Working in the dark
I continue to work in the evenings and through some of the night (or all of the night if I slept enough during the previous day).
Experimenting with tools to generate data overlays for cycling videos. GPStitch looks promising and I can just generate the overlay video for editing later in Blender.
An appointment with the podiatrist this week has cleaned up my foot, after a blister occurred over the area where my hole appeared previously.
Tuesday was the 21st anniversary of the London bombings on 7 July 2025. I was a cycle courier at that time and was working that day, in and around the area where the bombings took place.
Luckily I wasn't near enough to be directly affected and didn't know about the incident until later in the morning, as I was busy delivering packages.
As the news broke, our controllers told us over out radios that something had happened, although details were not clear for several hours.
My working day finished early as most people wanted to get out of central London, so requests for package deliveries dried up quickly. London was eerily quiet for the rest of the afternoon.
I didn't really comprehend what had happened until I got home in the evening and watched the news.
Cyclingλ︎
Continuing to experiment with GPStitch to create overlays from GPX / Fit files.
Wahoo doesn't make it easy to find the FIT files from previous rides via their website.
The FIT files can be downloaded from the Wahooligan site, but you have to know the actual URL as there isn't a way to search for those files.
Luckily I kept all the emails that Wahoo sent me, each email contains a link to download the FIT file.
GPStitchλ︎
GPStitch video overlay was generated from the Dragon Ride FIT file from Wahoo.
After a little experimentation, I found that Compositing > Blend > Lighten setting gave the better results when on top of a camera video when editing the files in Blender.
I edited the default GPStitch layout for the overlay:
- repositioned data metrics so speed, heart rate and cadence are all together
- elevation, gradient and altitude under the maps
- maps moved down and set to an opacity of 1 (default 0.7 has a tendency to disappear on lighter backgrounds, e.g. sky)
The new template was saved as practicalli-1920-1080.
TODO:
- review ffmpeg settings
- generate an overlay video using 25 frames per second, to match the video source
- refine the practicalli template
Isle Of Wightλ︎
Saturday was the annual trip to the Isle of Wight with the Bigfoot Cycling Club. I managed a quicker time of 5 hours and 6 minutes this year and we were back at the Fishbourne Inn around 17:20.
The route we took was 110km ride around the island, climbing 1,463 meters. The terrain was mostly quiet country roads although we did pass through several coastal towns and villages, but skipped the busier coastal towns in the South East.
My Wahoo computer showed the maximum temperature at 37 Celsius. Most of the day the temperature was in the early 30s, although it was 34 Celsius on the ascent to Freshwater bay.
Roasting around the Isle Of Wight - Strava
Thank you.
Practical.li Website