GPS Accuracy After a recent walk, I decided to analyse the data from the Garmin FIT files - one from my eTrex 25 and the other from my Apple Watch 4 and iPhone XR. I was purely interested in seeing how well the Garmin eTrex 25 was able to act as a tracker - mainly as when I was using it for my geocaching walk, it seemed to be tracking me, but looked on the screen to be sticking purely to the paths in the grounds of Wollaton Hall, which was a bit surprising.

Apple Watch Step Counter One of things I’ve found missing from the Apple Watch is the ability to display your steps for the day. The Apple Watch does have the ring system - something that I’ve found to be generally better than the Garmin system as Garmin only tracks intensity minutes and steps but occasionally it’s nice to check my step count for the day. After all, the watch tracks the steps you take during the day, it seems odd that it doesn’t display it.

So 2018 was pretty much the year I started geocaching and it’s been a good year - however, we’ll see if 2019 can beat 2018! Avro Round Walk The first day of my Christmas holiday saw me undertake the Avro Round geocache route around the old Avro factory and airfield in Poynton. It was a bit of a muddy walk in fairness as the image below shows! It was a nice route, especially as it was aviation themed (and builders of the two most recognisable British bombers, the Vulcan and Lancaster).

At the end of November, I had to go to Geneva for work - a one day workshop at CERN on fire risk. Considering it was the area I completed my PhD in and work were paying, what was not to like? Anyhow, after some serious thought, I decided that I’d take my Brompton with me to Switzerland and that I’d enjoy some cycling around Geneva collecting some geocaches. I say serious thought, as it would mean that I would have to pay the Easyjet baggage fee to get there and back again!

I carry around a USB drive with me - usually a Sandisk Ultra USB, but occasionally a SSD drive1. It usually comes in handy, as I either want to carry around my documents and images or need to transfer files between devices. However, the most common use, is for work files so that I can edit/continue working whilst I’m away from the office and I cannot connect to the VPN or to overcome the poor VPN speeds.

One of the few programs I really miss from macOS is nValt. I used that (rather than Notational Velocity) for a number of years for storing notes and stored everything in it from blog posts, to research notes and paper reviews. It worked well and I preferred it to Evernote. Since then however, I’ve discovered Zim Wiki and I use that for storing my data that where I may need images, as at the end of the day, it saves data as a text file still, so I’ll be able to access it at a later date wherever.

Zim is a notebook type software - think Evernote or Onenote. However, it’s free and open source and saves data locally. It also saves all files as plain text, so you can access the files however and wherever you want. I’ve been using it for a journal for a period of about three years now and I’ve written about it before. I did for a time switch back to Day One and tried the new syncing service, but when they had syncing issues earlier this year which exposed private data, I made sure I was back using Zim (syncing between my devices with Resilo Sync and stored on my own devices).

With some spare time at the weekend, I thought that I would get some practise in for my LEL award and I wanted to team this up with a geocaching trail that I’d seen. This way, I could go out and enjoy a day hike, whilst getting in some geocaching. Route I’d done some hikes in the Peak District for cadets recently and had seen a number of caches with the acronym TAL - on a bit of digging, this appears to be short for The Alien Landings.

My cycling has seemed to have dropped off somewhat since moving to Manchester. A downside to moving away from the London Brompton Club perhaps as I’ve not found a club up here that I’ve fancied doing much riding with as it’s not quite as welcoming and social as the LBC has been. I think that also weekend training exercises with cadets isn’t helpful to getting rides in at the weekend either!

Intro I’ve recently started using smart plugs throughout the home - initially stemming from the fact that I bought a TP-Link HS110 because I wanted to measure the charging rate and total capacity of my new plug-in hybrid. However, after using it for a while, I found I was using it more and more elsewhere within the house (or knew of locations I could use it) so I bought myself a few of the cheaper models (HS100 - the same plug but with no power monitoring).