Mtn Bike Vid: Duthie Hill

Another mountain biking video. Little shorter this time with some footage from October 23, 2015.

These are some of the trails at Duthie Hill Bike Park.

Enjoy.

Stinky Spoke 2016 Signup

The Stinky Spoke, an 18 mile mountain bike ride on the statistically worst weather day of the year, is coming up. The next event is January 23, 2016, in Woodinville, WA.

I've signed up again and have two others who plan to join. Are you up for an 18 mile mountain bike ride with a hill called Heart Attack Hill (300 ft of elevation over a short distance) at the start of the race?

Anyone completing the hill climb without dismounting their bike gets a medal!

Here are videos from previous years:

Mtn Bike Vid: Soaring Eagle

Saturday morning, my buddy Dan and I went for a ride at Soaring Eagle. This is a fun trail system in Sammamish and is a great place to go for some technical riding with a couple short and sweet descents.

Here's a breakdown of the ride as recorded with the Microsoft Band's Ride Tile (App).

GPS Route at Soaring Eagle

Overview of the Ride

Speed Graph

Heart Rate Graph

Elevation Graph

Mile Split Speeds

Here's some footage from the ride. Wait for the end where we hit 18 MPH down the fast #1 trail.

MTB Vid: Tiger Mountain, Fully Rigid to Joyride

Another mountain biking video. This time, the Fully Rigid trail onto Joyride. Both trails on East Tiger Mountain.

This video is also from my first ride on my new Santa Cruz and the first time I rode this trail.

Enjoy.

GoPro Footage: Tiger Mountain Summit Trail

As you probably know, I invested in myself and upgraded my mountain bike to a new Santa Cruz
Tallboy. I purchased the "entry" level Aluminum model.

This past weekend I had my first true mountain bike ride on my new bike and it was awesome. I was also riding a new trail (for me) for the first time, the East Tiger Mountain Summit Trail.

The first 3.5 miles took about an hour as we climbed about 1500 ft to the summit from the parking lot along highway 18. You can see a nice break down of the splits, elevation gain, GPS map, and other details over at MSBandGuru.com with my post Mountain Biking With The Microsoft Band.

I took a lot of video but here's the deal with GoPro, it can be very shaky and removing that does not always work well.

Here is some footage I took (speed up to 2x speed for most of it) that was taken on a handlebar mounted GoPro. It is very shaky.

For my next ride I will be experimenting with a chest mount and a helmet mount to see which one produces smoother video.

The music is a bit of Cigar Box Guitar that I did and looped.

Launching msbandguru.com

I quietly launched msbandguru.com a few weeks back, a Microsoft Band site for News, Tips, and Developer Info.

At msbandguru.com I will be posting:

• Microsoft Band enabled apps for Android, iOS, and Windows.
• Microsoft Band Web Tiles
• Microsoft Band News
• Microsoft Band Developer Guidelines
• Training with the Microsoft Band

If you have a Microsoft Band app, articles, website, developer article, or anything Microsoft Band related, get in touch with me.

You can also reach out to me on twitter at: @msbandguru

For development articles and blog posts about training with the Microsoft Band I will look at either cross posting here so readers less interested in Band news and apps can just pickup my posts about dev and fitness that they are used to finding here.

Check msbandguru.com out if you want to find out more about the Microsoft Band.

So You Want to Launch an App, Welcome to Being a Technical Writer

Launching any app means you have to do a lot of jobs that aren't programming jobs. They aren't but if you want to be an Indie and launch your own app you need to wear many hats.

Last night I did another pass through my user documentation. Included in this was a rewrite of the NewThistle LLC Privacy Policy to include information about Paddle Mate. I also tweaked it to add further clarification for the NewThistle Privacy Policy in general.

Next, I did another pass through the Paddle Mate app landing page which performs the duties of marketing material and user manual. This included lots of screenshots, information about how to use features of the app, and how Paddle Mate works with the Microsoft Band. I am happy to have those items checked off my sign-off list for app launch.

A part of running an App Business is taking care of these Technical Writing jobs, amongst the many other jobs you have to do.

I had most of this material already drafted and moved onto this task last night after I had made progress on my final few bugs. I am at a state now that another sign-off test is planned for tomorrow so I can verify that the few fixes I made tonight did not cause a regression (a regression is the introduction of a new bug or reintroduction of an old bug) which will gate the build (stop me from shipping).

I have said final few bugs more than once, I know that. The reason being that retesting sometimes brings to light new bugs. On a limited budget (my free time) I have to do the best I can with the time I have and sometimes that means days without much progress or reverse progress when I find a serious enough bug.

I am happy that this past weekend I made good progress with Paddle Mate in many areas. Not the least of those is getting these Technical Docs written for my users.