Pictures from Catalina

July 23, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Kathy and Laura and I went to Catalina today, and I took a good number of pictures. Quite a few of them are me sitting on the dock playing with lens flares and interesting ways to confuse the sensor with a sunset, but I think they're fun.

The quantity of pictures I took on this trip prompted me to figure out how to bulk upload to flickr. I ended up using jUploader, a cross-platform java app. It has an odd quirk of uploading in reverse order, but I figured out how to drag my pictures in reversed and get them to come out right on the flickr end. They're all there now -- 92 of them, I think.

6pm: 95 degrees

July 21, 2005 by Eric Richardson

It's hot today. I thought if I waited a bit later to ride home, I'd miss some of that. Turns out it isn't so; it's after 6pm and it's still 95 degrees outside. Oh well, I'm done waiting. Time to just man up and ride.

More Accurate Results

July 21, 2005 by Eric Richardson

This morning I stopped my computer entering Union Station and didn't restart it until I was set to take off from outside the Memorial Park Gold Line station. That may have been what propelled my average speed from 12.5mph to 14.2mph. It also may have been what pulled my trip distance from 6.36 miles down to 6.14. With that accounted for my trip distances now track a lot more cleanly with the ones I plotted on the map.

More Speed

July 19, 2005 by Eric Richardson

It is definitely 95 degrees outside, and I'm definitely drenched, but I just made it home on my first return trip with a computer. Mileage is really close to what I gave it as earlier -- GMap Pedometer gave 14.8 miles; the computer says 14.97.

Average speed was 17.7mph, and that was a number that went down as the ride went on and flattened out. Coming into the bike path in South Pasadena it was around 20. Approaching Chinatown it was 19. Then the lights and traffic kicked in, and I ended up with the final number of 17.7. Way back in May, when I first made the whole ride back, Alan commented that I should be able to hit 17-18mph on this ride. Turns out he was dead on.

Max speed was 36.5mph, and it was right where I thought it would be, on this stretch of road.

Trip time was 50:21, but that's moving time. When I stop at a light the clock stops.

Me and My Computer

July 19, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I bought a cycle computer yesterday -- a Cateye Enduro 8 -- and used it for the first time on my ride into work today. I'm trying to make sure I've got it all set up and callibrated correctly. To do that, though, I need a way to show mileage for the routes I take, which is something driving direction oriented tools won't manage (they don't account for cuts through parks, etc). Gmap Pedometer is an amazing tool for that sort of thing. It lets you just plot points on the map and creates a path out of it. It doesn't hold you to roadways, which is both good and bad. Good, in that parks are no problem. Bad, in that you have to manually click your way down the bends of a roadway.

In any case, it's the best thing I have at my disposal. Here you can see my route from my apartment to Union Station. The pedometer shows 1.29 miles, while my computer showed 1.45. Here's my route from Memorial Park to JPL. For this leg the pedometer lists 4.8 miles, while the computer gives me 4.91.

At first I thought this might be calibration error, but in that case the error should be linear, and increase with distance. Obviously these differences aren't doing that. My best guess? I don't ride in a straight line.

Here's the fun route -- JPL to my apartment. Some parts make more sense from the satellite view; the bike path shows up in empty space on the map. Here the pedometer gives me 14.81 miles. We're see how that corresponds to actual distance travelled by the bike in just a bit.

Other quick stats: Max speed on the ride in was 28.5mph, down a hill on Lincoln. Average speed was 12.5mph, though that includes limited sections pushing the bike through Union Station, etc (at 3-4mph). We'll see what I hit on the hill down Salvia Canon coming toward the Rose Bowl. I'm guessing 37mph.