Wizards 50th Birthday

Quote: Wizard

Self-powered unicycles should never be compared to electric ones. An electric unicycle will never give anybody the satisfaction of using his own muscles to get anywhere.

Unless he just wants to get there with no
hassle, like to work. Both versions have
their points. Definitely cooler than a
Segway, which makes anybody look like
an instant dork.

I remember long before the Segway, in
the early 70's, my supervisor at the
factory rode around on an electric
scooter. It was a platform you stood
on, looked a lot like a Segway. He looked
like a moron riding it, he thought it
was cool, we always laughed at him.
Like guys who drive 3 wheel motorcycles.
Not cool.

I'm not going to say that nobody is right for an electric unicycle. However, if the purpose is a hobby, I would burn some calories and have more fun with a real unicycle you have to pedal.

BTW, the year in the future in Back to the Future part II was 2015. I'd say the electric unicycle is the closest thing we have to the hover board.



In unicycle news, I met a bicyclist on a ride about two weeks ago who said he also rides unicycles but has been inactive due to the stagnant nature of the unicycle community in Vegas. We exchanged number and today we're doing an off-road ride. I'm looking forward to it!

17.3-mile ride on the 36" unicycle today. See the details on Strava.

I'm starting to feel more comfortable on the 36". I think my 29" unicycle is getting jealous.

Quote: Wizard

17.3-mile ride on the 36" unicycle today. See the details on

Do you really hit 15 mph as you cross Buffalo just north of Summerlin Parkway? I assume there is some kind of a glitch as you pass underneath the highway.

That's a lot of distance in 2.5 hours. Kudos!

Quote: Pacomartin

Do you really hit 15 mph as you cross Buffalo just north of Summerlin Parkway? I assume there is some kind of a glitch as you pass underneath the highway.

No. I doubt I ever get above 11 MPH. There indeed a bridge under Buffalo and Durango. There is clearly some error in the reporting. Ultimately the program must use triangulation to determine where I am based on my cell phone pinging and there is bound to be some error in that. That must explain all the spikes in my speed.

Somebody else commented a while back that this error might overstate my distance somewhat, by reporting a wobble effect. That is probably true but I'm not sure to what degree. I'd guess no more than 2%.

Quote:

That's a lot of distance in 2.5 hours. Kudos!

Thanks!

My eexperiments with my phone was about 5% (extra distance) error over using a GPS watch. You can get very strange paths with cell phone towers, making some runs completely useless for tracking (and no online system I've found yet lets you edit your routes to remove 'bad' points). The $99 I spent on my forerunner10 was well worth it to avoid such annoyances...

Quote: TheCesspit

My eexperiments with my phone was about 5% (extra distance) error over using a GPS watch. You can get very strange paths with cell phone towers, making some runs completely useless for tracking (and no online system I've found yet lets you edit your routes to remove 'bad' points). The $99 I spent on my forerunner10 was well worth it to avoid such annoyances...

Interesting, thanks. How does your forerunner transmit your location without the use of cell phone towers?

It should also be noted that the "wobble effect" would be less according to how fast you are actually traveling. I assume you weren't running at 10 MPH.

Quote: Wizard

Interesting, thanks. How does your forerunner transmit your location without the use of cell phone towers?.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/208454870
I think you upload it to your computer after your run.

If you think about cell localization with two cell towers, one data point will only localize you to a hyperbola. If you are not near the midpoint of the cell towers, then the hyperbola would pretty much have decayed to an asymptote. Now repeated fixes give you different hyperbolas, where you can get a localized fix.

Normally, you would filter out accelerations which are humanly impossible, but your data doesn't seem to have been filtered.

Inherently you would get better accuracy with GPS because you would have a perfect fix with each reading.

Ultimately, the watch must store data about where it is. I didn't see on your link how it does that. I can't imagine how without using either cell phone towers or satellites. Either way, it will have to rely on pinging and there will be some degree of error in that.

Quote: Wizard

Ultimately, the watch must store data about where it is.

There is a memory card because the watch will store up to 8 runs. It doesn't have bluetooth, so you must wire it to your computer with USB cable. There is a risk of losing data as sometimes they have problems with the USB port. You can clear it, but you will probably lose the data in the watch.

I presume there is no danger of losing a run with the cell phones, because data is being uploaded constantly.