My New Stopwatch
I wrote a stopwatch program for the computer. As near as I can tell (based on a quick google images search), it's the most awesome stopwatch program on the webs. You can check it out here:
http://www.charliethornton.net/stopwatch/index.html
That's it. No extra crap, cuz that's how I roll.
Okaaay, why?
It should really be an android app.
When I lift weights in the garage, I time everything. I have an academic curiosity about how long the entire workout lasts and I have a much more meaningful curiosity about my time between sets (i.e. rest). For example, right now I take a 90 second rest between my work sets in the squat.
When I first started, I would take the (analog) clock off our living room wall, reset it to the hour, then lean it up against the wall. This method had two problems:
http://www.charliethornton.net/stopwatch/index.html
Yep, that's all it does.
That's it. No extra crap, cuz that's how I roll.
Okaaay, why?
It should really be an android app.
When I lift weights in the garage, I time everything. I have an academic curiosity about how long the entire workout lasts and I have a much more meaningful curiosity about my time between sets (i.e. rest). For example, right now I take a 90 second rest between my work sets in the squat.
When I first started, I would take the (analog) clock off our living room wall, reset it to the hour, then lean it up against the wall. This method had two problems:
- At some (early) point, I get too stupid to figure out how to keep track of the second hand when a set ends on, say, the 38th second.
- Julie didn't like it when I would re-hang the clock without restoring it to the right time (this problem is intractable).
No problem, I switched to my awesome smartphone. I downloaded the best stopwatch app the world had to offer and away I went. This method had two problems:
- The stopwatch app I was using was written incorrectly. When you hit "lap" it saved off your split but continued to display overall time in the main view. There was no display for the current lap time. This meant: (A) at the end of every set, I needed to hit STOP, RESET, START in sequence, and (B) I couldn't track the overall time.
- At some point, I tended to lose the dexterity necessary to punch in the reset sequence on the touchscreen.
No problem, I switched to an actual, honest to goodness wristwatch. This method had only one problem:
- The display is too small.
It works fine if you're just lingering around waiting to start your next set. But if you're timing some kettlebell swings craning your neck to try to make out the stopwatch display is not cool. If I kept doing that I think Pavel would take my kettlebell away - and he'd be right.
So, I made my own program with two criteria:
- It should work like an actual stopwatch (show both total time and current lap time).
- It should have large whackable control buttons.
Bonus:
- The display should be gigantic!
I think I got it done. Still, dragging my laptop out to the garage is going to be a pain in the butt (it's more a matter of unplugging from and plugging back into the TV). I think I just need to make the true ultimate stopwatch android app and use that. So far though, I haven't managed to get "hooked" on android app making. Debugging takes too long, and unfamiliar things in general seem to be less fun the older I get.
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