Some Cool Pictures…

…of Air Force One making final approach on Elmendorf Air Force Base over the port of Anchorage.

Thought you might get a kick out of them.

Jim Arrives in the 21st Century, Finally

 

My old phone, a Motorola V710, has been dying a slow death for the last several months. 

I was reluctant to scrap it though, basically because as a phone it was perfect for me. The buttons were large, which suited my midlife presbyopia and my nerve damaged hands just fine.  It was Bluetooth capable and had a voice command function that worked perfectly for me with almost 100% reliability.

However, texting on it was an excruciatingly painful process and it had no internet capability at all. The camera resolution was about half a meg and didn’t work at all in dim light. There was no video capability. A couple of buttons, including the volume button, had quit working and worst of all the computer interface plug was worn out and the phone would no longer talk to my laptop.

Time for a new phone.

I’d been wanting a smart phone, something at the top of the technology food chain.

I’ve been looking around. 

I’ve looked at all the demonstrators Best Buy had and for the last two month I haven’t been able to walk past a cell phone kiosk without stopping to check out the shiny new smart phones.

I really wasn’t impressed with anything I saw.

I had some very specific criteria for my new phone:

First, it needed to be a phone. First and foremost I want my phone to be a friggin phone.  Not a game device, not a texting device, not an MP3 player, not a PDA, not a toaster oven. Phone, first and foremost. I don’t want some internet gizmo with phone capability tacked on as a second thought.  I wanted all the capability I had in the V710, ease of use, excellent voice recognition capability right out of the box that I don’t have to train, Bluetooth, and so on.

Then, of course, I wanted all the other stuff, texting, internet, MP3 and video player, decent camera, PDA functions, and toaster oven if they could fit it in. I wanted something that would keep me connected, let me manage, view, and update my online presence, and surf the internet if I needed to.

I wanted a full QWERTY keyboard.

I wanted something small and compact.  My wife has a smart phone and the thing is a brick – I didn’t want anything like that (My wife also has a Blackberry that her employer provided her and I liked the look of that device. I really wanted something like that.)

I wanted something with a readable screen – no, strike that, I wanted something with a excellent screen, clear, sharp, brilliant color, something on the order of the resolution I get with my ZEN.

I wanted something that could take memory chips.

I wanted something that would interface smoothly with my computers – including USB, wireless 802.11, and Bluetooth.

I wanted something I could expand with software downloads.

I wanted GPS capability.

I wanted something easy to use.

I wanted something easy to maintain, i.e. reasonably rugged and no special chargers and other such paraphernalia. I wanted something that would charge from a standard mini USB cable, because USB is fast becoming the universal standard for such things and I already have car chargers and wall charges and computer cables and USB batteries and I don’t want to have to buy a bunch of other crap.

I didn’t want anything that needed a stylus.  I didn’t want anything that used a touch-screen. And I sure as hell didn’t want anything where the advertisements for it emphasized weird obscure functions, games, Hello Kitty faceplates, or the hip hop skater punk lifestyle.

And I wanted it all in an affordable package. And I wanted it from my current cell phone provider on my current family plan.

 

The Rolling Stones said that you can’t always get what you want, they may be right – but not this time. I got everything I wanted and quite a bit more.

 

What I got was the Blackberry Curve 8330.

 

First, as I mentioned was a priority, it’s an excellent phone with crisp and clear audio. It does everything the old V710 did and more. The Bluetooth earpiece setup is simple (I just transferred over my Plantronic Explorer 320 from the old phone to the new one, best ear piece I’ve used yet – and I’ve gone through a lot). The 8330 recognizes voice commands without training, and in fact, the voice functions are expanded far beyond the old v710 and, after I got used to how it worked, I found that I liked it a lot better.  For example, with the old phone I had to have a separate entry for each contact number, so for my wife who has four contact numbers I had to have four separate entries in the old onboard phone book. With the Blackberry I can just upload my entire Outlook contact list as is, including her contact card with all her numbers on it, and then specify which number I want with a voice command, such as “Call Becky Mobile” or “Call Becky Business.”  So good is the voice recognition function in fact, that I can actually just tell it a phone number and it’ll recognize it and call it. For example “Call 555-1212.” That’s pretty cool.  The phone also uses voice recognition for a number of other functions, such as reporting status and connectivity and battery levels. It may seem that I’m putting a lot of emphasis on voice recognition and the ability of the phone to give me status verbally vice having to look at the screen – and I am.  It’s important to me. I don’t like looking away from what I’m doing to use the phone. If I have to make a call while driving, I don’t want to take my eyes off the road, I want to tell the phone what to do and have it do it without me having to look at the keypad. The Blackberry does exactly what I want with very high reliability.

The Curve is the smallest BlackBerry smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard. Despite the fact that the keys are small, tiny even, they’re surprisingly easy for me to use – couple that with smart software that figures out things like where the @ symbol should go in the the email address I’m typing and puts it in there without me having to jump through hoops and I’m seriously happy with it. It makes typing email, texts, tweets, and even short blog updates a snap. And I really, really like the Blackberry trackball thumb mouse.

Internet access depends on the provider network, of course, but so far it’s been excellent. The screen is crisp and clear and easy to read with user selectable font sizes. Page loads aren’t fast but they’re not slow either – and the smart display software can display even large webpages like Stonekettle Station’s main page with its huge banner picture in an easily readable format.

Hooking up my several email services with the Blackberry was as simple as entering the user name and password and the device took care of the details – seriously, the Blackberry software is how software should work.

The curve comes equipped with a 2.0 megapixel camera, with video recording capability.  The resolution isn’t great, but it’s a damned sight better than most phonecams.  There’s an integrated flash and video light. Here’s a shot I took this morning when Becky and I were sitting in the sunroom drinking coffee:

The sun was just rising over the shop and shining in the windows, which accounts for the angelic rainbow halo effect. Like I said, not the best resolution, but not too bad either.

There’s an advanced media player for music, videos and photos. The phone has a microSD card slot for extra memory and I replaced the 2Gig card that came with the phone with an 8Gig card I had lying around – now I’ve got plenty of room for annoying ringtones, you bet.

There’s 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth with support for stereo headsets and car kits, GPS navigation and the ability to be used as a modem with a laptop.

Battery life is supposed to be up to 17 days in standby, I haven’t tested this yet as I only got the phone 24 hours ago.  Truthfully though, if you’re using it a lot and have Bluetooth connectivity turned on you’ll be lucky to get two days out of it. That’s OK with me (Funny memory, my first portable phone was a Motorola analog bag phone with a lead acid battery, you’d get maybe four hours standby out of that battery and about twenty minutes talk time. You kept it plugged in to the car’s cigarette lighter – which is what we called a car power port back then - or you kept it turned off. Times, they’ve changed a bit). 

About the only thing the 8330 doesn’t do is WiFi connectivity (the 8320 and the 8350i do have 802.11g/n capability if you need it). This wasn’t a deal breaker for me, and besides the phone can talk to my laptop or server or the HP C7280 printer via Bluetooth, so WiFi isn’t necessary at all.  And speaking of interfacing with the computers, the included software is excellent and easy to use – and did I mention that it was included? Motorola made me buy their Phonetools software and the special cable and they charged me a fortune for it and it never worked worth a crap.  The Blackberry software is simple and easy to use and works without screwing around. It took a second to configure and then loaded my entire Outlook Contacts list, calendar, notes, and task list onto the phone without any effort at all. It also backed the entire phone up in a couple of seconds.

My current cell provider had a very affordable package that I could add to my current plan. The excellent tech behind the counter at the Wasilla store had the whole thing done and ready to go for me in a couple of minutes and I walked out of the the store more than a little satisfied.

I did think that the case/holster that came with the phone was pretty useless.  I stopped by Target after leaving the phone store and they had Blackberry holsters on sale. Note: you want a holster designed for the Berry, they’ve got a magnet in them that tells the device when it’s sheathed – the Curve will then adjust ringtone to vibrate and do other programmed functions if you want. I got a very nice semi-hardshell horizontal clip holster for $15 (and while there I checked for online deals on Blackberry holsters using the Blackberry. Seriously how big of geek am I? Pretty big, yep).

Five years ago I needed a Sony Clie PDA, a laptop, an MP3 player, a camera, and my phone to get everything I get in the compact Blackberry Curve. I like being able to take the internet and my email with me wherever I go.

So far I haven’t managed to fall into an open manhole or walk into traffic while texting.

But it’s probably only a matter of time.

In Case You Were Wondering What To Get Me

I want this (you can watch with the sound muted if you're at work):

helicoptere personnel


For those of you actually interested in this gizmo, there's not a whole lot of info. The pilot/inventor is supposedly from Austria and this is appearently the only one of these he's built. So far. Obviously it's not powerful enough to achieve much more than ground effect flight and any kind of safety feature is pretty much nonexistant. Supposedly, this video was shot in Courdimanche-sur-Essonne, Île-de-France, France. I say supposedly a lot in this paragraph because information on this machine is pretty hard to come by.

Still, until something better comes along in this shiney new 21st century, it'll do.

And I want one.

Sins of a Solar Empire

Bad news folks (or good news for some, I guess, depending).

I’ll probably stop blogging.

In fact I’ll probably stop sleeping, eating, and showering. I’ll probably be found wild eyed, emaciated, and raving.

See, I’ve discovered something more addictive than heroin.

This:

Well, OK – I’ve never been addicted to heroin, so I don’t actually know that Sins of a Solar Empire is actually more addictive, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

I’m not big on computer games.

My son has a Playstation, and we’ve thought about getting him a Wii. I’ve tried to sit down and play with him, but ten minutes of car chases, or motocross, or Lego Star Wars combat – and I’m bored. I can’t help it. It just feels like such a waste of time, and I have no interest in it at all. That and that damned head splitting, car crash music. Gah.

But, Sins, well, Sins of a Solar Empire is something else entirely.

My son gave it to me for Christmas, so I loaded it up last night and fooled around with it. I downloaded the latest updates from the maker, Ironclad. Read a bit of the manual – then started fooling around with it.

And I promptly got my ass handed to me.

Really, you need to do the tutorials – especially if you’re a middle-aged guy like me who is not up on the latest gaming technology.

What I am up on though, is military strategy. Hell, I wrote actual military strategy and executed it in combat. I was a CIC officer, I’m used to military interfaces and computerized battle management software. And I’ll say this – the pentagon needs to start talking to game makers like Ironclad. Because we need interfaces like this. We really, really do.

Sins is a science fiction real-time strategy game. The graphics are fantastic, especially in ultra hi-resolution on my big honking HD monitor. The complexity is unbelievable and there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of limits. So far I’ve only played in a single player mode, but it can be played in multi-player mode through the Ironclad site or over a VPN. I don’t think I’ll ever get that far though, in two days I’ve barely scratched the surface in single player mode – I don’t think I want to go up against somebody who takes this stuff seriously.

This isn’t any kind of review of the game, as I haven’t gotten far enough to actually evaluate it yet. And may not for some time (though I did hold my own against a full dozen pirate attacks this morning).

I just wanted you to know why you won’t be seeing much from me, at least for the weekend.

Well, yeah, that and the fact that I’ve got to go move several tons of snow.

And I’ve got a dozen jobs in the shop.

And there’s some pressing research.

Yeah.

Screw that. If you need me, I’ll be fighting the pirates.

Avast!

---

So, what did you get for Christmas? Bet it wasn't your very own interstellar empire.

You Know What’s Amazing?

This:

It’s amazing to me how much technology has changed the world just within my lifetime. Hell, just within the last couple of years.

Art has always pushed the boundaries of technology, even if that technology was little more than powdered pigment blown onto a cave wall with a hollow reed. But now, now artists can create entire worlds.

The above short film, Legacy, is the third such created by Grzegorz Jonajtys, a 36 years old VFX artist and animator/director from Warsaw, Poland who now lives in San Francisco. He’s no amateur, having worked on a number of high end projects for Digital Kitchen, Cafefx, Syndicate, and Industrial Light and Magic, but still – Legacy is what he does in his spare time, and his second short film, Ark, won the Siggraph Electronic Theater Best of Show Award in 2007 and was nominated for a Golden Palm at Cannes.

Even ten years ago, the depth and lifelike detail of a little film like Legacy would have been impossible - short of several million dollars and a cadre of special effects wizards – and it still wouldn’t have been as good. These films and those like them represent an emerging generation of artists who use computer systems, software, and the Internet as a medium of expression - as paint is for painters and clay is to sculptors.

While it’s true that nearly anybody can create realistic images using tools like photoshop and digital animator, it takes an artist and a story teller to do what Jonajtys did above.

I wonder if some day, little films like this will be regarded the same way sketches and doodles by Van Gogh, Da Vinci, or Picasso are regarded today?

Impressive, Most Impressive.

Strange and Distant Shores

I meant to do this a couple of days ago, but I've been swamped lately and the time just keeps slipping by.

I got a postcard from Anne in India on Saturday last.

India, I've always wanted to go there, ever since I read Kipling as a kid, and especially The Man Who Would Be King. For me India will always be an exotic foreign land, full of mystery and strange magic, elephants and tigers, ancient temples and teeming cities ... and, well, tech support.

When I joined the Navy, all those years ago, one of the reasons was to see the world. I had a list of places I wanted to see. The black volcanic sand beaches of Iceland. The great markets of Istanbul and the Golden Horn. The Valley of the Kings and the Giza Plateau. Pompeii and Herculaneum. Gibraltar. Hong Kong. Singapore. The Straits of Malacca. The Galapagos Islands. The Panama Canal. The Serengeti and Kilimanjaro. Freemantle, Sidney, and the Great Barrier Reef. Tasmania. Masada. And India.

I made it almost everywhere on my list and many others places too - but somehow I never made it to India. I never set foot there, and it's unlikely that I will. I've been around the world and walked on every continent except Antarctica, but the closest I've gotten to India is sailing around the sub-continent's southern horn. I've seen the Indian Navy up close though, and they are excellent and professional sailors as only the descendents of a thousand years of seafarers can be.

Anyway, thanks, Anne, for thinking of me and for reminding me of India.

--------------------

Update: I was still waiting for the coffee to brew when I typed the original post, so I was just a tad fuzzyheaded and forget two things:

1) I really, really like the stamp - International Physics Year with a picture of my favorite scientist, Ole' Albert himself.

2) Question, where is it that you always wanted to go, and why?

Cool new gadget, continued

We took the new Delorme GPS unit out for a test drive this weekend.

My son was over at a friend's house for the day, so my wife and I got a rare afternoon of hiking and exploring by ourselves. We went down to the Matanuska River and spent a couple of hours - and it was nice to be able to poke along the water without having to constantly keep an eye on the kid.

We left the truck at the Palmer River Park, and followed the trails through the campground down to the river bed, just above the bridge on the Old Glenn Highway.

It was sunny and warm in the valley and we wandered along the river plain looking for cool rocks and driftwood as is our habit. And as always in Alaska, even the mundane scenery was fantastic.

I have high resolution topographic maps of the entire region loaded in the PN-20, and before we left home I downloaded a bunch of geocache locations into it from the links on Google Earth. While my wife hunted for interesting rocks for the rock polisher, I wandered up and down the river bank playing with the GPS unit. It worked better than advertised and I was routinely locking onto a minimum of ten satellites and getting position fixes good to within a couple of feet.

We walked a couple of miles up the river before getting to the first cache - which we couldn't find. Someone has either taken it, or its hiding place was too obscure for us. But the second one was right where the Delorme said it should be, and after a second or two of poking around my wife found it under a log. We noted our find in the log, took nothing and left nothing, and went inland following a trail. The path was a little, uh, damp in places from the spring runoff. Note: if you go hiking in Alaska, you're going to want good, waterproof hiking boots, just saying.

We somehow ended up behind the Palmer Municipal ball park, where a bunch of kids were playing Saturday afternoon little league. While working our way back down the hill, following the GPS back towards where we'd left the truck, I came across an old cottonwood tree stump. It's hard to tell from the picture, but that burl is about 6 feet in diameter. If only there had been some way for me to cut it off and haul all two tons of it back to the truck, imagine the bowls it would make.

All in all we walked about four miles and explored parts of our neighborhood that we hadn't seen before. It was a pretty good day.

Now, in the old days, especially back when I used wet-film cameras, I kept a notebook in my pocket and wrote down where and when I took each picture, but the Delorme PN-20 and TopoUSA 7.0 software package has a unique feature which I wanted to take advantage of. First I needed to make sure the camera's clock was set to the correct time and date in order to ensure the time stamp on each picture was correct. I normally use a Sony professional model D770, but for this hike I didn't want to lug it along and instead used my little Pentax Optio S4. The clock was way off, so I synced it to the GPS before taking any pictures. After the hike I downloaded the GPS track data to the TopoUSA software and then downloaded the Pentax's SD chip to the computer using the Vista media downloader. Then, using the GeoTagger function in TopoUSA, I synced the pictures to our recorded route on the map. Since the GPS unit records our position about once a second, it is easy for the software to determine exactly where I was standing when each picture was taken (providing that both the GPS and camera clocks are synced, hence the need for setting the camera's clock correctly. The GPS unit syncs its clock automatically to the global standard via the satellites). TopoUSA will then insert a thumbnail, an icon, or a hyperlink to the picture file at the correct position on the map. I tried it all three ways, and decided that I like the icon option best.

In the screenshot, the red track on the map is our route, and each camera icon is where I took a picture. Clicking on the icon opens the picture in the default viewer. Additionally, you can add notes to each picture on the map or in the picture's data file, or both. Since both my Pentax and the Sony record detailed information about each picture (e.g. the camera settings at the time of capture), I get far more information about each picture than I ever did with the old method of recording each photo by hand in a log book. Additionally, since I use Corel Photo Paint X2, if the pictures are photoshopped X2 will record any changes and stamp the photo with its version and program information - allowing me to look back years later and determine if any changes were made to the photo and be able to reconstruct the original exposure if necessary.

This is an extremely cool ability. A couple of years ago, I scanned into digital format hundreds of old Ektachrome slides and negatives from the 40's, 50's, and 60's that my mom had. After thousands of hours of photoshopping to correct for redshift, scratches, and general damage to the film, my mom spent hours trying to remember where and when each picture was taken, and who exactly those funny looking people were. With this system, I have all that data recorded almost automatically and a hundred years from now, or a thousand, somebody will be able to reconstruct exactly where and when my pictures were taken. Will anybody give a damn? I don't know, but it's there if they want it.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a hundred uses for this capability (I sure wish that I had it when I was on scouting missions in Iraq). As I said elsewhere, if you're looking for a really cool gadget, or you're a photographer, or you just want to be able to remember where the hell you were when you snapped those pictures on that family vacation, or you're engaged in an occupation that requires you to record details of a specific location and then be able to find it later (Nathan, I'm talking to you here), you couldn't ask for a better tool than the Delorme PN-20 and TopoUSA 7.0.

Cool New Gadget (updated)

(updates at the end of the post)

I like to know where I'm at, especially when I'm hiking in the wilds of Alaska.

I've got an extremely well developed sense of direction. My dad taught me how to use a map and compass at a young age, and I've been an expert at orienteering for most of my life. The Navy taught me stellar navigation and I'm fairly good at it; I even own a decent sextant. Given rise and set tables, compass, sextant, and a decent chronometer I can usually plot a fix and chart a course home without too much sweat. Hell, I can even build a reasonably accurate solar compass in the field, if it really becomes necessary.

But, I'm also a gadget freak. Can't help it, I love technology.

So, for me there's nothing cooler than the US GPS satellite navigation system. I've been using GPS since since the first satellites went up - first in the military, and later when civilian receivers became available to the general public. Naturally, a number of years ago we got into geocaching, which combines our love of hiking and the out of doors with treasure hunting, puzzles, and land navigation. Geocaching, for those of you not familiar with the game, is based on the century-old European sport of letterbox treasure hunting. Basically the way it works is that geocachers hide small treasure 'caches' in interesting places, the caches (usually an ammo can or other such durable weatherproof container) are usually filled with interesting items, some have themes such as a dog friendly trove or child related items, and some are just collections of random stuff. Some are large and some are tiny. All caches contain a log book. Some are placed in easy locations, such as city parks or even sidewalk planters. And some caches are placed in remote and difficult to reach locations. All are well hidden and not apparent unless you are looking specifically for them. There are literally millions of such caches hidden on all seven continents all around the world. Once hidden, the location is recorded using a GPS unit and then posted on Geocaching.com, each post contains the coordinates, a description of the cache, it's difficulty, it's type (the are several types of caches), a map, and clues. Additionally, each post contains comments from those who went seeking the cache). A geocacher logs into the site and searches the database for caches in his or her area, loads the coordinates into their GPS, and goes treasure hunting. When you find a cache, you sign the log book, take one item, and put something back of equal or higher value. It's fun for the whole family and it has taken us to many strange and interesting places that we would never have visited otherwise. I'm a paid member of the game, though you don't have to be. There are advantages to a paid subscription, including special caches and a secret handshake. Being me, I also have a paid Google Earth Plus account, and the Geocaching plugin which allows me to plot caches onto Google Earth - Yeah, I was one of those kids who poured over maps and national geographic for hours on end. For me Google Earth is like heroin.

Anyway, like I said above I've owned GPS units for a long time, starting with one of the very first models, the Motorola TRAXAR, an enormous beast of hideously expensive 80's technology. It took 6 AA batteries and sucked the life out of them in about two hours. It weighed a ton and was like lugging around a brick. It had six receiver channels and took about an hour to plot a position when cold - and it was accurate within, oh, about 300 yards on a good day.

In the early 90's I bought a Magellan GPS350. Much smaller and lighter. It ran on a pair of AA's and lasted about 6 hours or so, depending on a number of factors. It had eight receiver channels (more channels = faster and more accurate fix) and a whole megabyte of RAM. It cost in the hundreds, vice the thousands, of dollars and was reasonably accurate, down to a hundred yards usually. In those days, the Pentagon was afraid the Evil Empire would use our GPS to fly cruise missiles through the windows of the White House and so they implemented something called 'selective availability,' basically a wobble in the satellite timing pulses which induced a margin of error into a receiver's fix datum - therefore the best you could do with a civilian receiver was about a hundred yards, and your fixes tended to move around a bit as the elements of the GPS constellation rose and set. Still that was good enough for geocaching, and the sport was born around that time. The military, or course, had encrypted receivers which filtered out the SA error and were accurate to a gnat's ass.

Somewhere along the line, a couple of smart guys - geophysicists building instruments to measure the slip of tectonic plates - wrote a simple software program to average out the errors induced by SA, and published it to the web. They didn't know that the position errors they were seeing in their receivers were there on purpose, they assumed that the folks in charge of the GPS system were just lousy engineers. They published their program as freeware, and from then on anybody with a laptop and a crappy Garmin receiver could plot fixes accurate within a few feet. It took a couple years, but eventually the Pentagon figured out there wasn't much point in SA anymore, so they turned it off. Along with the lofting of the new WAAS satellites (which broadcast a special signal to WAAS enabled receivers to correct for the natural attenuation and signal bias inherent in atmospheric transmission) this ushered in a whole new era of GPS usage. Cheap, reliable, and very, very accurate receivers became widely available. As such I upgraded to the Magellan Sporttrak Pro around 2001. WAAS capable, water proof, small and light, it was extremely accurate - and it included maps! It had a whole eight megabytes of Ram and could interface with my PC via serial cable and download maps and track data. Very, very cool and I used it not only for geocaching, but for just about every other navigation chore as well. It could find street addresses, show roads, map the boundaries of my property - hell it could even find where I'd left the car in the Disney parking lot in Anaheim.

Last week, though, it crapped out. It's tiny little electronic brain frizzed and the display died a pixilated death. I nearly panicked - not because I'm afraid of getting lost, but because I've gotten so dependent on GPS that I don't want to be without it. So I immediately looked to see what Magellan had to offer in their latest product line - and was seriously disappointed. The company has, uh, declined. They are no longer innovators, and seem to be mired in the past. Here's the thing though, there are two major manufacturers of civilian GPS units in North America, Magellan and Garmin. And for those of us who are GPS nuts, it's a lot like the difference between Macs and PC's. I've always used Magellan and I was seriously reluctant to go over to the dark side of Garmin - yeah, that moral dilemma lasted just long enough for me to read through the abysmal product reviews of Magellan's latest Triton line. So, I headed up to Sportsman's Warehouse to look at Garmin units. I knew exactly how much I wanted to spend and exactly what features I wanted - and unfortunately couldn't find that in any of Garmin's products.

Then I spotted something I'd never heard of - the Delorme Earthmate PN-20. I'm familiar with Delorme, they make some of the best Topographic maps in the world, but I didn't know they'd branched out into GPS. The unit looked like everything I wanted, and then some. I went home and did some research online, and immediately went back and bought it.

I've been playing with it for a week and I've come to the following conclusion: It rocks. Seriously.

It's small and lightweight, water proof and it floats. The case is high visibility yellow (don't think that's important? Try dropping your black Sporttrak in thick Alaskan brush sometime), it runs on a pair of AA's and has very good battery life, and you can use Li-Ion rechargables which the unit will charge from the USB cable or optional power cord. It's got 75MB's of internal memory and takes 2gig SD chips in an integrated card slot located in the battery compartment. It has a high-resolution color display and extremely simple controls and intuitive system navigation. Like most high end modern GPS units, it has an integrated electronic compass, sun and moon tables, fishing and hunting predictors, and can store far more waypoints, routes, and POI's than you'll ever use. And it does something I've never seen in any handheld GPS unit, military or civilian, in addition to detailed topographic and street maps, it can also download and display satellite imagery of the ground you're walking over. That is just so cool, that I can hardly contain myself. But wait there's more - Delorme has included one of the absolute best software mapping packages I've ever seen, and I'm including military software here. Delorme Topo USA 7.0 is PC based (I don't know if they are planning a Mac version or not) and is worth the price of admission all by itself - hell, If I was a Mac user, I'd buy a PC just to run this software. It's a professional level package, not one of those cheap atlas program you can buy at Wal-Mart, or view on the net. When Delorme transferred their high resolution topo maps to electronic format, they lost nothing in detail and not only can you display the maps in normal flat 2D mode, you can also show them in 3D mapping mode with realtime control. In fact you can split the screen and show both displays at the same time. You can add layers to the maps, adding your own information and points of interest. You can upload data recorded in the Earthmate via the included USB cable or the Bluetooth add-on, and plot it in layers over the topo maps. If you load the software on a laptop, you can plug the Earthmate into it and track your GPS position on Topo USA in realtime - this is a powerful tool for people on the road or on the water, for surveyors, for property managers, and the like. The software has a significant learning curve, but there is extensive help both integrated and online, and Delorme includes a tutorial DVD in the package. Overall I've got no complaints about either the software or the hardware. This is an excellent unit at an extremely reasonable price - the nearest comparable Garmin unit is about $300USD more, and doesn't include mapping software, that's a separate purchase. Magellan doesn't have anything to compare and I suspect they'll be out of business sooner or later. The Earthmate retails for around $419, but you can usually find it for about $350. For the next month Delorme is offering an interesting rebate. If you purchase the package for over $299 (up to $420), they'll send you a rebate check for the difference - making the purchase price $299. Period. That's an exceptionally good deal.

From the left: Mid-80's Motorola Traxar, early 90's Magellan GPS350, early oo's Magellan Sporttrak Pro, and finally the Delorme Earthmate PN-20. On the computer screen is the split-display 2D/3D Topo USA 7.0 topographic map display showing the Government Peak area of Hatcher Pass, Alaska.

So, bottom line: If you're looking for a really cool gadget or you need a dependable, affordable, and exceptionally advanced handheld navigation system - you're not going to do much better than the Delorne Earthmate PN-20, in any price range.

Get one, and give geocaching a try.

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- I mentioned above that the Delorme PN-20 took 2Gig SD chips. And it does - as shipped. However, I neglected to mention that Delorme pushes out regular firmware updates and that if you update the PN-20, the 2Gig limitation is no longer an issue. An updated PN-20 will take all capacity SD cards on up to the new 32Gig SDHC chips. This update massively increases the PN-20's capability to download and store highly detailed regional maps and satellite imagery. There's a couple of ways to do this, if you've got several hours you can download large files via the USB connection, or a much faster method is to plug the SD card into the computer and download directly to that. One minor issue - not all computers, especially older models, can read high-capacity SD cards. You might need to update a driver or two. Just saying.

- Several GPS and outdoor forums and websites linked to this post. For those of you surfing from those links, Howdy and thanks for coming by. So far today there's been almost 600 of you. Feel free to comment. A poster on one forum mentioned that he thought my dating on the beginning of Geocaching was a little off - i.e. he thought that caching began after Selective Availability was turned off. He's right, sort of. Geocaching was around during the SA period, however it was not nearly the phenomenon it is nowadays. Both the world wide web and civilian use of GPS were in their infancy - a bunch of us goofy bastards used to email around caching info, or post it on BBS's such as CompuServe (remember them?). Caching was a whole lot more primitive and had a variety of names and methods back there in the dark ages. GPS would maybe get you within 100 yards of the cache, on a really good day, then you'd have to follow clues in the post to zero in on the treasure. Eventually both the web and the technology improved, SA was turned off, and things merged and formalized and evolved into the sport you see today. And it's still evolving - which is cool. Really, try it, you'll like it.

- Some folks have complained about the PN-20's battery life. I don't know about them, but I've been running this unit on and off since last Sunday, I just drove into Anchorage and back running the unit the whole time - about 4 hours. Figure so far I've got roughly 12 hours on the original Duracell Copper Tops and I'm still showing 1/4 charge left - this is equivalent to what I was getting with the Sporttrak Pro. Battery life though is highly variable, depending on usage. Running the backlit screen all the time will suck significantly more amps than unlit usage.

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Follow-up Post: Delorme Test Drive and syncing pictures to Topo USA 7.0.

Weird, sort of creepy - and just damned cool

Meet Boston Dynamic's BigDog - a whole lot cooler and more advanced than that stupid Japanese walking toaster, what an asimo:



According to the the website, BigDog runs on a two-stroke gasoline engine which powers its hydraulic system, it has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos, the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. So far, BigDog has trotted at 3.3 mph, climbed a 35 degree slope and carried a 120 lb load.

It needs a muffler, or a quieter power plant - but can you see this thing trotting along with a squad of soldiers? Or even carrying your camping gear on an overnight hike? How about a train of these things carrying tourists on their backs down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back?

No jetpacks yet - still, it's starting to feel a lot like the 21st Century.

Space Cowboys

The USS Lake Erie shot down a falling satellite on the first try.

Man I love typing that.

Having been part of a number of missile shoots myself, I can say that unless you've done it you just can't imagine the shear number of things that can go wrong in a "normal" intercept. To take out an orbital target with a single interceptor, that's just plain friggin' incredible.

Well done, Lake Erie.

Hopefully COMTHIRDFLT will allow them to paint a satellite on their bridge wing.

Best. Idea. Ever.

This is the kind of innovation we need more of.

Pleasant Surprise at Best Buy

I own a number of computers, about ten in all, scattered throughout Stonekettle Station. I use the big monster HP tower in the den for writing and photoshoppery and data storage, etc. There's another one in the upstairs office that my wife uses for business and one in my son's room (with parental controls enabled), and various other machines scattered around. But I don't like being tied to a desk, and so for most non-writing related things I use a laptop. Becky has one too, for similar reasons, and she usually has her business laptop at home as well. I love the portability of my wireless laptop; with the extended range signal booster added to the wireless network router I can get a connection and excellent bandwidth pretty much anywhere on my property. Becky and I tend to wear out laptops at an alarming rate however, and every couple of years we've got to get new ones. Currently I'm using a Gateway CX2618 Convertible, a tablet laptop that is hands down the best damned machine I've ever owned. I can't see ever owning a laptop that isn't tablet capable ever again. It does everything I want, and the ergonomic design suits my damaged hands perfectly. About the only downside is the weight, the thing is heavy, mostly because of the large 8-cell battery (which doubles as a cushioned hand grip in tablet mode). However, I think the weight is a fair trade-off for seven hours of battery power (Gateway does offer a smaller, lighter 6-cell battery with less battery time. Do not want).

The Gateway was expensive but I got a pretty good deal on it at the Best Buy in Anchorage (computer companies don't offer free shipping to Alaska, in fact they often charge extra. So it's generally cheaper to buy technology locally and pay a little higher retail) - and on impulse I went ahead and bought the extended warranty. Now I don't normally do that, either buy computers from Best Buy or purchase extended warranties. There are damned few things I don't know about computer systems and not much I can't fix myself. I've been doing this for a long time (my first computer was a homebuilt HeathKit 8-bit Z80 breadboard running CPM, that should give you a basic idea of my experience), so I figure I know just a bit more about it than the Geek Squad nerds. Plus, at the rate I go through laptops, I'm usually in the market for a new one before the warranty expires. But for some reason I decided to purchase Best Buy's three year extended warranty, I don't know why, sometimes I do things even I don't understand.

Last week the CX2618's battery charging light came on, and stayed on - after the battery was fully charged. The power meter showed 88% charge, even though the machine had been plugged in for several hours. I unplugged it, discharged the battery, and plugged it back in. Same results. Uh oh. So I tried a full battery maintenance cycle. You do this by disabling the power save options and shutdown warnings. Run the computer until the battery is fully discharged, recharge, and again three times. Same results - the battery would only charge to 88%. Well, crap.

Pretty obvious what happened, 12% loss in an 8-cell battery indicates a cell failure, and a failed cell will cause the other cells to start failing sooner rather than later. I need every bit of charge I can get. A failing battery would seriously harsh my mellow, dammit. So, a new battery is not a luxury, it's a necessity, and I'm looking at $160 minimum, plus S&H, and a two week wait (nobody local carries them).

But, about then I remembered that extended warranty! Ah Ha! What are the odds that the warranty covers laptop batteries? I don't know, says I to myself, let's look. Only I can't find the stinking paperwork. Anywhere. Argh!

We had to go into Anchorage anyway. So I figured what the hell, I took the battery and went to Best Buy to see if they had a copy of the paperwork. Best Buy was zoo, worse than usual with the pre-xmas chaos, and there was a line at the service desk. Three people ahead of me in line all had the same problem - they had forgotten their passwords and managed to lock themselves out of Windows. Uh, duh. $30 bucks for the Geek Squad to do a reset on Windows XP's shitty security. Man, I'm in the wrong business, thats like free money. So anyway, half an hour in line and I finally got up to the geek, I explained my problem and the lack of paperwork. Now I expected two things: 1) no tickee, no laundry, and 2) batteries not included. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong, on both accounts. He asked for my phone number, which I gave to him, and he pulled up the paperwork in a jiffy. Printed it out and gave me a copy. Cool. A couple of clicks later, and Geek Squad boy says, "OK, sir, you're all set. We'll mail you a new battery in a couple of days. You should have it in within ten days, max." Two minutes and I'm done, and happy. How often does that happen to me? (shut UP. Don't go there)

I got an email notice last night from Best Buy customer service telling me the battery has been shipped via UPS. According to the tracking number it'll be on my doorstep tomorrow. Cool, and just about as painless as it gets in the technology world.

The extended warranty cost me less than the new battery would have. And, get this, Geek Squad guy told me that since I've got eighteen months left on the warranty, to come back right before it expires and swap the battery out for another new one. Oh, and have a nice day.

You just can't beat that. Thanks Best Buy, next time I need a laptop I know who I'll be buying it from - along with the extended warranty.

Sunrise on Pioneer Peak

After the last post I needed to step away from the computer for an hour or so. I spent 45 minutes in the shop, hollowing out a bowl on the lathe. Afterward I stepped outside to finish my coffee and saw the sun coming up over the mountains. This is what is looked like.



And now that my blood is sufficiently settled, I'll get back to writing.

Blue Diamond

This is the Knik (pronounced K-nik, say the "Cuh" sound) Glacier from my back window. It's about fifteen miles away, at the base of the Chugach rampart. That's it, right there in the middle. Cool, uh? (pun definitely intended)


In the summer, when the trees are fully leafed out, you can't see the glacier from the ground level of my house, you've got to go upstairs onto the second deck sunroom balcony to see it. In the winter though, you can see the whole icefield from the main floor. Today it's overcast and and gray out, but there was this one shaft of sunlight illuminating the ice. So, I decided to share it with you.

If you're a Google Earth person, you can get to the right place by starting Google Earth, then searching for the placemark: "191205 Op Knik Glacier"

Tvashtar

I was helping my son with his science homework this evening.

Using the internet, he was supposed to look up an active volcano and write down the information he found. The only provision is that the volcano must be outside the United States.

We found one.

That's got to be worth an "A." Got to be.