Category: Exercise

Bugs in GaiaGPS

They are too busy/understaffed to communicate with anyone or fix any bugs, but in case anyone at GaiaGPS ever has some free time, these are issues I have noticed.

Some may be on account of the large number of tracks which I have collected.

  1. On both my phone and computer, the map at gaiagps.com or on the app will not show all of my tracks when zoomed out. Far enough out (like looking at the whole city or a big part of it) they do not show at all, and then they pop into vision when I move in enough
  2. Track names often fail to sync from my iOS phone to the web/desktop app. They show up as generic track names and I need to figure out which is which and manually rename them
  3. Both the desktop and especially the iOS version insist on showing waypoints near tracks which are visible, even when the folder for those waypoints is explicitly set to not display
  4. When exporting a folder of tracks with waypoints near them, GaiaGPS includes some of the waypoints along with the tracks in the exported .GPX or .KML file
  5. Tracks and waypoints often fail to move into folders, on both desktop and iOS. I select a track or some waypoints and put it in a folder. It may disappear from where it was previously, but if I wait a minute it will often jump back to where it was before.

None of these break the functionality of the app, which is remarkably capable for a free version. Still, it would be nice to see a good product improved by sorting them out.

Mapping and cartography

When the University of Toronto gyms closed for the pandemic, I realized and decided that I would be getting most of my exercise through walking.

All through writing up my dissertation, I broke down my life into 20 minute chunks of either thesis work, sleeping, exercising (walking), or doing anything else.

I am now up to well over 7,000 km of walking since August 2020. This had begun to produce spin-off projects: the Toronto Urban Hike Collection to identify nice nature trails, maps made in QGIS and posted to Flickr, and animation and wall-sized map projects that I am still developing.

Premier voyage en canoë

Many of the group walks I have taken during the pandemic have been around Toronto’s scenic Tommy Thompson Park wildlife and bird sanctuary.

Since my friend Tristan recently joined the St James Town Sailing Club to learn to sail Albacore boats, he can make use of a canoe from their location near Cherry Beach. Yesterday, Tristan and I did an initial foray around the protected waters in that part of the waterfront:

There are a lot of intriguing options for a longer trip: circling the small islands in the Toronto Islands which cannot be reached on foot; circumnavigating the whole islands set, as well as Tommy Thompson Park; and following the waterfront west as far as Humber Bay and a bit up the river to a boat club there, or east toward the RC Harris water treatment plant or the Scarborough Bluffs.

Years ago when I was still living on Markham Street and had time for semi-regular visits to the island, I considered getting an inflatable canoe since I lacked the means to store and transport a conventional one. Being able to borrow a canoe that is already on the lakefront is hugely better, and could be the basis for many peaceful paddles.

Podcasts and audiobooks

Because the spoken word content on Spotify is so-so most of the time (aside from podcasts like Ologies and the Spycast), I have been trying Audible to provide better quality listening material during walks.

So far I have finished James Donovan’s book “Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel” about the espionage trials and eventual prisoner exchange of a KGB colonel living as an illegal in New York (also depicted in the excellent film Bridge of Spies) and Lyndsay Faye’s “Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson” which I learned about from an interview with the author on the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere podcast and then finished in two days.

Donovan’s book was quite interesting, if read a bit mechanically. Faye’s book is a great pastiche, interestingly written with both deep knowledge of the canon and a willingness to innovate, and very well read in this edition.

Over several weeks I have listened to the first half of “Anna Karenina” read by Maggie Gyllenhaal, which is superb. She brings a great saucy enthusiasm to the text and language, and it’s easy to imagine that one is being read to by her character from the film Secretary.

Finally, in the hope of better understanding American conservatism in order to better strategize about climate change, I have been listening to Geoffrey Kabaservice’s “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.” I’m still working through the 1960s, which is still fairly little-known history to me. The book is a bit challenging both because a lot of the names and events are unfamiliar and because the narrator is a bit monotone in a way that tends to enhance the difficulty of paying attention.

I found that such narration was commonplace in the books and spoken word content on Spotify, so generally I have been very happy about how Audible has shifted my listening toward fully accomplished published works with enduring social importance, rather than just the (sometimes excellent) present-focused podcast and news content.