Ping.fm in Perl

Personal, Tech

Using the fabulous ping.fm? Want to use your own Custom URL? Want to use Perl? Use this!

The attached script takes only status updates from ping.fm and writes it out to a file. In my case, this file is then "included" by apache dynamically on the front page of my site.

Bit rough and ready, but hey, it only took 60 seconds :)

   1: #!/usr/bin/perl
   2:  
   3: use strict;
   4: use warnings;
   5:  
   6: use CGI qw/:standard/;
   7: use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';
   8:  
   9: my $file = '/path/to/my/file.include';
  10:  
  11: open my $FH, '>', $file or die "Unable to open $file\n";
  12:  
  13: if ( param() ) {
  14:  
  15:        print header;
  16:        my $method = param('method');
  17:        my $title = param('title');
  18:        my $message = param('message');
  19:        
  20:        print $FH "$message";
  21:        
  22: }
  23:  
  24: else {
  25:  
  26:     print header;
  27:     #Do nothing
  28:     
  29: }
  30:  
  31: close $FH;

Nike+ Sportband Problems

Personal, Running, Sport, Tech

It’ll teach me to be an early adopter but I’ve had nothing but troubles with my Nike+ Sportband since I bought one a few months back.

My first one suffered a "bleeding" crystal display:

bleeding_nike_sportaband

I sent this back to Sweatshop and they sent me a new one. A week ago, lo and behold, the bleeding display was back. I dropped them a quick mail and they replied saying that there was a known issue with the very first batch of devices and would I like another one or my money back.

So, I’ve gone for third time lucky! I can’t say enough how good Sweatshop have been in sorting all this out.

The Nike+ utility also seemed to have difficulty in realising that not everyone used Pacific Time on their computers, which meant the time on the device was always -8 hours out. v1.1 seems to have fixed this though.

I’ve heard some other complaints about the calibration not working, but I’ve not had much trouble with that.

Anyway, I shall hold onto my wallet next time :)

Nike Sportband and Garmin 405: first impressions

Personal, Running, Sport, Tech

I went to the London Marathon expo last night to check out the Garmin 405 primarily. I have to say that I wasn’t impressed. Even though the actual diameter of the bezel is quite small, the initial part of the strap (closest to where it joins the bezel) is rigid – I’m guessing to hold some electronics or the GPS antenna. So, on someone with small wrists like me, it looks pretty stupid as it sticks out the side of your arm!

Also, the touch sensitive bezel seems overly sensitive and a bit clunky to use and reacts to you brushing it (I’d probably knock it against my leg a few times a run!).

All in all, I wasn’t impressed so I didn’t splurge.

All was not lost though, as Nike were there in force and I had a nice demo from a lady on the stand for the new SportBand which interfaces directly to the Nike+ foot sensor, so no iPod needed. And at £40, I couldn’t resist so I’ve bought one. They do look very sexy indeed and definitely suit the more petite of us.

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