Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Sport

  • Fitbit: One Hand Giveth, Another Taketh Away…

    My first fitness band was a Microsoft Band 2. The functions were well thought out, and it tracked my workouts at the gym very well indeed. Unfortunately, whilst the design was good, the build quality was appalling – so much so that I got through three examples before Microsoft pulled the plug on the product entirely.

    So I looked around for an alternative and selected the Fitbit Ionic. While it didn’t track my workouts as closely as the Band 2, it was acceptable, and other functions (watch, timer, notifications) matched what I had with the Band.

    The Ionic also had the capability to store music and play this back through Bluetooth headphones. This I found very useful – I now listen to Podcasts during my sessions at the gym. Getting the Podcasts onto the Ionic is a very slow and clunky process involving a badly-designed Fitbit Windows app and WiFi, but, OK, it more or less works.

    My Ionic is now getting on for three years old, and despite a small crack in the screen in a corner, it is still working satisfactorily. However, sooner or later the inevitable will happen, and I will need to look for a replacement.

    I see that Fitbit have just introduced two new models positioned as potential replacements of the Ionic – the Versa 3 and the Sense. Up until now, the Versa product line has closely matched the features of the Ionic, including music storage, while the Sense is a brand new introduction focusing more on health than fitness functions.

    Both the Versa 3 and the Sense list “Music Experience” in their features, but the wording rang alarm bells in my head:

    Store and play music and podcasts with Deezer, plus control Spotify from your wrist—then, use them to stay motivated with curated playlists specifically made for your favourite workouts.

    Although Deezer is available as an app on my Ionic, I don’t, and won’t, subscribe to either the Deezer or Spotify streaming services. With local music storage on my Ionic, I don’t need them.

    I checked the product manuals for the Versa 3 and the Sense, and yes, there was no reference to either of these products having the capability of storing local music. If you want to listen to music, you must be a subscriber to either Deezer or Spotify. That’s a deal-breaker for me. Unless this feature is restored to the Versa 3 or added to the Sense, neither are of interest to me. Judging from the Fitbit community forums, I’m not the only one.

  • Horse Driving Trials

    The local horse and carriage club held its annual horse driving trials (samengestelde menwenstrijd in Dutch) last weekend. On the Sunday, the Marathon was held, and I went along to take photographs at one of the sets of obstacles near our house. The full set of my photos is up on Flickr, but here’s a taster:

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  • Litmus Test

    Reading the reactions to Danny Boyle’s Olympic Opening Ceremony is something of a litmus test, gauging where the commentator resides on the spectrum from left to right, or from heartfelt to disingenuous.

    I have to say that I loved it, although it was so full of cultural references that I will need a second or third viewing to appreciate them all. As Marina Hyde wrote,

    …as deliciously indigestible to global tastes as Marmite or jellied eels. I loved it.

    Just to make it clear, I am on the opposite end of the spectrum to the tweets from Aidan Burley, and from the blindness of those who did not see the Windrush reference (Ranga Mberi, I’m looking at you).

    Overall, I find myself in agreement with Al Weiwei, who compared the machine-like opening of the Beijing games (impressive as it was) with the gentler, more human-scale vision of the London Olympics.

    But I have to doff my hat at Marina Hyde’s invention of the term “the global arseoisie”, and her description of them:

    For while it was the best of folks, it was also the worst of folks. Gazing stonily down on a parade of athletes, about whose dreams and sacrifices this entire extravaganza is supposed to be, were some absolute shockers. Taking gold in the Biggest Scumbag in the Stadium event was probably the Bahraini prince, on whose directives athletes are reportedly tortured, flanked on the podium by Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Prince Andrew’s brutal mate from Azerbaijan.

    That’s humanity – the best and the worst; thrown together, with mostly the worst in charge…

  • Out On The Ice

    A few minutes walk from our house is a field that gets turned into an ice rink during the Winter when it’s cold enough. Temperatures this past week have been sufficiently low enough that the flooded field has become the much hoped-for ice rink.

    I went down there yesterday at around lunchtime, and already people were there practising their skill at ice skating.

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    I suspect that now, on a pleasant, but cold, Sunday afternoon, there will be hundreds of people there.

  • Japanese Archery

    I often drop by Jeffrey Friedl’s blog. He’s a computer scientist living in Japan, but in addition to this, he’s a keen, and talented, photographer, and his blog usually has stunning images of Japan and Japanese society.

    He recently attended a Japanese Archery contest for the first time, and has written a number of blog posts about the experience. Do go and take a look; I suggest you start with this one, followed by this and this. There are others in the series as well.

  • Hippisch Festijn 2011

    Last weekend was the annual horse festival held around here: the Varsseveld Hippisch Festijn. It’s a three-day event, but as usual, I only had time for going along to view a couple of hours of the cross-country event and the horse and carriage event on Sunday morning.

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    More photos are up on Flickr.

  • Over The First Hurdle

    Watson and I have been doing the first set of Dog Agility lessons. Yesterday evening came the moment I was rather dreading – the exam. However, I needn’t have worried Watson came through and did us proud – he passed easily with 115 points out of a possible 120 (the pass mark is 70 points).

    Actually, I think he could have scored even higher – it was my fault that he lost marks. One of the hurdles is to have the dog jump through a hoop. I was standing by him and gave him the command to jump through. I hadn’t realised that I should have been on the far side of the hoop before giving the command. And on another hurdle, I should have given him more clearance for his run-up, Oh well, I won’t make those mistakes again…

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    Next week, we begin the next stage of training…

  • Dog Agility

    Having managed to pass the dog training exam with Watson, I decided to carry on training with him, and we enrolled in the Dog Agility course run by the Agility Club Achterhoek.

    At first, I wasn’t sure whether this would be a good idea – training Watson to jump fences might put the idea into his head about jumping over the electric fence around the garden. However, I decided to go ahead with it, because it is a good way of getting rid of some of his energy, and because he’s able to socialise with other dogs. He certainly seems to enjoy it, although neither he nor I are very good at it at the moment.

    Yesterday the Club played host to a national Dog Agility competition – there were four competition rings running simultaneously and hundreds of people and dogs, both of all shapes and sizes. It was quite a spectacle.

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    More photos are up at my spot on Flickr…

    And here’s a video of a dog doing the “paaltjes”…

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    Watson and I will have to keep practising…

  • Varsseveld Hippisch Festijn

    Last weekend was the annual horse festival held around here: the Varsseveld Hippisch Festijn. It’s a three-day event, but this year, I only had time for going along to view a couple of hours of the cross-country event on Sunday morning.

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    More of the photos I shot are up on Flickr.

  • Out For A Walk

    The annual four-day walking event in this part of the Netherlands began today in Doetinchem. I happened to be passing by part of the route and noticed that some unexpected participants appear to be joining in.

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  • Biking With The Buurt

    Each year, a couple of volunteers in our local neighbourhood (the buurt) organises a route for a bicycle ride through the local area. This year about thirty of us had an enjoyable day out, with a few stops for food and refreshment along the way. This is an opportunity to rediscover what a very pleasant part of the Netherlands this is, filled with cycle tracks that wind through the countryside.

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    More pictures here.

  • Down At The Waterhole

    Thursday was really warm. We went, with a friend, to have lunch by a local lake, and (for a couple of us) to cool off. Watching the local water-ski enthusiasts was pretty interesting too. They were of all ages. Unlike me, however, they (mostly) managed to remain upright on their skis. I think I’ll stick to just taking photos.

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  • Hippisch Festijn 2008

    This weekend saw the Hippisch Festijn 2008 – an annual international horse eventing spectacle – taking place in our neighbourhood. I went out this morning to take photos of the cross-country event.
     
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  • That Old Sinking Feeling

    I think Justin, over at Chicken Yoghurt, sums up the queasiness I felt when watching Britain’s eight-minute segment in the Olympic closing ceremony yesterday. Dear lord, it was pretty dire. A wonderful harbinger of the joy to come in 2012 – assuming I survive that long.

  • Horses and Carriages

    This weekend saw another gathering of horsey people and their animals around here. It was rather pleasant.
     
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  • I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About

    Well, unlike Norm, I really can’t get worked up about sport. Never did, never will. Bread and circuses, anyone?

  • Losing the Knack

    Near where we live, there’s an open field that has street lighting installed in it. At first, I thought this somewhat bizarre, until I twigged what it was – a natural ice rink. The field gets flooded, and in cold weather, becomes the local ice rink. After a week of sub-zero temperatures, this weekend it became the centre of much activity. But it was noticeable that the most accomplished skaters seemed to be people of the older generations. Most Dutch people of my age grew up when winters were almost invariably colder, and learning to skate was a natural part of growing up – just like learning to ride a bike. But the opportunities for skating on natural ice these days seem to be fewer and farther between. Hence there’s a whole generation who have never learned to skate…
     
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  • Soccer’s Murky Secrets

    I’ve never been a football fan; probably to do with the fact that I hated playing it at school. So I don’t generally follow events in that world. Still, the increasing involvement of Russian billionaires in English football is an intriguing development. It’s one that I didn’t give much attention to until I read this piece by Craig Murray on Alisher Usmanov and Arsenal football club. Murray blows the whistle on Usmanov’s disturbing background. 

  • Life’s Too Short…

    …for me to bother trying to learn how to Aquaskip…

  • OTT Bike

    For those who think that the bicycle is passé, may I point you towards the Hyperbike. Somehow, I can’t see myself wanting to cycle through town in this. I’ll take my chances on the old-fashioned bike, thank you very much.
     
    (hat tip to Improbable Research)