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As I have mentioned in my New Year Resolutions 2016 post I have started doing yoga. The main reasons for this are: The meditation part Some of the sessions are so relaxed that you fall asleep and even if your mind is racing at the beginning of a practice, after a few minutes you get distracted by doing stuff. In that aspect it is like cycling for me, getting out of your head and into your body. Breathing exercises are a big part of this. The stretching bit Yoga is mostly about getting into positions your body doesn’t want to be in. At least my body doesn’t want to be twisted like that. Sitting on my desk most of the day and then sitting on the bicycle a bit more has resulted in myself being very inflexible. The result of this is a bad back and problems with all kind of joints. I did some physiotherapy for my back a long time ago and when I broke my collarbone. The exercises are very similar to some yoga poses. So I am just going to pretend that they work. The workout stuff This I just discovered after a few practices. Apparently I should have some muscles I didn’t know about. I am mostly talking about the mystical core one hears about so much. Disclaimer: I am the first to admit that I was not a big fan of yoga. I saw it as something people do that don’t want to do a proper sport and can be done lying down. And it isn’t about yoga, you can have the same result with other sports. But the Kata style helps, it gives you a pattern to adhere to. So how did I start? On YouTube obviously. Because I am not quite up to embarrassing myself in front of a group of pros. One of the cycling channels I am subscribed to had some Yoga For Cyclists videos and it is a good starting point. It also helps that it shows a few inflexible guys in sweatpants trying to keep up with a yoga teacher. ...

It's that time of the year, when everyone makes empty promises to themselves. And I don't want to skip this important tradition. The last one I did was in 2012, which seems like a long time ago. Usually these are along the lines of sporty stuff or loosing weight. I have already stopped drinking alcohol and coffee end of last year and I am doing two hours of activity (as tracked by google fit) already. And nobody will stop me cycling too much anyway. There are also some things I promise I won't do this year: going vegan, stop gluten intake or low-carb. Still, some of these might be unexpected. ...

In September I published a review of the Bloomsky Weather Station, which I summarized with “a nice toy with brilliant hardware and rubbish software.”. My main complaint was that it was impossible to share an URL of the station and to get to the data, photos and images in any way. Today all of this has changed. Now there is a map with all the stations, and each station has it’s own URL like mine for example. It includes the current data and webcam image and last timelapse. This will already make most people happy, but they didn’t stop there. Now every user has his own private dashboard with access to previous timelapses and historical data. historical data The historical data gives you nice graphs for the available period and also has a table view with the detailed information. The feedback of the graphs can be a bit slow especially if you choose a large time span, but it does look really pretty and gives you a quick overview about the weather changes in a longer time frame. timelapses The timelapses view is straight forward, you can see a calendar with the available timelapses and you can download the one from the selected date. No bulk download yet as far as I can see. ...

UPDATE: I posted a followup to this, with information about the new software and API and now highly recommend the Bloomsky Station The Bloomsky “Weather Camera” is a weather station with built-in camera. I first saw it on a Kickstarter Campaign, which was pretty successful. I snapped one of the early birds deals and later added a solar panel. Expected delivery was December 2014 (ha!), it turned up in August 2015. But this is already better than some other campaigns. They had some problems to get the CE approval for Europe, so that explained some of the delay. It is advertised as “5-in-1 weather station + HD camera that captures real-time weather data + sky image at your location. Next Generation Weather Network.”. ...

For some reason this year turned out to be a year with a lot of time spend on bicycles. While I have been cycling more since I changed to a company which allowed me to park my bicycle in the office, this year I increased this even more. One part of this has definitely be Strava, which allows me to track my riding and improvements (or not) over time. Some numbers for 2014, 2013 in brackets: Rides: 340 (276) Distance: 7434 km (3311 km) Elevation: 127496 m (66689 m) Time: 411 hours (209 hours) Rides on the mountain bike stayed the same at about 900 km, but rides on the road tripled. A good reason to finally buy a road bike. I also participated in my first ever race, just a hill climb organised by a local bike cafe, but still pretty fun and exciting. Another fun part of Strava are the Challenges, which take a random set goal and allow everyone globally kill themselves trying to finish them. These year I managed to finish some of them, the most difficult one being the Rapha Rising 8800m elevation in 8 days, others were easy, but all were fun. I also spend a ridiculous amount of money on bike toys, but mostly on clothing. On the bicycles themselves I only replaced a few chains, cassettes, bottom brackets, tyres and tubes. For 2015 I have subscribed to three Sportives / Gran Fondos, in the hope that my new bike arrives before the first one of these. I also want to find a higher hill to climb than my current record (974 m), probably in the Pyrenees and maybe ride somewhere outside of Catalunya or even Spain. ...