Why I like geocaching?

Last year I bought a phone that had an internal GPS receiver. I decided that I would try geocaching. It sounded like a hobby that I might like. And boy, did I get hooked. In my mind geocaching is the awesomest hobby in the world. Here are a few reasons why:

1.  First of all you get to spend time out doors. No need to spend time in those dusty gyms. Being  outdoors also means that you can observe the changes that spring, summer, autumn and winter bring. 
2. You can cheat yourself to do exercise. It is easy to spend couple of hours walking and get a good aerobic work out. If you like you can run while going from cache to cache. 
3. Besides physical exercise, you get also some exercise for those grey brain cells. Some of the geocaches can be tricky to find and you really need to think where the cache is hidden.
4. Also, if you're a bit childish like me, the idea that you are doing something secretive is really exciting.

More about this very exciting hobby can found at geocaching.com.

Arts&Crafts: HTC Wildfire bikemount for Pokemon Go

Time for the first arts and crafts entry in this blog. I'm pretty sure that there won't be many more of these. Anyway, I was searching a way to mount my HTC Wildfire to my mountain bike and was unable to find a solution that was commercially available that would meet my requirements. Of course there are some solutions available, but most of them are expensive, clumsy and look pretty stupid. Then I got this idea of making a bike mount myself. I came up with design that is cheap, sturdy and at least in my opinion looks pretty cool. This design can be adapted for many other types of devices and it is kid of universal bike mount mobile phone/devices. Here is how you can make one yourself:

1 Parts: 

What is so great about this bike mount is that you do not need that many parts. There is only two parts that you need to buy. Firstly you need to buy this mount from DealExtreme. It costs 8$/6€, so it's very cheap and the shipping is free. Then you just get a silicone case that fits your phone. I don't have any recommendations where you should or could buy the case. It shouldn't be hard to find.

In total the parts should cost you less than 20$/15€ so this bike mount won't blow any ones budget.

2 Putting the mount together:

First thing you need to do is to remove the screw that is on the Fotopro Flip Motion Mount. Basically what you need to do is to cut a bit of rubber from the other end of the hole. This allows you to take the screw out. There is a little notch at the other end of the hole that was used to put screw in, be sure to cut from that end.

Secondly, you need to cut holes to the silicone case. You can use the Fotopro mount to mark the places where you make the cuts. I recommend that you use a leather hole puncher to make holes to the ends of the markings and then cut out the rubber in between with a sharp knife. Utility knife should do the trick. The round ends of the holes should prevent the silicone from splitting. You could reinforce the holes with electric tape. Any ideas for reinforcing are welcome.

BAM! And you are done.

Time to slide the velcro straps through the holes and mount it to your bike. Now you can use your mobile phone's navigation features while biking! SWEET.

Since the mount is on the stem it is easy to read and operate your device while riding.

The mount sits pretty nicely on the stem.

If you combine your Android phone with something like WorkSmart Cardio Trainer your phone turns into a fully featured bike computer. Cool.

EDIT: If you decided to build a bike mount using these instructions, please drop me a comment and/or picture of your bike mount.

EDIT: This also works great for Pokemon Go players riding their bikes. You can have your phone attached to your stem while hunting for those Pokemon.