As a computer engineer, a.k.a. Geek, people often think all we do is sit behind the keyboard and monitor and scoff down sweets and drink loads of caffeine. Well, they’re not too far off. However, we do have to get every now and then and recently I found a cool little tool that helps me do just that.
As I live in Europe where the Zune is still yet to be sold (I’ll get one soon, a Zune HD no doubt), I have an iPod. It’s a fancy 6G Nano. It’s got video (woo hoo, big deal). It plays music, ok, that’s what an iPod is for, but moreover, the silly little thing that it has that’s amazed me is a pedometer with a cool add on called Nike+. What does this mean? Well, this week I decided to walk to work all week…Not sure why, it’s not part of some new exercise regime…it’s not part of some New Year’s resolution (let’s face it, how many people stick to ‘em)? None the less, it counts steps and then when you sync it, the results go to a Nike website:
Then the cool thing is once it gets uploaded, it tells you approximately what your steps are doing for you. For example two things I’ve accomplised:
So in essence, 21,000 of my steps taken was enough horse power to power a small car 1 mile and another 50,000 of my steps would have taken me to the summit of Mt Fuji (and burned 2,500 calories). My current challenge is “ripping through a pizza” which takes approximately 64,000 steps and is the equivalent of 3,200 calories, wow. At any rate, so far since my iPod purchase I’ve accumulated (in just over 2 months) 139,249 steps. Do you have a nano and if so, how many steps are you up to (or did you know the functionality even existed)? 
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