If you frequently use Google as a search engine (who is not nowadays?), you probably have noticed that the Google logo is sometimes changed by something else, always using the google letters. It is mainly to celebrate a particular day, a cause and sometimes people.

In the blog article named “25 amazing people celebrated by Google“, you will see some people celebrated that way by Google. All are great, but I do really like the following :

I have made some corrections and improvements to the PERL converter script for Garmin TCX files. This simple script extracts an activity from a TCX file (exported from the Garmin Training Center tool) and converts it to a Google Earth KML file. Previous version are still available on my previous article on this topic: “Convert tools for Garmin Training Center“.

My Training Center release is the 2.0.3 for Mac OS X, the TCX file is available through the “export” function of the file menu, it generates an XML file with all your activities, training and routes.

Download here : convert-tcx-tokml.pl

Usage:

1. first export the database from the Training Center to a TCX file (here 20081221.tcx)
2. ./convert-tcx-tokml.pl -f 20081221.tcx

   Available laps (using -l to specify one)
   
   [...]
   2008-11-29T13:10:39Z    Biking    3255s  17449m
   2008-12-16T12:13:44Z    Biking    1984s  34914m
   2008-12-21T13:01:04Z    Biking    9411s  18254m

3. On the activity list find the one you want to convert and use the first field in the -l option:
   ./convert-tcx-tokml.pl -f 20081221.tcx -l 2008-11-29T13:10:39Z > my_activity.kml
4. The generated KML file could directly be loaded in GoogleEarth
5. You can customize the two XML fields with a text editor in the KML file in order to get a better presentation in Google Earth
6. A compressed KMZ version could be obtained with the zip command, useful for sharing by email :
   zip a my_activity.kmz my_activity.kml

You may have seen some changes here on the design part. This blog is now powered by the latest version of WordPress and clearer than previously.

It has been a long time without writing here, but I have been terribly busy with our new e-commerce solution (cf bikeo.fr).

If you are using an Asterisk PBX for personnal or professional use, maybe you will find this widget usefull: Asterisk Dialer. The page is for the time being in french, but you can download the widget directly from this link.

This is my very first yahoo widget, so please be gentle if you find a bug and let me know in order to ease correction.

Let me know if you find it useful (or not).

Are you mountain biking in winter ? I am not talking about riding in mud, even if it appears to be good for skin, but in snow. Once snow appears, most of the time the mountain bike is stored until better days are coming. Ktrak is proposing us a new life for the bike during winter. By changing the rear and front wheel, it becomes possible to climb the hills with snow and ride as usual.

Since we don’t have a lot of snow down in Lyon, France, I promise to try once relocated in Canada.