Exporting Routes From Runkeeper

Posted on August 31, 2012 by cyclingengineer

I was planning out a route for a 140km cycle and wanted to get some information like maximum incline etc of the RouteYou website. Unfortunately RouteYou’s plotting functionality is a little frustrating in manual mode so I thought I would plot it out in RunKeeper. However, I hit on the problem of exporting the route from RunKeeper.

This proves a little tricky, but I found a way:

  1. Plot your route using the Runkeeper route planning
  2. Create an activity that uses that route – annoyingly you can’t just select export as GPX as you would normally for an actual exercise route
  3. Goto My Settings and click on Export Data
  4. Select the date your fake activity is on and export the data
  5. Inside the zip file that gets generated you will get GPX plots for your required activity
  6. Remove the fake activity you created

I don’t really know why RunKeeper don’t support the import and export of routes to GPX – seems like a sensible feature to add – but then they haven’t added lots of features I have requested before.

Posted in Howto | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Runalyzer Heart Rate Monitor Review

Posted on August 27, 2012 by cyclingengineer
Runalyzer Heart Rate Key in iPhone

Runalyzer Heart Rate Key

The Runalyzer HR key is billed as a small widget that plugs into the bottom of your iPhone and allows your iPhone to receive HR information from the ‘analogue’ heart rate monitor belts such as the Polar T31 Coded – which I own.

I bought this as I thought it would give me a bit more information about my HR and allow me to do easily do zone training with the apps on my iPhone. I bought this back in October 2011 and it has, to be completely honest, been nothing but trouble.

Continue reading →

Posted in Gadgets, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Pool Mate Watch Review

Posted on August 21, 2012 by cyclingengineer
Pool mate Watch from Swimovate

Pool Mate Watch from Swimovate

When I started swimming on a more regular basis I quickly came to realise I missed the tracking that I was afforded by Runkeeper when running and cycling. I struggled to count laps and remember timing while trying to concentrate on what I was doing in terms of technique and breathing.

As with the Polar FT1 watch I bought this one about a year ago – so have put a few laps on it.

This watch does just what I need it to – it tells me how many laps of the pool I have completed and how long it took me to do them. It also gives feedback on your stroke rate and efficiency – though I haven’t really made best use of these metrics as of yet. Continue reading →

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Review: Polar FT1 HR Monitor

Posted on August 16, 2012 by cyclingengineer
Polar FT1 HR Monitor

Polar FT1 HR Monitor

I bought this probably over a year ago now when I started running so I have had some good use out of it.

The FT1 is Polar’s most basic HR monitor (and therefore its cheapest!). It comes with a HR monitor strap (T31 Coded strap) of the half plastic half soft elastic variety. Despite having a large chest size (~48″) the supplied strap fits fine, though I have to have it adjusted to as big as it will go.

The watch itself sports a single button that you do everything with. Little icons such as + and – and OK? prompts are displayed to show what function it is performing when adjusting settings. Continue reading →

Posted in Gadgets, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Getting JetPack working

Posted on August 14, 2012 by sillyscientist

I had two issues with JetPack – but I finally got it working.

Issue one –

 Jetpack could not contact WordPress.com: register_http_request_failed.
This usually means something is incorrectly configured on your web host.
Operation timed out after 15000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

This was resolved by setting the max_execution_time to 300 in my php.ini file – make sure you restart your webserver / fast cgi daemon.

Issue two –

Your website needs to be publicly accessible to use Jetpack: site_inaccessible
Error Details: The Jetpack server was unable to communicate with your site [IXR -32300: transport error: http_request_failed Operation timed out after 15000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received]

This was easily solved by changing the following value from 1 to 2 in my /etc/init.d/php-cgi script

PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN

(Credit to http://technology.bauzas.com/uncategorized/the-jetpack-server-was-unable-to-communicate-with-your-site/)

Posted in Howto, Server Admin | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Lenovo USB Modem in Linux (Ubuntu 10.04)

Posted on June 23, 2012 by sillyscientist

I recently bought a Lenovo USB modem for some experiments in telephony that I am working on. I want it to work on Linux. It is based on the Conexant RD02-D400 device. When plugging it in I get the following in dmesg:

cdc_acm 2-2:1.0: Zero length descriptor references
cdc_acm: probe of 2-2:1.0 failed with error -22

This seems to be a common problem – it looks like the cdc_acm driver is not correctly recognising and processing the descriptors.

The fix is pretty easy –

  1. Get root, install kernel source

    2. $ sudo -i
    # apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` linux-source-2.6.32
    # cd /usr/src
    # tar xjf linux-source-2.6.32.tar.bz2
    # ln -s linux-source-2.6.32 linux
    # cd /usr/src/linux

  2. Now edit the cdc_acm.c file

    3. # nano /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.c

  3. Add the following lines in the long list of entries that are similar to it:

    4. { USB_DEVICE(0x17ef, 0x7000), /* Lenovo USB modem */
    .driver_info = NO_UNION_NORMAL, /* has no union descriptor */
    },

  4. Prepare configuration (will pull config file from /boot) and build the entire kernel

    5. # make oldconfig
    # make

  5. To re-build the driver (can now use this to rebuild if you get the VID/PID etc wrong)

    6. # make M=drivers/usb/class

  6. Remove current driver

    7. # rmmod cdc-acm

  7. Test the driver

    8. # insmod drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.ko

  8. You should get something like

    9. cdc_acm 2-2:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device

  9. Install the driver permanently

    10. # cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`
    # mv kernel/drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.ko ~/cdc-acm.ko.bak
    # cp /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.ko kernel/drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.ko
    # depmod -a

Note: I ended up using Ubuntu 10.04 because I was having a bit of a battle with 12.04. I suspect it was just some mistakes I made… the principles of the above should carry. Will update if I try it again on anything newer.

Posted in Howto, Projects, Telephony | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Pairing Apple 1st Gen Keyboard (A1016) with Windows 7

Posted on June 5, 2012 by sillyscientist

I was having some errors pairing the Apple 1st Gen bluetooth keyboard to my media centre. I discovered that you need todo the following:

  1. Turn on the keyboard
  2. Open up Bluetooth ‘Add Devices’ and wait for windows to discover the keyboard
  3. Select the keyboard and proceed to the next step in the wizard
  4. While it is saying ‘Connecting to device…’ you need to type a code into the apple keyboard. Just type 1234 then return
  5. Windows will now ask you for the code – you’ll need a working keyboard to enter this
  6. The keyboard should now be connected

Some users have reported that you will need to unpair the device with any previous computers – so you may need to do this as well.

Posted in Howto | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Stupid things you should not do #1

Posted on January 10, 2012 by sillyscientist

> python generator.py –help
Opening –help
Outputting start code…
Outputting template…
Writing out finish…
Done

Do’h!!

> ls
–help generator.py

> rm –help
rm: illegal option — –
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file …
unlink file

> rm “–help”
rm: illegal option — –
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file …
unlink file

Gah! and hooray for GUIs

Posted in Stupid things you should not do | Tagged | 2 Comments

Can you crack it? Stage 3 solution

Posted on December 3, 2011 by sillyscientist

Once getting through stage 2 you will have an EXE file. It requires windows (I ran it in a VirtualBox VM seeing as I had no idea what it would do – can’t be too careful!), cygwin and the crypt library when installing cygwin.

Running the EXE you will see that you require some kind of license.txt – if you create an empty one then you get an error about it being invalid. The next stage is working out what is required to make the license.txt file valid. Being new to this realm of reverse engineering, but being comfortable with work with ASM I tried a number of tools – strace, objdump and strings. Each yielded useful bits of information – especially strings.

However the real breakthrough came when I ran the exe file through a tool called IDA Pro – the freeware version is sufficient for this exercise.

Running the binary through IDA Pro produces a very comprehensive flow of the program. If you navigate this flow you will being to see calls to printf which relate to the message we get on the screen.

Continue reading →

Posted in Howto, Reverse Engineering | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Can you crack it? Stage 2 Solution

Posted on December 2, 2011 by sillyscientist

There has been a lot of news about the “Can you crack it?” challenge that is currently to publicise GCHQ recruiting. Here is my solution for stage 2 – the implementation of the Virtual Machine, or emulator. It’s actually pretty straight forward when you get a hold of a few of the nuances. I’ll put a list of hints here, and then present the full solution after the fold.

  1. As of stage 1 – everything is centred around the x86 architecture, this means that your instructions need to mirror the behaviour of their x86 equivalents
  2. Firmware seems to be irrelevant – don’t worry about it.
  3. There is no real trickery here – it’s just a straight forward instruction set simulator implementation
  4. The programme will finish on a HALT instruction

This is actually quite a neat little program that works by decrypting itself further programme code which it then runs and decrypts the message to get to the next stage… enjoy…

Continue reading →

Posted in Howto, Misc. | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments