I’ve been a big fan of the insanely useful gmap-pedometer site since I discovered it some time ago. It makes it really easy to track where you’ve walked, run, cycled or generally travelled on Google Maps, and nicely works out the distances for you. A nice bit of work.

Its developer, Paul Degnan now has a better idea – a mobile version, in particular  an iPhone app. He’s asking for funding to support this – he wants to raise enough to buy a MacBook Air (he has good taste there) and a backup drive, so he can work on coding his app on his daily bus commute. Well, it seems he’s already raised enough for that, but the offer is still open.

Anyone who contributes at least $5 US will get the ad-free premium version of his app when it’s ready.

I’ve sent some money in his direction – I may not make much use of the mobile app, but I’ll certainly want to see it, but I saw it as a chance to say thanks for the work he’s done already.

If you like gmap-pedometer, you can support the project here.

I think I may have neglected to mention this before, but as I’ve just done quite nicely out of it, I thought it would be a good time to share…

Top CashBack is a nifty service that is well worth having a look at if you’re in the UK. It’s basically a referral site – you click through their links to sites that want to sell you things, and if you buy anything, you get paid. It works because companies pay commission to sites that send them paying customers. Top CashBack takes that money and passes it back to its members. I think they make money by holding the large amounts of money they get in interest-bearing accounts for long enough to make it worth bothering. Or something.

Anyway, all you have to do is click through from Top CashBack to the sites you were going to buy from anyway, buy the things you were going to anyway at the prices you were going to pay anyway, and a few months later you can collect your cashback, which can be paid by PayPal, bank transfer, or in Amazon vouchers. If you  opt for Amazon vouchers, you’ll get an extra 5% on your cashback, which works nicely for me, considering how much money I give to Amazon. Incidentally, Amazon is one of the few online retailers who do not give you money back through Top CashBack.

Apart from the cashback – typically 3-5% on most purchases, you can also pick up discount codes for a lot of online retailers. I’ve managed to get a few for those lovely Laithwaite’s people, for instance.

The best deal I’ve had so far was on my iPhone 4S. I was going to buy it online direct from Three anyway. I was going to sign up for their One Plan anyway. By clicking through from Top CashBack, I got £106.05 back. Now that is basically free money, and I’d have to have been even crazier than I am already not to take it up.

Check it out – it costs nothing to register, nothing to use, and you can get some money back from a lot of things you’re probably going to buy anyway. I’ll be up front about this – if you sign up via my link, I’ll get paid.

Top CashBack – Sign up for free money!

As is traditional, not long after the release of WordPress 3.3 comes the first update. This fixes a number of bugs that you may or may not have noticed, and more importantly fills a recently discovered security hole.

Automatic updates are available in the usual way, or you can do things manually if your server configuration doesn’t allow the automatic stuff.

Full details from the metaphorical horse’s mouth[1]

WordPress › WordPress 3.3.1 Security and Maintenance Release.

[1] Note: I am in no way comparing Matt with a horse’s front end.[2]
[2] And absolutely not a horse’s back end, before you ask

Hmm, up a pound today. Insert usual comment about daily fluctuation thingies, and other such excuses.

It was very windy this morning, with some quite nasty sudden gusts that made things a bit interesting when in the vicinity of traffic. I was wary enough to walk across the High Level Bridge, which was a bit more sheltered than the Tyne Bridge. Getting blown in front of a bus wasn’t something I fancied this morning.

Having had fun with the Garmin Fit app not playing yesterday, I found it was still refusing to synchronise with the web service today, so I used the Runkeeper app instead for today’s walk, then did that slightly annoying conversion thing:

1. Export GPX file
2. Run TCX Converter to get a TCX file
3. Import into Garmin Training Center
4. Realise I exported it wrong (course rather than track), repeat steps 2 and 3
5. Upload from Garmin Training Center to Garmin Connect

And there you have it:

Walk to work (windy day)
Walking for 00:29:36
2.04 mi @ 14:29 min/mi

Or you can see the details here.

At some point during today, it would seem somebody at Garmin put the plug back in, because on the mumbleth log out/log in on the iPhone app, data appeared as expected. I’ve just checked, and it even admits to knowing about today’s walk that I imported earlier. Shame it lost yesterday’s – I’ll log that as a manual activity so it gets a proper total for this month’s activity.

Anyway, that’s enough muttering about badly behaved software. Here’s a thing I saw yesterday:

Strange Creature