Sumit sez, "This is the wacky story of how I biked across the country on my exercise bike and lost a lot of extra pounds in the process - complete with charts and graphs of calories burned vs. weight loss and bullet points and all sorts of other happy mutant happiness."

Sumit is also "the Seattleite who brought you 'Rope Bondage for Laptops' and 'Putting a Wood Floor on Carpet.'"

My VRATUS - How I Rode My Exercise Bike Across the Country (and Lost 20 lbs Along the Way) (Thanks, Sumit!) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/11/02/stationary-bike-weight-loss-su.html/feed 37 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/treadmill-desk-advice-sought.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/treadmill-desk-advice-sought.html#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 02:14:24 +0000 Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/?p=175485 Some Remarks, I've decided to try it for myself. But I don't want to ditch my beloved desk (a wooden kitchen table) -- instead, I was thinking I'd raise it on blocks to standing height, get a treadmill, and wedge the handlebars under the desk so that I could walk while using it. Does anyone have any recommendations for a treadmill model? It looks like it's really hard to use a manual treadmill without holding onto the handle-bars, so I'm guessing that means I'll need a motorized one. But motorized treadmills all seem to have their controls in the front, which I envision wedging under the desk, rendering them inaccessible. Have you tried this? Got any ideas? I think I probably want something like this, but available in the UK, and cheaper if possible. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/treadmill-desk-advice-sought.html/feed 37 http://boingboing.net/2012/07/19/the-zen-of-the-underwater-trea.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/19/the-zen-of-the-underwater-trea.html#comments Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:24:15 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=171942

Something I enjoy: Specialized equipment that looks completely and utterly ridiculous when you watch people using it out of context.

Case in point, this advertisement for the HydroWorx X80 Underwater Treadmill. You have never seen Olympic-caliber runners look sillier. (Sadly, it's not entirely underwater. When I first saw the name of the clip, I was really hoping for guys in scuba gear.)

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.

Every once in a while on Gweek, we take a break from talking about movies, science fiction, video games, and gadgets. This is one of those times. I spoke with Bruce W. Perry, the author of a brand new O’Reilly/Make book called Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health.

If you’re interested in how things work, Bruce’s book will help you experiment with one machine we usually ignore -- our body and its health. Bruce takes a science-based approach to fitness, and shows you healthy ways to tinker with your lifestyle, by using apps and gadgets to self-track your fitness, by creating the ratio of macro- and micro-nutrients work that best for you, and by applying biohacks, such as high-intensity exercise and good stress to your system.

However, buying an underwater MP3 player has been more complex than I'd thought. I started with a Speedo Aquabeat, which is about the worst-designed piece of consumer electronics I've ever owned. Not only does it crash every single time I use it, it also requires some kind of proprietary Windows crapware to create custom playlists if you want to do something really complicated, like listening to all the numbered tracks of an audiobook in order. After the Aquabeat crashed with seemingly terminal finality, I tried something else.

Something else being the Nu Dolphin, a semi-generic Taiwanese device that at least supported complicated use cases like "Play these tracks in order." However, the Dolphin's headphone seal turns out to be pretty fiddly and the second time I used it, it filled up with pool water and died forever. And yes, I did, in fact, carefully screw the headphones all the way in. Go figure.

The third time turned out to be the lucky try: Finis's SwiMP3 is an ugly, clunky, weird answer to the question, "How can I listen to audio in the pool?" but at least it works.

Finis's design is markedly different from Speedo's or the Dolphin: rather than building a waterproof device with a gasketed 1/8" headphone jack for charging and listening, the Finis embeds its controls directly on one of the earpieces, these being sealed, teardrop-shaped pieces of plastic that are intended to be held against your cheekbones by the straps of your swim-goggles. Yes, the SwiMP3 conveys your MP3s to your head by means of bone conduction, which is so science-fictiony it practically sells the product right there.

A wire runs between the earpieces, and midway along that wire is a standard USB plug with a dustcover. It's nominally waterproof, this cover, but doesn't have much by way of a positive clicking lock when you shut it, which leads me to suspect that you can get it wet without killing the device (though the instructions warn you to ensure that it's dry before you plug it into your computer). I haven't tried it, though.

The SwiMP3 shows up on your desktop as a USB mass-storage device (that is, like any USB thumb-drive). You make playlists by sticking MP3s in folders; each folder is a playlist and the files play in alphabetical order (there's also a shuffle mode). Music organizers generally recognize the SwiMP3 automagically -- I've been using Banshee with it, which is handy, since that's also what I use for all my desktop music.

The controls are small, and have a bunch of different functions depending on how you use them -- for example, the next-track button is also the volume-up button (but only if you press and hold it down). This could be better thought through, but I don't do a lot of track management once I hit the water.

How's the sound quality? Well, bone-conduction is pretty top secret, super-spy, but it's no audiophile's delight. Out of the water, it works less well than the in-the-ear headphones used by the Speedo and Dolphin (though unlike these products, the sound actually emerges reliably). Underwater, the sound is actually much improved. I like it, overall -- having my ears free saves me from collisions with other denizens of the pool's slow-lane, who are a blundering, crash-prone lot. And pristine audio quality isn't that important with spoken word, which is what I bring to the pool.

All told, the SwiMP3 is the least-worst product in a pretty amateurish race, but it does have the distinction of being the only product I tried that actually worked.

SwiMP3 ]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/03/01/bone-conducting-unde.html/feed 43 http://boingboing.net/2009/11/30/juggling-is-good-for.html http://boingboing.net/2009/11/30/juggling-is-good-for.html#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:35:47 +0000 Cory Doctorow #2 Got The Hunchies?
The average person spends 312 hours per day at a computer. Your back and neck get outta whack, your wrists start hurting and your legs fall asleep. You can combat this crappy feeling by doing light exercise - juggling is perfect. To hone the art of juggling, you need to think about standing up straight, relaxing, and using your hands correctly.

#3 I can't de-stress you with my eyes
It's nice to learn something new, do something active and get away from what seems important in your life. You can lose your tension through tons of hobbies, but juggling is a great combination of physical activity, brain stimulation, joy of success, and visual stimulation. Here's another scientific study... 8 Reasons Normal People Should Juggle

(Photo: WJD2008 - 7 JUGGLING BEANBAGS, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from madaboutasia's photostream) (via Kottke)