This is the first in a series of two post I’ve helped write over at MSDN – the next one will give more information on how to use the APIs and build a polling web service to update tiles.

M and I made 160, 4oz jars of Apple Butter for our wedding guests. It was fun spending the past couple of weekends putting this together. Here are a few pics of the process.

If you’re employed by the big M, then you’ve likely heard of Lifestyles 20/20. It’s essentially a chichi froufrou soup-to-nuts (as in crazy) approach to losing pounds, ridding diabetes, increasing lifespan, dropping cholesterol, and general cure-all for what ails yah. The crazy part is more centered around how successful it appears – if you believe their numbers, they’re the rock stars of the permanent weight loss world. 

That’s why I’m all in – I love the approach of medically supervised care, including a doctor, dietitian,  counseling, and personal training. I also love that they approach the nutrition angle similar to an elimination/paleo diet, but with a personalized touch. I probably can’t say much about the specifics (I’m pretty sure I signed an NDA that says I can’t talk about specifics…). I’m really looking forward to finding out why I eat the way I do… in particular, why I never quite drop weight no mater how active I get.

Today was the beginning of the first phase – the one in where I’m going to be grumpy until my body figures out it’s not actually hungry on fewer calories. Hopefully that comes soon, because what I’m really looking forward to is my next meal… tonight’s dinner was sparse, but tasty. And right now, I’m just hungry.

200+ miles and 14 hours of riding later, we rolled into Portland. The ride was great, despite a bit of a mishap that left Andy with 3 stitches, but no worse for the wear. Yet again, the Cascade Bicycle Club did a great job putting on the ride.

This year’s pace was a bit slower than last year, but not by much. We did pretty much the same ride as last year – 135 miles to Castle Rock, and then the remainder on the next day.

I’ve posted some of the better pictures up here, and the GPS stats are below:

Day 1 – 134+ miles, about 9 hours in the saddle (15.0 MPH Average) – 4 hours of stopped time.
Day 1 GPS Tracks Here

Day 2 – 66+ miles, 4 hours 42 min in the saddle (16.4 MPH Average) – 34 min of stopped time.
Day 2 GPS Tracks Here

Every now and then, the fabulous Garmin 705 will get screwed up while “Saving History” when plugging into the computer. What’s good is that the data isn’t lost. What’s bad is that it can take some hacking at the internal structure of the file to fix it up.

I’ve put together a quick script that you can run on the files to fix them up. It’s not perfect (it won’t fix the lap data, for example). But it saves the time to stitch the files together by hand. The script is attached, and the instructions to use it are below.  Be warned – it’s a little geeky.

Requirements:

1. A Windows 7 machine (or a machine that has PowerShell V2 installed on it).
2. This script file: lapfilefixer.ps1 (Size- 3.2 KB)
   To make things easy, download it to your desktop.

PowerShell Setup:

1. From the Start Menu, search for “PowerShell”. Right click on PowerShell and select ‘Run as Administrator’
2. Type in the following command and follow the prompt
   Set-ExecutionPolicy remotesigned
   
3. Close the Window, you’re done here.

Copy the files from your Garmin:

1. Locate the .dat files on your Garmin. They will be in the (X:\Garmin\History\Laps) directory. Each of the numbered folders represents a ride, start-to-stop.
2. Copy the Laps folder onto your computer (for example, onto your Desktop)

Run the Script:

1. Start PowerShell (From the Start Menu, search for PowerShell, and run it)
2. Navigate to the folder that contains your Lap*.dat files for the ride you want to fix (for example, C:\Users\Kevin\Desktop\Laps\14)
   cd c:\Users\Kevin\Desktop\Laps\14
3. From this directory, run the script
   c:\Users\Kevin\Desktop\lapfilefixer.ps1
4. The output will be in the ‘output.tcx’ file in the same directory.
5. Import the ‘output.tcx’ file file into SportsTracks or Garmin Training Center, or whatever software you prefer.

End Notes:

I hope this helps you out! It certainly has saved me a bunch of time. Note, I’m not responsible for any data loss or problems that the script causes. I’ll try to help you out if you have questions, but I’m no expert on the file format. I just hacked this together for myself. If you want some really good information, I’ve found the following blog and thread helpful:

• http://www.photoscene.com/kimandsteve/476/fixing-corrupted-garmin-tcx-files
• https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?t=8360
• A good XML editor: First Object XML Editor

Windows 7 has a DLNA server built into it. My LG TV has DNLA built into it. It took all of about 5 min to run through the instructions to get Windows 7 sharing media on my network. But one of the things that I’ve noticed is that new movies put onto the server don’t always show up on my TV’s list of files. I finally figured out today that it’s Windows Media Player that’s doing the indexing of the movie list – you have media player running for the new files to show up!

So, if you ever fire up your DNLA end point and can’t see a file, fire up Media Player on your sharing device and that should solve the problem.

I wrote up an instructable here describing how I built it:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Flat-Panel-TV-Shelf-Mount-for-XBox-Kinect-Camera/?ALLSTEPS

I just got a new TV (after going without one for 2 years) and decided to go whole-hog and go for the 3D.

The TV is pretty awesome, but the manual is pretty entertaining in it’s own right… particularly the part where they blame you and your eyesight if it doesn’t work.

Or that you shouldn’t use wear your 3D glasses near the kitchen counter (but since they don’t mention the bathroom, I assume that’s okay).

I really don’t know why pregnant women or people with other disabilities cannot use their 3D glasses.

Be careful, because our 3D is so awesome you may flail about in pure excitement and hurt yourself and others.

That led to a conversation with Matt today about how to level set those statements against other less common phrases that I also use:

• “love”
• “like”
• “not bad”
• “I’d buy that”
• “I don’t hate it”
• “I don’t love it”
• “are you sure?”
• “hate”
• “loath”

This was all brought on by an idea to which I responded “not bad”… I think it surprised him that I didn’t hate it. :)

This fall I am raising money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society by participating in the BikeMS 150 – a one-hundred and fifty mile bike ride which raises money to support MS research, programs and services dedicated to improving the quality of life for individuals affected by MS.

I’m asking you for a small donation to help support the cause. If you’d like to know more about where your money will go, you can find out more here. Any amount you can give will help.

My donation link is here: give to support Kevin and Team Microsoft.

Many thanks, in advance!

Kevin