Let's get physical

On paper I consider myself a pretty active person with interests in Tennis, Golf, Squash, Swimming, Hiking, Bike riding, and when the stars align I even try my hand (and feet) at Surfing. Unfortunately between these exciting outdoor activities I’m typically bound to a desk during work hours and enjoy couch based video games as well us far too much unnecessary food between meals.

Between actively exercising and following a more disciplined diet to neglecting physical activities and making very poor snaking choices, I estimate over the past five or more years I’ve let my weight yo-yo by as much as 25 kg and have never been able to reach my ideal weight. The good news is I’m back into a weight loss mindset; the bad news is my latest spree has put me in close to or possibly the worst shape of my life.

I do despise how cliché my change in mind set aligns with the rest of society. It’s a pretty common occurrence to let one self go a little in the winter months with less sunlight for motivation and more hearty meals as hurdles. Nevertheless with my now annual pier to pub swim less than three months away on top of my decision to compete in the next BRW Cooperate Triathlon in February 2010 there is no time like the present to get ‘back’ in shape.

So like any gadget obsessed self proclaimed nerd I completed my Nike plus set! The love child of Apple and Nike and outside of the obvious attempts to sell their own wares, Nike plus tries to provide you with a set of tools and utilities that encourage you to run, and run more often. Nike plus isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination and I estimate without doing too much research that it is at least three years old and could even be five.

What is Nike plus? Well I’m glad you asked! At a very basic level it is the pairing of your running shoes to a computer in order to record basic workout stats each time you go for a run. Uploading the workout data to the web then lets you monitor your workouts over time and in theory you will see your own improvement and can then even train for certain distances etc. Add a sprinkle of social networking to the mix and you can compare workouts with friends, place challenges to like minded runners and even track your overall distance ‘ran’.

The real genius behind the system is for a decade or more runner where already carrying the computer, listening to their favourite tunes while on a run in the form of an iPod. All Nike did was make a range of shoes that you could hide a tiny radio transmitter in and Apple added some software to the iPod to record the radio signal from the shoe. Then with the help of iTunes you could elect to upload your workouts to the Nike plus web application and presto you have an advanced running aid; available all over the world.

It has taken me over eighteen months to collect all the bits and pieced needed to utilise the system, but yesterday I got my first taste of the whole experience. A few too many beers the night before had me leaving my car at a good mate’s place for the night, and the next day it came time to collect it. After the customary hour of procrastinating – since I’d decided to run there – I was all set with iPhone, sensor and Nike+ shoes. 18 minutes and 39 seconds later I had navigated the 2.48 Km distance and cursed every single sausage roll and packet of chips consumed in the last 12 months.

The real magic occurred hours later, upon getting ready for bed that evening I decided to charge my iPhone by plugging it into the USB cable connected to my Computer. The customary iPhone synchronisation process was kicked off, but before long I was prompted on whether or not I wanted to upload my workouts to the web. Curiously I agreed and before long I was navigating the Nike plus web application and exploring what it had to offer. It took me a little while to work out which links where plain unadulterated ‘advertising’ and which links actually provided ways to analyse my run. At the end of my exploration I’d subscripted to a 12 week training routine to get me from “walk to run” and taken note that I’m scheduled for a 15 minute, 1Km walk tomorrow (well today).

I’m not so disillusioned to think that this one utility is the savour to all my physical conditioning problems. I understand that this tool is just as useful as a gym membership and just as pointless if unused. All the same I’m happy to try it out and with luck it will help me with my least favourite discipline (running) and hopefully force me in to some ongoing good habits ...

Your eBay item sold!

Well it might have taken me three years and four months but I've finally joint the millions of people worldwide to sell something via eBay.

The argument I had with myself when I decided on a whim to buy an iPhone 3G S at launch, was that I must immediately sell my original iPhone 3G to compensate the cost. It seems 'immediately' is a month long process but in fairness it took me two weeks to list and the default auction length is 7 days so it doesn't take long to add up. I'm pretty happy with the iPhone's ability to keep its value selling it twelve months later for around 60% of its original cost.

But enough about the iPhone, lets talk about the selling process. It really is a wonderful service but it doesn't come freely, I'm an advocate of you get what you pay for so while I'll highlight the cheeky charges I won't go so far as feeling hard done by.

I should point out that the eventual winner opted to pay via credit card with PayPay and from a seller point of view I think this incurs the most handling charges. To list an item with four images on the listing page and a duplicate image on the gallery page ended up costing me $4.84AUD. I was then charged an additional $15.43AUD from eBay once the item sold. If I add to this the $12.50AUD that PayPal charged me to accept the credit card payment I'm looking at a cost to sell of $32.77AUD

So for a national and even worldwide audience I sold my item at a cost of 6.5% commission to third parties and I don't think anyone can complain to much at those numbers.

A final word for those planning to sell something be very wary of the international buyer trying to purchase your item for a son in a different country. They are pretty much scammers and should be avoided at all costs ...

Thank-you DigiDNA

Well I didn’t even last a week before blabbering about something iPhone. Ironically this is a post about an application that helps overcome one of the biggest downfalls of the Jesusphone.

FileAid is an iPhone application built by DigiDNA that allows you to transfer files from your PC to your phone essentially giving you usb memory card like storage, particularly appealing since I splurged and bought the 32 GB model.

This alone doesn’t really position FileAid as anything revolutionary as a number of applications allow you to transfer files from Mac, Linux and Windows via WiFi to the iPhone. The genius behind FileAid’s ying is its yang counterpart DiskAid.

DiskAid is a desktop application with support for Mac and Windows (sorry penguin lovers) that allows you to connect to your iPhone via a usb cable and transfer files on to your iPhone assuming you have FileAid installed. This becomes amazingly powerful if you are transferring GBs of data like I had to recently. As the transfer speed of the usb cable blows any WiFi speed out of the water and you only need consult physics to work that out.

the good

FileAid supports all the basic file formats you’d expect allowing you to view documents and even play iPhone supported media internally within the application. It also has a healthy number of options around security and these are accessible via the actual app and not hidden in the settings pane. During WiFi file transfer the iPhone is essentially an anonymous ftp server which is better for transfer speeds. At the moment FileAid a free download to your iPhone via the app store.

DiskAid has a clean interface both in the Mac and Windows version with clearly labelled buttons to allow you to intuitively perform tasks without seeking any help. It automatically detects when the iPhone is plugged in and makes it clear when you’re good to go and can start transferring files and has its own status bar to track progress. DiskAid is available for a free 14 day trial and can be purchased online from the DigiDNA online store for around $10.00.

the bad

FileAid has a number of views and while I might be using it for a specific task they seem unnecessary and more confusing than worthwhile. While I have no issue with the ‘folder’ view strangely the last option, I don’t see a use in sorting all the files on ‘File Type’, ‘Date’ or ‘Name’ particularly if you have a plethora of files as seeming them outside of their folder structure but in alphabetical order for example is plain confusing. I also found it annoying although I’ve come to accept it now that you needed to be in the ‘sharing help’ screen to connect to the iPhone over WiFi from either Mac or Windows.

DiskAid unfortunately requires iTunes to be installed to allow the USB file transfer and this adds to its overall footprint on the host machine.

and the ugly

For some reason FileAid and DiskAid both have different default paths so unless you see the setting in FileAid to ‘Use DiskAid folder instead of FileAid folder for FTP’ it can be frustrating trying to use usb and WiFi transfers in unison and although I solved it eventually I think it’s an ugly design decision. Another ugly side effect of using an anonymous ftp server for file transfer between the Mac and the iPhone is the Mac doesn’t have any simple out of the box anonymous ftp client so the developers suggest you download CyberDuck which is an annoying step if at a mates and wanting to grab a file quickly. Last but not least and I guess more of a criticism of Apples backup process but if you dump a large number of files on your iPhone and then sync with iTunes you’ll end up transferring all those files into a backup of your iPhone which really isn’t necessary.

At the end of the day besides some major short comings as much Apples fault as DigiDNA the FileAid/DiskAid combination provides the much needed usb file transfer feature, and is particularly powerful for large media files and install iso’s as long as you remember to transfer them to your primary machine before backing up your phone with iTunes.

I give it 7/10 and wonder if it is the best usb file transferring solution I’ll ever see on my non-jail broken iPhone ...