter I have on my bike.
A quick digression: there are two major standards for wireless exercise sensor connectivity, Bluetooth Low Energy (aka BLE and Bluetooth 4.0) and ANT+. Some devices support one or the other, and some devices support both. For example, my heart rate monitor (the excellent Scosche Rhythm+) simultaneously transmits both ANT+ and BLE signals, but my Wahoo speed/cadence sensor is ANT-only. When I ride, I usually use two devices: my old iPhone 4 on the handlebars, in a Wahoo case that has a built-in ANT+ adapter, plus my Fenix 3. The iPhone is too old to use BLE, and turning on BLE on the Fenix 3 dramatically drops its battery life, so I’m using ANT for all the sensor data. Having two devices means that sometimes I forget to start or stop one device or the other at various points, so I often have mismatched data between the two.
A picture will illustrate the problem most clearly. When I use the Fenix 3, I end up with ride data that looks like this:
As you can see, the power graph has a few spikes with lots of flats– and an average power of only 23W. (I’ll get to why the average is important in a minute). By contrast, here’s what the ride looked like when captured with the Strava app on my iPhone 4. Note that the power data much more closely tracks the speed, cadence, and HR data.
So why is this important? First of all, as a techie, it annoys me when two things that are supposed to work together won’t. More importantly, I actually use the power data from these rides in two ways. While I’m on the bike, I use it to gauge and adjust my level of effort. For example, yesterday’s ride was pretty windy, so I tried to hold a steady 190-210W while riding into the wind, keeping my level of effort constant and accepting whatever speed that gave me. After a ride, my coach and I use the power data to plan my recovery time and to identify areas where I need more practice (e.g. climbing hills). Having inaccurate or dirty data makes both of these uses impossible.
The Stages power meter support FAQ suggests moving the watch around, but I haven’t tried that yet. My troubleshooting efforts so far have been limited to changing the battery in the Stages and making sure the Stages and Fenix both have the latest firmware. I’ll see what Garmin support has to say. Hopefully they have a magic fix; I have a very early-model Fenix 3 so maybe they’ve made some improvements since launch. Until then, I’ll keep recording each ride twice and keeping the cleanest data.
Filed under FAIL, Fitness, General Tech Stuff
2015: the books I read
I read a lot. This is both a feature and a bug. At any given time, I’ll usually be reading 3-4 different books, in a mix of electronic and physical formats. Inspired by my mom’s example, about this time in 2014 I decided to keep a book journal. Below you’ll find my list of all the books I finished in 2015, more or less in the order in which I finished them. I omitted any book that I gave up on before finishing, as well as those that I’m still working on. I didn’t think to jot down a short review for each book as I finished it, and I’m not about to take the time to do so now. I have embedded a few notes for books that I thought were particularly good. Or not.
- F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century: riveting tale of the 1973 tornado superoutbreak, set just a few miles from where I now live.
- American Sniper
- Defending Jacob: unsettling chronicle of a good kid gone bad.
- Hardwired (Walter Williams): original cyberpunk that didn’t age well.
- Girls of Atomic City (audio): historical recounting of women’s work at Oak Ridge during WW II. Incredibly annoying narRAtion.
- Lockstep
- The Counterfeit Agent: reread this to get ready for Twelve Days
- Twelve Days: might need to re-read this soon to get ready for The Wolves
- The Racketeer: meh. Not my favorite Grisham, but not bad.
- Afterparty (audio): unexpectedly moving tale of chicanery and redemption, with superb narration
- From Gym Lifter to Competitive Powerlifter: very informative, with an easy conversational style
- Daughter of the Sword (Bein): terrific mix of modern and feudal Japan, with a complex intertwined storyline that moves along swiftly.
- Year of the Demon (Bein): just as good as its predecessor.
- When Penguins Flew and Water Burned: thoroughly enjoyed this memoir of a USAF B-52 navigator. Very educational too.
- Station Eleven: as good as its reputation suggested
- Whisper of Stars: enjoyable, if implausible, novel set in a near-future dystopia
- Building the H Bomb: memoir of one of the original Los Alamos H-bomb team.
- The Heist: predictably good Daniel Silva novel.
- The Hope: I may have accidentally learned something about the formation of the State of Israel from this.
- Avogadro Corp: The Singularity: an email system becomes superintelligent. I sure hope my friends in Redmond don’t read this and get ideas.
- Stiff (audio): I love Mary Roach and this book is a great example of why.
- The Glory
- The Jakarta Pandemic
- The Park Service
- Pirates of Pensacola
- Black Flagged Alpha
- Trident Deception (audio): completely implausible. Don’t bother.
- Season in Hell
- The God Hunter: like Ghostbusters but for grown-ups.
- Flowers for Algernon
- Allan Quatermain: surprisingly entertaining relic from a long-gone era.
- Already Gone
- Angles of Attack: love all of Marko Kloos’ writing. One of the best science-fiction writers currently working IMHO.
- Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with his Century, vol 1: superbly readable biography of an incredibly influential man.
- Song of Kali: read this and you’ll never want to visit India. Gross, borderline racist, and not all that interesting. Far from Simmons’ best work.
- Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with his Century, vol 2: just as good as volume 1.
- Bagmen
- The Martian (audio): excellent audio treatment of one of my favorite recent books. The characters actually have distinct voices and accents thanks to the narrator’s excellent work.
- Nuclear Family Vacation: a husband-and-wife team tour major nuclear installations around the globe (including Huntsville). Interesting but dated.
- Cadillac Jukebox
- Draw Blood: second in a series of books by my friend Jason Bovberg. Cracking good zombie/post-apocalypse novel.
- To Honor You Call Us, For Honor We Stand, Brothers in Valor: excellent old-style space opera featuring a naval officer named (wait for it) Robichaux from (better yet) Nouvelle Acadie.
- On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery: compelling story of how we got the Arlington of today. Crisply written and fast moving; full of historical trivia.
- All the Light We Cannot See: meh.
- Year’s Best Science Fiction, 32nd Annual Edition
- Mongoliad, Book 1 (audio): Awful, confused mess.
- The Devil’s Waters: Terrific novel centering on USAF pararescue jumpers.
- The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas: why have I waited this long to read Iain Banks’ Culture novels?
- Three-Body Problem: didn’t deserve the critical acclaim heaped on it. Scientifically ridiculous, culturally interesting.
- The Empty Quarter
- The Red: First Light: superb emergence-of-AI story set in the near future.
- The Red: Trials
- The Colonel’s Mistake: arresting novel set in Azerbijan and surroundings, featuring a burnt-out CIA officer. Dan Mayland is a hell of a thriller writer.
- Telefon
- The Leveling, Spy for Hire, and Death of a Spy: the next three of Mayland’s books featuring the characters from The Colonel’s Mistake.
- Prince of Tides
- The Silkworm: excellent noirish mystery by J.K. Rowling. A grown-up book, written for grown-ups.
- Zero History: can’t go wrong with William Gibson.
- The Annihilation Score: more enjoyable than Stross’ other Laundry novels because it has much less Bob Howard in it.
- Ruthless
- Chasing the Phoenix: another of my top five for the year. Sly, sly, and more sly.
- Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction
- The Library at Mount Char: surprising, depressing, and exhilirating. Another of my year’s top five. Thanks to Tim for pointing it out.
- Exo: another solid Steven Gould novel.
- Seveneves (audio): This might be the book that cures me of reading Neal Stephenson.
- Guaranteed Heroes: see above but for William Lashner.
- The Short Drop: superb debut thriller.
- The Devil’s Horn: the third of Robbins’ series featuring USAF rescue jumpers, and by far the worst. Tedious.
- Red Cell: another excellent debut, this one by a former CIA analyst.
- Two Hours: the Quest for the Impossible Marathon: one of my top 5 books for the year.
- The Grove
- Time Loves a Hero
- Man in the High Castle: typical Philip K. Dick: weird.
- The Teller
- Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (audio): I kept expecting this to get better. It didn’t.
- Tipping Point: The War With China – The First Salvo: I love David Poyer’s writing and I sure hope he writes the missing half of this book.
- Cold Shot: sequel to Red Cell. Equally good.
- Invasive Species: truly scared me. Why do humans always assume that we’re the highest product of evolution? Evolution doesn’t stop, y’know.
- Fallen Angel: needs much, much better proofreading, but Chuck Logan still writes a mighty taut book, with ringing dialog and relatable characters.
- The Cairo Affair: ever read a book and find that you’re rooting against the protagonist? Yep, me too.
- Echopraxia: intellectually dense writing that doesn’t stop to explain anything. Keep up or else.
- Every Clime and Place: Marines! In space! Some of them are women! Thoroughly enjoyable if uninventive.
- Iron Gate: clunky tale of American intervention in South Africa. Maybe the author’s other books are better?
That’s it. Time to start working on my 2016 list.
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Training Tuesday: 2015 in review
All right, so it’s not Tuesday. I’m running behind because oft the holidays.
So far in 2015, if I trust Strava’s numbers, I’ve cycled 896 miles and run about 471 miles. That doesn’t count time on my bike trainer, and it’s probably missed a few activities here and there. I don’t know how many pounds of weights I’ve lifted, but I bet it’s a lot.
Competitions
This was a busy year for competitions. Maybe I should say “organized events,” since at my level I am not truly competitive in most events. Still, I had a great time racing with, and against, friends and strangers.
- Trail races: XTERRA Monte Sano, Tick Ridge Trek 10K
- Road races: UAH 8K, Rocket Run 10-Miler, Firecracker Chase 10.2 mile, Monte Sano 15K, Hobbs Island 10K
- Half marathons: Bridge Street, Four Bridges, Huntsville Half
- Duathlons: Heel & Crank, Lake Guntersville Duathlon
- Triathlons: New Orleans Sprint, Pflugerville Sprint, Huntsville Sprint, Rocketman, Renaissance Man
- Powerlifting: USPA Europa Orlando (where I took first place in my division of one!), USAPL Georgia Powerlifting for Pink
In 2016, I will complete my first half-Ironman: 1.2mi swim, 56mi bike, followed by a half marathon. IRONMAN North Carolina, here I come! Depending on how the offseason goes, I may give IRONMAN New Orleans a shot in April too; I’m still waffling on that. I’ll fill in my schedule with other events as they appear (for example, I already have lifting meets planned in January and February).
Performance
Thanks to the excellent coaching I received from Alex Viada and the crew at CHP, I am much stronger and faster than I was at this time last year. I cut nearly 30 seconds off my best time for the mile, a minute off my 5K, nearly 3 minutes off my best 10K time, and ran my first half marathon in 2:15– then shaved nearly 15 minutes off my best time before the end of the season. My bike endurance is greatly improved, although I’m still not where I want to be speed-wise. And my weightlifting… holy cow. I’ve put 70 pounds on to my maximum bench press, just under 150 pounds on my deadlift, and 80 on my squat. I am looking forward to more speed and power gains in 2016, that’s for sure. I have some specific time goals for Rocketman and Renaissance Man, and my goal is to join the 1000-lb combined lifting club before the end of 2016. (Notice I didn’t say anything about swimming? I will keep hacking away at it. Gradual improvement is still improvement.)
Nutrition
I worked with a nutrition coach for a few months but I did a really poor job adhering to his plan. This is something I need to work on in 2016— not necessarily for weight loss or body composition, but to make sure I’m fueling my body properly for what I’m asking it to do. Most of the nutrition challenges I’ve faced are self inflicted; they come about from failure to stock good things to eat as opposed to random crap, as well as failure to plan to eat so I don’t suddenly decide I’m starving and latch on to whatever’s within reach.
The mental game
If there’s one area where I feel like my 2015 performance was poor, it’s mental focus. I still haven’t learned how to consistently focus and perform. I have a few ideas about how to work on this, luckily enough. I tend to be extremely critical of my performance, and while a certain degree of this is healthy, too much of it is stifling.
I’m looking forward to another dynamic year— as long as I can stay healthy, I’ll see y’all out on the roads. But probably not in the water, because I’ll still be at the back of the pack.
Filed under Fitness
iOS charging woes
I have been meaning to write a long article about why I moved from Windows Phone back to iOS, and the good and bad parts of the transition, but I’ve been too busy to bother. I do have time for a quick rant, though: damn, I am tired of having charging problems.
See, Apple has this logo certification program called “Made for iOS.” Join it, and your devices (which might include chargers, cables, etc) can be certified as compatible with Apple devices, and you get a cool logo. Sure, it costs you a few bucks to sign up and get certified, but it’s cheap insurance. Nice line of chargers and cables you’ve got there. It’d be a real shame if anything happened to it.
On my last two road trips, previously-working cables have suddenly started producing the infamous “this accessory may not be compatible” message. Once that happens, it’s game over. The phone (or iPad) will no longer charge from that cable. If you happen to be on a road trip, well, too bad. Luckily I had a spare, but I am now nearly out of working cables, and there’s no guarantee that the name-brand cables I bought from Amazon (all of which were from vendors who claimed to be MFi certified) will keep working. Of course, because it’s Apple, there’s no way to override this dialog, ignore it, or force the device to talk to a tainted cable– once the cable is blacklisted, it’s no longer usable with that device at all.
The worst part? I’ve seen many reports of this happening to people who bought cables and chargers from the Apple store. Since I am unlikely to ever do that I’m not too worried, but I hate the precedent, and the inconvenience factor has been pretty stunning compared to my easy prior life of using micro USB cables with my Lumias. While I understand Apple’s desire to protect the IP embodied in the Lightning interface, and while I even believe that part of the rationale behind blocking non-certified devices is to prevent bad customer experiences, the whole thing has left an unpleasant taste in my mostly-discharged battery.
Filed under FAIL, General Stuff, General Tech Stuff
Flying Friday: looking stupid now vs stupid later
Remember this Fram commercial?
The concept it highlights is a fundamental part of many different aspects of life. Technical debt, TiVo guilt, and my own growing backlog of Kindle books are just three of the many manifestations of the now-versus-later principle. Here’s another great one: “It’s better to look a little stupid now, than a lot stupid later.”
I don’t really have anything to add to this article; it very neatly captures the principle and provides an excellent cautionary tale for all of us, but especially pilots and most especially those who are entrusted with the role of pilot in command.
Filed under aviation
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