May 20, 2010
Raw STS-132 Launch Audio
During the #NASATweetup and launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis for STS-132, I left my netbook recording audio in the twent (about 3 miles from Pad 39A). Here's the raw, unedited audio from the launch including the hum of the big A/C units and the PA audio commentating on the launch proceedings. Zero time is right around 17:25 File type is .ogg. File size is 22.3 MB: right-click to save file: Launch.ogg.
Enjoy. MUCH more to come.
March 12, 2010
GPX to CRS - Setting a Course in your Forerunner
A plan was hatched to meet up with a fellow runner who needs to pound out 18 miles this weekend, like myself. The idea came up to preview the Wisconsin Marathon course in Kenosha, since he'll be running it as his first marathon in a few weeks (5/1 - go cheer! I'll be down in Champaign). It turned out that the marathon route was nicely posted on MapMyRun.com. It's a complicated route neither of us have run before. Since we both have Garmin Forerunner GPS running watches, we figured we'd let them be our guide, and rather than try to re-map it by hand whittled down to 18 miles, I decided to try futzing with the downloads available. They provide the option to download as a Garmin .crs file, but since I wanted to edit the route, I opted for the more universal .gpx file.
One note on Garmin Forerunner Courses, I have NOT used Courses a lot. About a year ago, I built a Course similarly for a 20-or-so-miler once, and the watch got VERY picky about hitting the points, going off-course, and not advancing properly through the points. I BELIEVE this was a flaw in my source Course - I'd made it too sloppily (not following slight bends in mostly straight roads, not putting in enough points around arcs, etc. Keep this in mind when editing/building a source track, and don't use it for life-or-death navigation until you test it out and see how it works FOR YOU.
Continuing on, I opened the .gpx in a handy old program I have called ExpertGPS from TopoGrafix. It's not the prettiest program out there, but if you look at my old flying tracklogs, it's a workhorse when it comes to GPS data. Other than address-based routing, I've always preferred it for to the Garmin-specific software for working with Waypoints and Tracks.
As I said, the marathon route itself is very complex. It turns back on itself several times, so cutting out that redundancy (with the zoom and scissor tools) got me down to about 20 miles. One thing ExpertGPS wonderfully is that it easily reverses tracks and joins two together. So I cut out the repeat areas, deleted as needed, and then re-joined the resultant fragments into one track. To lose the the extra two miles, I busted out the scissors again and just started snipping off bits of the northern out-and-back section until I was near 18 miles - re-joining the main parts again when done.
One final tweak I did was to adjust the start and finish location to be less ceremonial (on a loop out by Lake Michigan) and closer to a parking lot. The 'Draw Track" tool has a nice feature which lets you extend an existing track, so that was trivial.
Once all of the edits were done, I saved the file back to a new .gpx file.
Garmin's Training Center Software (used with Forerunner GPS watches and the like) lets you import Courses which can guide you through a workout, but amazingly, it doesn't import the nearly universal GPX format. So a translator is needed to get the .gpx file into a .crs file Garmin Training Center can use. There are a few options to do this.
One option is the handy website GPSies. The upload form will take a local file, data directly off a Garmin GPS, or the URL to a file anywhere on the public web. There are many options as far as what to convert the data to, but for the Forerunner you want to select, from the Track pull-down, "Garmin Course CRS." If you click "Show Options," you can reduce the number of points in the track (to make a smaller, less-detailed file), give the track a name (this will be handy when you import it to the Training Center and watch), speed (if you like dot-racing the dude on your watch), reversing the track, using a special algorithm for reducing the track further, or Add / replace elevation. I'm not totally up on that option, but it sounds good to me (to get an elevation profile on the watch as opposed to the Course just showing flat), but it's not critical. Once you click convert, the browser will churn a bit and eventually spit out a File dialog and likely ask you if you want to open or save the resultant file. Save it (make sure it gets a .crs extension).
Another other option is to use a stand-alone converter program. There are several out there and Google can guide you, but I found/used (right-click/ Save-As) gpx2crs.exe (a href="http://www.niniu.com/Garmin/release%20notes.txt">Release Notes) I don't know anything about the author, hosting site, or anything. I smelled it and it didn't smell rotten, but use it (as all software randomly downloaded from the internet) at your own peril. The interface is pretty simple. Stay on the first tab "Convert GPX to Course," browse to the source .gpx file, put a target pace and make sure "Simulate an average speed of" is selected (default), add extra points or reverse the track if that's your thing, and click convert. At that point, you'll get prompted for a filename/location. Again, ensure the .crs file extension is added. I noticed that when the conversion is done, the progress bar is still colorized like it might be doing something. It's likely not. The 18 mile track I was working with only took a second or two to process on an old laptop.
Once you have your .crs file, you can open the Garmin Training Center software. Click File, Import, Courses. Browse to your newly created .crs file. and you should see the new course listed when you press the "Courses" button at the top of the Training Center. You might have to expand one or more folders to find it. gpx2crs gives the course a non-unique name, so it's a good idea to right-click the new course, select Edit, and give it a good name - in this case, "Kenosha 18."
The next time you sync to your watch, the new Course(s) should go along for the ride. To use a Course on your run, cycle through the Modes on the watch, select Workouts, then Courses (this is from memory - might not be exact). When you select a Course, you can edit it (just the name), delete, or "Do Course." Once you select that, the watch will guide you to the start point, and you're off.
If you're interested, my edited .gpx file is here: (right-click / Save-as) Kenosha18.gpx
and the resultant .crs file is here: (right-click / Save-as) Kenosha18.crs
BTW, I'm NOT going to get to test this out this weekend, as timing didn't work out, but we might do similar with a 20-miler in a couple weeks. I'll try to remember to post back with results.
Yeah, I should have included some screenshots in this. Oh well.
Edits/comments/suggestions are welcome @ eblo @ ratula dot net.
YMMV.
Etc.
Happy running/navigating!
January 08, 2010
July 30, 2009
Boo!
Yet again, it's been far too long since I've posted here. Oh well. Blame Twitter and/or Facebook if you must. Quick hit-and-run run-down:
A) Em's great. I love that little girl. Words and photos fall miles short of describing her awesomeness.
B) I ran a marathon in April and I'm supposedly training for the Chicago Marathon in October, but I haven't run in almost 2 full weeks due to a creeping illness which has taken away all of my energy. Need to shake it off soon.
C) I never wrote a proper Illinois Marathon wrap-up. I thought I had one well underway, but all I can find now is my 'notes' file. Here it is:
<Quote>
What went wrong:
Inconsistency in first 10 (and throughout). a) Should have had 1-mile paces. b) park route was slow and passing was impossible c) 2nd half was hillier than expected.
Calf cramp - pre-race stretching? Water/nutrition?
Hip fatigue - stride?
Wind/uphills = mental. 9MPH headwinds on the uphill stretch around Mile 18-19.
Tingling in last 2-3 miles.
What went right:
Tim, Chris, Dennis.
Had gas left to sprint the end.
Weather (other than wind).
CROWD/VOLUNTEER SUPPORT!!!
Other points:
The Champaign Country Club mile SUCKED! My slowest mile.
Garmin was good, but it disagrees with reality. It gave me about 0.01 mile extra per course mile. At the end of the race, that added up to over a quarter mile of difference. It's minor, but noteworthy. Also, for whatever reason, my watch time differs from the official chip time but nearly a minute. I'm not sure how to resolve that.
<EndQuote>
My photos from the event.
Tim Borbely's photos from the event.
Oh and here, listen to this PODCAST about the Illinois Marathon: 061_2009IllinoisMarathonPodcast.mp3
D) Motorcycling:
i) Not ONLY motorcycling related, but everyone who drives should visit The Black Nail Brigade web site and in particular, read The Black Nail Brigade Manifesto. This is no joke. This is not a fashion statement. This is about life and death and the preservation and prevention thereof. Go. Read. Now. I'll wait for you.
ii) Been doing a bit of riding. Not much on the dual sport, but some here and there.
iii) Got waylaid by a minor accident in May when an ignorant woman pulled in front of me. You can search out details in my Flickr photo stream. I am well or at least really close to it, the bike is well, damage insurance has been settled, injusry insurance is still outstanding.
iv) Just bought tickets to the Moto GP races in Indianapolis at the end of August. This will be my first race experience ever, believe it or not - car, motorcycle, whatever. Should be a blast.
E) Computers - I've been burned out on technology lately in part because a seriese of hardware failures have just beaten the crap out of me both at home and at work. But I've lately heard about some interesting projects which have rekindled a bit of a spark. I no particular order of usefulness to my life, examples are: Xen, eyeOS, Evernote (used it before, using it more now), a cheap analog to digital video capture device from Woot!, some stuff with MythTV, and a few other things I've forgotten already. OLPC or something like it for Emily? Anyway, yeah, tech = cool.
F) Pets: Harrison died back in November. Not sure if I ever posted that. Also, a few months back we got fish. Now we have a TON of them. And a snail. I love watching them.
G) Flying. Have done NONE in a long, LONG time. Doesn't even look like I'll make it to Oshkosh this year. A bummer, but oh well. *sigh*
Ok, I'm running out of steam on this latest hit-and-run. As I always say, I'll try not to be such a stranger. Yeah, right.
Later.
October 07, 2007
M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 MIDI Repair
I recently had to take apart my new-to-me M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 keyboard controller. The MIDI Out port had flaked out. I bought it as a floor display and I think the MIDI cords got yanked out of the back more than once which resulted in broken solder joints. I've used it for a while as is, but the plug always felt loose and I wasn't surprised when it went totally Tango Uniform on me. So I busted out my screw driver, multimeter, and soldering iron to effect a repair of the MIDI jack.
When it came to dismantling the board, it looked fairly straightforward to me, but I searched online to see if there was any guidance to be had. I didn't find any, so I decided to take some photos along the way and post this little write-up in case any one wanted to follow in my footsteps. WARNING: I am not an electronics expert by any stretch. I'm just a guy who likes to take broken things apart and fix them if he can. I get lucky and occasionally things work the same or better after I put them back together, but follow this guidance at your own risk. If you have any doubts, take your board to some one with experience and/or insurance.
1) To work on the keyboard, I took it off its stand and placed it on the floor. I tipped it to that the back of the board (with the ports and power switch) was facing upwards. On my carpeting, it would rest like this on its own, apparently with no pressure on the keys, but I didn't trust it to stand on its own and kept a hand on it while it was propped up thusly.
2) The back of the board is made up of one continuous plate of metal. To remove it, I removed all of the screws on both the back and bottom of the board that attach the metal plate to the frame. Note that on my board, the screws on back had little clear plastic washers presumably to protect the finish of the board. I kept an eye on those so I wouldn't lose them. Also note, NO OTHER SCREWS NEEDED TO BE REMOVED! Just the ones holding the metal plate down from the outside.
3) Once all of the screws were removed, I took a while to figure out how the plate came off because it was still held in fairly tightly. I was trying to open the back panel up by lifting up from the bottom of it, but this didn't get me any where. The trick was to use a broad putty knife and pry up at the back plate from one end of the board. The plate has 90 degree bends at both the top and bottom that fit tightly into the frame of the board, so it has to be lifted straight out of those tracks.
4) I found that once the panel was loose, tipping it 'bottom forward' while looking at the bottom of the board was the best way to get at the ribbon cable connectors. There wasn't a lot of room on these ribbon cables, so I was careful not to over stress them and kept the back plate as close to the board as I could. I believe all of the connectors are unique, but it's always a good idea to label or at least photograph them before removal.
5) Once I removed all of the connecting wires, I removed the 8 screws holding the the circuit board to the back plate.
6) After using my multimeter to confirm that the jack itself was still good - the solder joints were just broken, I resoldered the jack to the board, tested the connections with a MIDI cable and my multimeter and put everything back together.
Note: The one tricky bit I found when reassembling everything was that the power and USB jacks did not want to fit nicely through their cutouts on the back plate. I cranked down the screws before I realized this and risked screwing up those jacks while repairing the MIDI. I removed the board one more time, made sure everything was seated properly, and THEN screwed the back plate back down.
That's it! As easy as 1-2-6, I fixed my MIDI controller. If not for my recent Brain Machine project and my first experience soldering on a Printed Circuit Board, I don't know if I'd have had the guts to attempt this repair, but it was really not a big deal when all was said and done. The toughest part is that the board weighs nearly 50#. I could have hurt my back getting it off and back on the stand :)
I hope this helps some one out there who needs to crack the case on his/her board. If you have any questions, let me know: oblivion at ratula dot net.
