The first battery was this one that cost under $10 shipped from a US seller on Ebay.  This looks very similar to a Kensington battery that retails for about $30 from a brick and mortar store.

Here are the specs on this first battery:

This essentially doubles the use time of the iPhone.  I was originally concerned that the phone would be unusable while using the battery, but I was pleasantly surprised that I could still text without too much trouble while the battery was plugged into the bottom. Another nice feature about this battery is that it is charged using the same USB cable for charging/syncing the phone. You can even have the battery plugged into the phone and the USB cable plugged into the battery at the same time, allowing both of them to charge simultaneously.  But while this is a great battery to carry around in your pocket, I didn’t think it would be suitable for keeping it plugged into the phone while running MapMyRide (or similar app which causes a heavy drain on the battery) while I was on the bike.

Another reason for wanting an external battery – and this is probably somewhat unique to me – is for multiday bicycle touring where access to electricity may not be available at the end of the day.  So battery number two has a built-in solar panel for charging.  This one was about $20 on Ebay, shipped from China.

Here are the specs on battery number two:

The quality on this one is a little shaky, but passable for the price and considering that I couldn’t find anything else like it.  In order to get all the shrink wrap plastic off the solar panel, I had to unscrew the two tiny screws to remove the metal case!  I don’t think this battery would stand up to daily use, but I think it should be good enough to hold up for my planned occasional use.  Another benefit to this battery is that there’s adapters for other phones, as well as an AC plug to charge the battery when you do have access to electricity.

Finally, the third battery of interest was the “Portable Power Station” for about $20 shipped from a Chinese seller on Ebay.

Here are its specs:

My interest in this battery was twofold. First, I had concerns that the first battery would render the phone unusable while charging, so I wanted to have this that “surrounded” the phone so that the battery wouldn’t fall off.  Also, I wanted a battery more suitable for using with MapMyRide while on the bike.

The seller had made an honest mistake and shipped me the wrong battery. In the meantime, I had figured out that (1) the first battery turned out to be much better than expected, and (2) the third battery wouldn’t be as useful as I thought because the available iPhone bike mounts only accommodate a bare phone.  (I suppose I could have used the third battery in my bike jersey pocket or on a bag on the bike, but if I were going to do that, I would be able to one of the other two batteries in the same manner.)  Furthermore, I’d have to remove the iPhone from its case every time I wanted to use the battery. Therefore, I ended up getting a refund rather than getting this battery and having a chance to try it out.

To sum up, something like the first battery (which has been also called a “Portable Power Station” by some Ebay sellers) would likely be sufficient for most users – although for some people it may be inconvenient if the goal is to charge the phone while its in your pocket.  So far, compared to the $30 version that friends have bought from retail stores, I’ve found no downside to the $10 version I ordered on Ebay.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the same battery on the inside!

Installation was similar to the original install, using an electrical junction box and plexiglass for the enclosure, except this time I used a 4″x4″x4″ box instead of a 6″x6″x4″ box.  I had to take apart the webcam casing in order to get the antenna to fit in the smaller box.  Since the webcam overheated last time, this time I didn’t bother with any insulation to keep it warm.

Original photo with full length antenna.

Here’s what it looks like on the garage:

Here’s the view from the webcam. It’s blurry, but at least I can see whether or not there’s snow on the street and driveway.  (I still have to see how the view looks at night with the garage lights on.)  The walkway to the front steps of the deck is in the lower right corner of the image.  I may rotate the webcam in the enclosure or take it apart to move the lens (the camera movement functions were fried during the overheating) in order to see more of the walkway.

Note the difference between the previous image and better quality image from an undamaged webcam in the backyard.

By the way, a strange thing happened today that I can’t explain. Every half hour during daylight, the backyard webcam connects to my ISP via FTP and overwrites an existing image (which sits in its own folder/directory) with a new one.  So rather than give live access to the camera, my cabin rental site has a link to the latest image.  When I looked at the website this afternoon, the image was all black.  Yet if I connected via FTP and downloaded the image to my hard drive, it looked OK. To fix the problem, I had to delete the directory, create a new one with a different name, tell the webcam to write to the new directory, and update the webpage to look for the image in the new directory. Problem solved. My only guess is that the directory somehow got corrupted?

I just received BikeBrain as a gift last week, and I thought I’d give some first impressions.

BikeBrain is program that is run on a Palm-series handheld organizer that provides basic cyclocomputer functions and ride routing. It comes with a plastic case to mount the Palm organizer on the stem or handlebars, and a Vetta cyclocomputer-like pickup mounts to the front fork and plugs into the port on the bottom of the Palm. (The Palm organizer is not included.) Overall, the mounting system is definitely secure enough for road use, though I don’t think it could survive an endo off-road. In spite of that, I got a used Palm Pilot 5000 to use with BikeBrain instead of using my “good” Palm.

BikeBrain also comes with a desktop software program (PC or Mac compatible, but I’ll say PC from now on) which is used for editing routes and viewing ride data. Data transfer between the Palm and the PC is done via the same “HotSync” technology that is normally done for other Palm applications.

BikeBrain not only does “normal” cyclometer functions such as current/average/maximum speed and distance, it also can show various graphs from the ride data: such as speed vs. time, speed vs. distance, etc.

To record a route, you start riding, and at every change in direction, you press a button which records the turn direction and the mileage at that point. Then you download this data from the Palm to the PC, where you can then type in the street names and other information.

One disadvantage of this recording method for multi-day touring is if you’re recording a route while on tour, you can’t go back and put in the road names at the end of each day without a PC.

This tool would be great if you’re the one responsible to generate route sheets for an organized ride. It would also work good if you’re doing a century ride and you got the cue sheet the night before and typed the directions in on a laptop and then transferred them to the Palm handheld.

I haven’t gone on any really long rides with BikeBrain yet, but based on some battery life tests I’ve been doing with the Palm, I think I can get at least 2 full days of riding with rechargeable NiMH batteries (longer with alkalines). On a long tour, I would use a solar charger to keep a spare set of batteries charged up.

The software can be just a wee bit “buggy” – for example, if you create a new route on the desktop and then save it, it will automatically save it using the name of the route without prompting – if there are any “illegal” file name characters in the title (for example, “/”) it will choke.

Overall, I think there could be a few improvements to the software, but it’s still an excellent training tool.

The website is http://www.bikebrain.com/ (can’t believe the website is still up after all these years!)

When I travel, or go on multi-day bicycle tours, I like to type a log of my travels as I go.  I like to travel light, and if I’m bicycle touring, I’m usually camping, so I don’t have electricity to run a laptop.  So I use my Palm Professional (upgraded to a Palm III with the 2 MB IR card), with a GoType keyboard, and the Palm modem.  On bicycle tours I have a second Palm mounted on the bike running BikeBrain.

I’m really happy with the GoType keyboard.  Just a couple of minor gripes, though. The keys are a little closer together than on a “normal” keyboard – I found this annoying at first, but I got used to it after a while. Also, the up arrow is where the right shift key should be (I heard the new keyboard have fixed this problem). The old version of the driver (1.1) had an option to swap the key mappings, but the new version (1.5) doesn’t.  Also, the viewing angle of the Palm can’t be changed when it’s in the keyboard cradle, but that’s probably a common problem for all keyboards.

I also have the plastic key protector that goes over the keyboard, and the simulated leather pouch for the keyboard. The pouch also had two pockets on the outside – I use one of them for the Palm, and the other for the modem and cable.

I use NiMH rechargeable batteries.  When I don’t have electricity available for a recharger, I use a solar charger that can easily charge 4 AAA batteries in a day (assuming sunlight for only half a day, just to be safe).

Since I don’t have easy access to a computer to HotSync backup my data while traveling, I was a little concerned about losing all my data if the batteries were to run out.  I got FlashPro, which lets me use the ~700K of flash ROM memory that comes with the Palm.  This memory doesn’t get erased when the batteries run out – I use this space for the “critical” programs and to backup data – here’s a list of what I keep in the flash memory (link removed).

I used to have a Palm modem and MultiMail Pro 3.1 for staying in touch via e-mail.  I also had an acoustic coupler which is not shown in the picture.  It’s one of those thingies that straps on to a phone handset, and there’s a cable that plugs into the Palm modem.  This setup worked pretty well if I was staying at someone’s house or at a hotel.  But I couldn’t get a reliable connection during camping type bike tours, where I have to use a payphone or my cell phone (even with the acoustic coupler) to connect.

So now I have a PocketMail add-on device for my Palm Pilot.  It works the same as those other e-mail devices by Sharp.  You dial a 1-800 number to get your mail.  You get another mailbox (yourname@pocketmail.com) in addition to your regular one, but you can “collect” the mail from all of your other e-mail boxes into the PocketMail box.  The only downside is that I still need my internet provider at home, plus the PocketMail service.

The first game is from the last round of the Expert Section of the 1990 Massachusetts Open. It was a must-win game to get first place – a draw or loss would instead have given my opponent the honors.

The second game will follow in another post.

The “events” function in Facebook was easy to use and also supported the ability to invite non-friends by using their email address. The problem was that non-Facebook users would have to join Facebook in order to see the event details.  So I scratched that option and decided to go with Socializr.

As expected, Socializr allows inviting people using a list of email addresses separated by commas, or by importing entries from a Gmail or other address book. But it also lets you connect to your Facebook account and invite Facebook friends. This is useful to me, because for some of my Facebook friends I either don’t have an email address, or I have reason to believe I may have an old email address.  There are a couple of downsides to inviting Facebook friends. The first is that you have to click on each friend one at a time, wait for the draft Facebook message to appear on the screen, press OK to send to the recipient, and then repeating for each friend you want to invite.  The second is that unlike the people invited via email, who show up on the guest list as “awaiting reply”, the Facebook friends don’t show up on your guest list until they RSVP to the event.

So both tools have worked well so far – although I would favor Facebook if inviting mostly Facebook friends, and favor Socializr if you have email addresses for most of the invitees.

(Late update:  Some colleagues who have forwarded the Socializr invite from the Lotus Notes email at work to their personal Yahoo accounts lost the links to the event in the process. <sigh>)

From Pasadena to Wrightwood, I guessed that the route would go east along the foothills, then take Highway 39 to Highway 2. Instead, it will go west from Pasadena and then take Highway 2 all the way to Wrightwood.  Well, you can’t blame me for being wrong there, because I based that on a quote that “from the start in Pasadena, riders will climb up to Crystal Lake” – which sounded like a Highway 39 routing to me.

The next question was the routing through Wrightwood. I had guessed and hoped that the route would climb through town to get to Lone Pine Canyon Road, rather than fly past on Highway 2.  Score a point for me here.

For the final stretch to Big Bear Lake, since there was buzz about a mountain top finish, my bets were on a Highway 18 climb up the back way from the desert.  I had discounted the possibility of heading east on 138/18 through Crestline, Lake Arrowhead, and Running Springs, because although there is a lot of climbing that way, at the time it didn’t conjure images of a mountaintop finish. Now I am kicking myself, because I totally overlooked the climb from the lake to Snow Summit Ski Resort!

The route is always subject to last minute changes, of course, but it should be an enjoyable stage!

In retrospect, I should have unplugged the camera for the summer or at least removed the insulation. Lesson learned, but now I needed a new webcam. I picked up a D-Link DCS-920 wireless webcam online for under $70 shipped (after rebates. First the webcam had to be turned upside down to fit in the enclosure. Luckily the D-Link webcam configuration allows the image to be flipped, avoiding the need to flip the image with software post-capture.

Then the insulation went back in.

And finally the plexiglass cover went back on.

Setup of the D-Link webcam on the wireless network was much easier than the Panasonic – although that’s not saying much if you’ve ever tried to setup a Panasonic!  However, the D-Link built-in webcam software is not as flexible as the Panasonic’s. For example, the Panasonic supports mulitple FTP profiles, while the D-Link only supports one.  Still, that was good enough for me, because all I really need to do is upload a still image to my cabin rental website every half hour. 

Here is an image from the new webcam:

All in all, the D-Link DCS-920 has been a great buy and has worked out perfectly so far!  But I’ll be sure to remember to unplug it or remove the insulation this summer!

Recently I migrated from a mailbox hosted at my domain name’s ISP over to Gmail. The transition was seamless, because my email address is on my “briandesousa.com” domain, giving me the ability to route it to both the ISP mailbox and to Gmail at the same time. After the transition, I continued forwarding my briandesousa.com email address to Gmail, in part so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the hassles of changing addresses. Although it was easy enough to update the “reply to” address, the gmail.com address is still in the headers when using the Gmail SMTP (outgoing mail) server.  The Gmail configuration has the option to use another SMTP server, so I used my ISP’s SMTP server instead of Gmail’s. No more gmail.com in the headers, problem solved.

With the transition complete, I deleted the old mailbox on the ISP. Well, there was one problem with that. My ISP’s SMTP servers require authentication. The authentication is the username and password for the mailbox. So when I deleted the mailbox, I also cut off the SMTP server access. OOPS!

Although this mistake is 100% my fault, there were a few oddities which had caused me not to pick up on this when I made that fatal error way back on January 14.  First, there was no reporting whatsoever from Google/Gmail that the SMTP server specified was invalid or unreachable. Second, any outgoing emails in which I copied myself would show up as a new unread message in my Gmail. Gmail must be set up to bypass the SMTP server if it knows the address is local.

Thankfully I didn’t have this problem with my cabin rental email address going to the same Gmail account, as I hadn’t gotten around to changing the SMTP server for that address. Yet, the fact that I could still carry on email conversations with propsective renters was another reason I didn’t pick up on the outgoing email problem for the other address!

All is fixed now, and I’ve gotten around to resending everything important from January 14 to today, February 2. But please drop me a line if you’ve been expecting a response from me but heard nothing!