So i finally got my Fitbit in Monday after pre-ordering it a year and 2 months ago. and its well worth the wait! If your not familiar with the fitbit its a tiny device that helps you track your fitness, here’s how they describe it:

The Fitbit accurately tracks your calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and sleep quality. The Fitbit contains a 3D motion sensor like the one found in the Nintendo Wii. The Fitbit tracks your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities.

Basically its a hella accurate and awesome pedometer. the hardware is cool, but the software is where the fitbit really justifies its pricetag. the steps, calories burned, and miles traveled is Very accurate, like data from it, compared with data from my GPS were almost mirrors asfar as distance traveled. steps were easily determined to be accurate aswell. that’s all well and good, and will help people track their fitness and whatnot. An unusual but awesome part of it is the sleep tracking. your body behaves and moves in different ways when your in different stages of sleep. and how often you wake up at night and all that, so fitbit can measure your sleep patters by measuring the way you move when your asleep. it uploads this all to their website so you can track your sleep! its hella awesome, and id like to mention, i am a kick ass sleeper!

That brings me to the next selling point for the fitbit, which is their website! all the data collected by your fitbit is auto uploaded to their site every time you pass near your docking station, and translated into cool graphs and whatnot of your steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled and other spiffy things, so you can track your daily activity. You can also use the site to track your intentional workouts, like weight lifting, swimming, or other things the fitbit by its nature cannot track. It will calculate calories burned during those activities somehow using your BMI and all. so it can supposedly get a pretty accurate count of calories burned!

Ive only had the fitbit for 2 days, and haven’t been biking or swimming, but just wearing it and having it track my steps has made a pretty spiffy graph of my daily calorie burn.

You can also track your diet which is pretty awesome, put in what you eat and it will tell you how many calories it was and if your a net positive or negative for the day/week. Great way to keep on a reasonable diet and find out how your workouts/diet are paying off. you can do some other things like track weight and whatnot, but I’m not going to post screenshots of that, at least not till i get in better shape

So in short, the fitbit is awesome, i love it after only 2 days use. defiantly recommend it for anyone trying to get in shape. Especially recommend it to anyone trying to loose weight that had an affinity for spiffy gadgets. More pictures of the web interface after the break.

Just discovered a whole new world of happy today with Google Chrome Extensions!!! i was still hanging onto Firefox for some tasks because chrome didn’t yet allow stumble-upon or anything yet. but its a brand new browser today! To play with any of these awesome new toys the first thing you will need to do is upgrade to the newest version of the Chrome Beta. after your upgraded just click here for a list of awesome extensions. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Chrome Milk – Remember the milk for Chrome
• Number One – Gmail, Google Voice, Google Wave and Google reader notifier
• Chromed bird – For all your twitter needs
• Chrome Reload – reload page every X seconds
• Stumble-Upon – Its stumble upon for chrome!!!!
• Ad-Thwart – An ad-blocker for chrome! Finally!!!

Love it!!

So ive been growing this beard for just over a year. Its been an enjoyable process, and i do love having a beard but i think its time for a trim. that is to say, i think its time to trim it off. I still want a beard, but im thinking more of a Riker rather than a Hezbollah. I thought id turn over the decision to the will of my readers.

If you didnt know, this is the beard currently.

Update: Looks like regular readers and friends have voted for a neat trim! so a neat trim it is. ill trim it tomorrow (friday) and post pictures of the change. But just got lols, im going to stumble this post and see what a wider community thinks

Post trimming picture:

With all the new android users since the release of the “Droid” phone i thought i would give some updates on the best android app!
Locale is an excellent app for managing your phone and some of the annoyances that come with phone ownership. the best way to give you an idea of what locale does is to give examples. For instance… When you go to the movies you need to silence your phone, maybe set it to vibrate, and dim the screen so when you check whats goin on during the movie your not blinding everyone behind you. Locale can do that for you without you even touching the phone. Just setup conditions for the movies. mine were the GPS coordinates of the theaters locally. so when i arrive there, my phone is silenced, dims, and the wifi turns off to save battery.
I also have a condition of “low battery” setup, so when my battery reacher 20% or less i have locale Automatically turn off wifi, gps, bluetooth, dim the screen etc etc. Your conditions can be almost anything the phone can detect, form presence of a wifi signal, to gps location and many more. the results of the situation can be anything! i used to have it Automatically birghtkite check in for me using the SMS plugin! so i didnt even hafto look at brightkite, when i showed up at a placemark it would Automatically send the text to the brightkite SMS. So yeah, Definitely check out Locale! its won the Android developers challenge and the Mike’s Seal Of Approval!
Scan the barcode with your android phone to install the app!

Posts are getting fewer and further between, have alot on my plate. so this is one of those many many posts im manking about not posting. but i thought id spruce it up a bit with what i am doing thats taking up my time!

Ive been working on the KESM project, its an ultra bitching microscopy thing. cuttin up brains and whatnot. more info here.
Im also half assed working on getting my MCP in Windows 7 (its really not as bad as i thought it would be) so thats taking up a few hours a day until im confident enough ill pass the test.
Ive also been trying to get back in shape, or atleast shed a few pounds, so trying to get out and go biking at least 3 times a week, and yeah im only out cycling for an hour or so, but after that im pretty much spent. if you care to check out my workouts ive got them posted on my sportypal account. Also… boarderlands is a hell of alot of fun, so yeah, no time for you right not blag. ill prob post some windows 7 study materials later though.

So ive recently gotten on this much needed fitness kick, and started walking and occasionally jogging. Recently i also started using the android app SportyPal.  Its an awesome way to track almost all aspects of your workout!

Pretty much any workout where a gps can track you its useful for. roller blading, walking, jogging, cycling, even a mixture of them it can track your distance, speed, calories burned, top speed, all kinda of spiffy things. Ill post my test workout below, itll give you a good idea of how it tracks things. on this workout i was walking,m then decided to pick up the pace a couple times to see how the app would react.

You can see the velocity and altitude graphs aswell as how long it took to get between checkpoints. the app can automatically post your stats to Facebook and twitter, or just upload them to the sportypal.com website to track them. if you click on the right side of the map above it will display all kinds of spiffy information that a serious exercise enthusiast would love!
If your at all interested in working out, or just want to play with a very spiffy app i defiantly recommend this for anyone. casual go on a walk every now and then types to “i fucking love cycling” folk. and its free so if you don’t like it ill refund your money Just scan the barcode below to install!

Decided to post another workout im proud of

I love everything augmented reality! Ever since BIL ive been hella interested in an augmented reality system thats content is community driven, and Wikitude is exactly that. sounds like a very specific thing to wish for.. but trust me… its worth wishing for. The app has alot to offer as far as hard data. it pulls your location gia GPS and uses the compass to point you in the direction of location based Qype and Wikipedia entries. the awesome part, and the augmented reality part is the camera mode. Wikitude overlays way points of interesting landmarks and descriptions on the display of your Android phone. Its really best described in this video.

Its not a terribly useful app at the moment unless your going sight seeing, but it is an awesome way to show off the ideas behind augmented reality. And a spiffy toy to play with. Scan the QR-code to get the app. Enjoy!

Recent gaming news has revealed that id software has been purchased by ZeniMax, this initially caused me to panic and fear for id and Quakecon, however after reading up on things and some googling i thought id share my results.

The company that purchased id Software is ZeniMax, they also own Bethesda Softworks. Which has licensing rights to Startrek, Starwars , and Terminator franchises among many others. so this purchase effectively gives id rights to make games on those subjects (long time hope of a Startrek FPS that’s good). Bethesda is also responsible for The Elder Scrolls series, which could only be made better by using ids RAGE engine. so which this merger as it were we can only expect to have both Awesome game companies improve! And it looks like ZeniMax has gotten Carmack and id as a whole to drop their “1 new game every 4 years” model in favor of “lets make badass games ad well and quickly as possible” model. More id games = good. Not only that but id Staff is largely being left as is!

id Software will continue to operate as a studio under the direction of its founder, John Carmack. No changes will be made in the operations of id Software in the development of its games. All the principals at id Software have signed long-term employment contracts, assuring they will continue in their roles developing games at the studio

Which is music to my ears! John Carmack is the heart and soul of id, i don’t think i would have quite the fanatic love for the company if he was no longer a part of it. that being said there will obviously be a new boss in town for id.Robert Altman is the CEO of ZeniMax, and seems to be built for this job. I cant tell if hes a supervillan of Lex Luthors mental acuity, or an unlucky badass (I’m voting for supervillan) a bit of quick research on Altman shows that he was under suspicion of fraudulent actions involving the sale of a bank, but he was acquitted of all charges and banned from banking….. so i can only assume (hope) he has a boatload of payoff money stashed away somewhere from this whole venture and got off clean. Take this and add that he married WonderWoman, and bam. you’ve got your awesome supervillan game software company owning badass. which can only be a good thing for id. And i have been told by an unconfirmed source that Quakecon is not only still on, but is getting MORE sponsors as a result of this buy!!!

To summarize, this is why i think this deal is good:

1. id has access to Startrek licensing (Good Startrek FPS)
2. id Now has the funding to increase staff and make games better and faster
3. Bethesda has access to much better game engines
4. Both companies are being run by a badass
5. And id is being pushed to be what they once were in the gaming industry. The best!

Sources: VentureBeat,ids Homepage.

Ive been using the Google Chrome browser since launch. and it was awesome to begin wiht, i mean its made by Google what else could it be? but alot of issues started cropping up recently. something i didn’t even thing about… is to frackin update the thing. The issues with Copy and paste in google chrome are all solved by the newest update. aswell as alot of chromes spell checking problems. To update it just to go tools and click about chrome, it’ll check for an update and get you to the newest version. just thought i would pass on that nugget of info.

Ok, this has been a long time coming, I’ve been using google voice since the grandcentral change, and everything i love about grandcentral had been moved over, and improved greatly!! The features of google voice are:

Call screening – Announce and screen callers
Listen in – Listen before taking a call
Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
Place calls – Call US numbers for free
Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring
Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says
Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone
Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS
Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller
Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails
Conference calling – Join people into a single call
Call record – Record calls and store them online
Call switch – Switch phones during a call
Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile
GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance
Manage groups – Set preferences by group

and each one of them is displayed so masterfully that i have begun using my Google voice # more than my regular phone number (The Google Voice app for Android has helped ALOT there!). One of the best features, and strangely unmentioned in Googles feature list is the Contacts! they do such an wonderful job of managing contacts, contact lists, and contact groups that its impossible to go back to any other management system! Ive used it to setup one voicemail message for family members and another for business contacts. seems like a useless feature but is totally awesome! Its voicemail system is also ZomgsWTFlol Amazing! If I’m in a meeting and forced to ignore a call that i needed to take, the transcript of the voicemail will be text messaged to me shortly after the message is left! Text messaging, as well as placing calls can all be done though the web interface, so it has the potential to save you alot of money on text messages. and a whole lot more money if you put your google voice number in your Fav5 (then all you calls can be free ). There are just so many small things that when put together make an amazing product!
Oh and the Google voice app for the android OS makes it Amazingly easy to route all your calls and text messages though the Google Voice system! The GV app also has surprisingly good contact management, and a few other spiffy features, but its main use is routing calls though google voice. If you have a Voice account, and a G1 but havnt installed GV yet now is your chance!

Update: Download Google’s GV app instead