More uninteresting crap… Now from England!

The topic of babies came up again… more friends hatching more babies (3 close friends in the span of a month or so.)

Deb and I have agreed to defer any possible baby we might have until after this England adventure is over. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still talk about the idea. The basic dialog is the same, but this time it ended with a new twist…

(Heavily condensed transcript follows)

Me: “So do you see us having kids?”
Deb: “Not anytime soon…”
Me: “But do you want to have a kid?”
Deb: “We’d make good parents”
Me: “But do you want to have a kid?”
Deb: “Well I can imagine having one, it would probably be fun…”
Me: “Do you desire a baby?”
Deb: “uh…”
Me: “Do you desire a kitten?”
Deb: “Absolutely!”

I’m guessing people that want babies must desire them at least as much as we’d like a kitten. For us, for now, it’s kittens by a landslide.

The topic of concerts we’ve been to came up last night. It’s personal info that doesn’t actually reveal anything substantive… perfect for a blog.

Here’s my list in reverse chronological order:

Bon Jovi opening for RATT
Poison opening for RATT
Skid Row (watched it from the hillside overlooking Point Stadium in Johnstown)
Marylin Manson opening for Nine Inch Nails
Type O Negative, Pantera, Ozzy and Black Sabbath (Ozzfest ’97)
Page and Plant
Tori Amos
GWAR opening for Insane Clown Posse
Rob Zombie, Slayer, and Ozzy (Ozzfest 200?)

I had a chance to take my new Zumo 550 mounted to my CBR1100XX out for a spin this weekend, and now can give a bit of a hands on report.

Installation: For once, something went easy. I don’t have old school tubular bars on my bike, and the clutch mount option would interfere with my windscreen. This eliminated the two provided ways to attach the Zumo to the bike. Fortunately I was able to put the u-clamp around the riser on my Heli-bars… this put the Zumo in a near perfect location. None of the gauges were obscured and no interference with moving parts or accessing the ignition.

The device: The screen is bright and clear, even in difficult lighting situations. The mount is very solid and secure feeling (which is good… I’d hate to see $1000 of electronics skipping down the road.) More importantly, it’s quick to dock and undock the unit, and small enough to not be a burden to carry (take it with you when you park!) I had no problems working most of the device with gloves on.

The UI: I’m still a bit unhappy with the UI, the main map display specifically. The TomTom UI was clearly better and yesterday’s ride just hammered that fact home. Specific shortcomings:

1) Just not as clear. TomTom used better colors, better fonts, and better layout.
2) Zumo lacks the next turn indicator. That little glyph in the corner was brilliant. It helped make sense of roundabouts which might be hard understand looking at the map. It was also something that could be quickly glanced at to know that a few miles up the road I might want to be in a particular lane.
3) Framerate. The map display doesn’t update as smoothly as the TomTom. It is just enough of a difference to make navigating in congested areas (“this left? or the next left?) a bit more difficult. You need to look, not just glance to piece things together and know what’s going on.
4) Slower to recalculate. I had one instance where it took 10-15 seconds to figure itself out, and during that time I had no map at all (just a little message saying “drawing…”) I never saw this happen on the TomTom.

Now that I’m more comfortable with the menu UI, I’d say that it’s on par with the TomTom… maybe a little better because it’s more tolerant of fat fingers. Having dedicated buttons to augment the touch screen is nice.

Routing: I’m still learning how to deal with routes and tracklogs, but my first attempt was a success. I think that’s a sign that the feature is reasonably well designed. I used Mapsource to plot out a route (an easy enough process, although with some room for improvement) and uploaded it to the GPS (a simple one click process.)

When we got ready to set off, it was just a matter of selecting the route and we were on our way. I made a few goofs when I made the route (mistakenly setting the waypoint a hundred feet up another street at an intersection, necessitating a u-turn, etc. I think the trick here is not to set the waypoints at the intersection but just before/after. I also made a few goofs navigating as I was having fun motoring along not realizing a turn was just ahead. I was happy to see I could very easily add waypoints en-route. This is key because a motorcycle just wouldn’t be as fun without the freedom to change your mind and visit something else that looks interesting (and nice to find the nearest petrol/toilet too.) We stopped, and visited a castle ruin, and when restarted I was again happy to see I could easily pickup the route where I left off.

Tracklog: This feature is really neat. I copied the GPXs over to my machine. Used Google Earth to suck them in, and there it was… our complete trip overlayed on the globe. The trackpoint resolution is very good, capturing all the little twists and turns on these tiny country roads.

You can see the route in Google Maps here:
Bourne End, Berkhamstead Loop in Google Maps

Or download this to see it in Google Earth:
Bourne End, Berkhamstead Loop KMZ file

Interesting note… must be some quirk in the tracklog. It seems to have captured some erroneous speed data at one point (you might have to look at the KMZ directly or the properties in GoogleEarth to notice.)

I had a post linked to earlier this week by GPS Tracklog. Within minutes I had 17 spam comments… all helpfully consigned to the trash by Askimet. Now they are just rolling in.

I bought a Garmin Zumo 500 this week, and sold my TomTom Go 910.

I had really specific reasons for this decision. I wanted GPS navigation for my motorcycle, and back when I moved to the UK, the Zumo was not yet for sale. So I bought the best GPS with European maps available in the US, the TomTom 910. The Zumo is unique, because it’s waterproof, vibration-proof, and has an interface which is a bit more glove friendly. It also has a mount designed to really hold.

I’ve now had a chance to use the Zumo, and here are my impressions:

The TomTom UI beats the Garmin hands down. The Garmin’s UI is very similar to that found on the Nuvi models, so keep this in mind if you are thinking about getting one of those. It’s not that the Garmin UI doesn’t work, it’s just no where near as polished as the TomTom… and it’s these little things that make a difference when you are driving. The TomTom has this little turn indicator glyph in the lower left corner. The glyph really shines in roundabouts. At a glance you know what to expect ahead. It’s like this throughout the UI, little things that add up to a cleaner, yet more information rich display.

Startup time and satellite acquisition: again the TomTom wins. The Zumo takes longer to boot, and longer to acquire a satellite. The TomTom usually had a lock before I startred moving, the Garmin is about 30secs behind. It also jacks me off with a warning about navigating while driving every startup, then bugs me again when it connects via bluetooth to my phone. Hey Garmin: ditch the warning and use a little icon to indicate you connected to my phone, not a giant dialog that obscures the map.

Form factor: Garmin wins… it is larger, but not as thick making it more pocket-able.

Maps: TomTom’s map display looks better. Can’t comment yet on the accuracy or routing ability.

Cost: Zumo is close to $1000 (ouch) with EU maps, the 910 is $450 with NA and EU.

So why am I still happy with my Zumo: Works well on a motorcycle. Has really nice tracklog features. Expect future posts documenting my motorcycle adventures that you’ll be able to view in Google Earth. I can also cross reference these track files with EXIF data from my pictures to geo-tag them.

Update: I’ve had a chance to use it on the bike. Check out my first impressions.

I’ve been neck deep in support work for the last few weeks. Something I’d desperately like to dig myself out from under by next week.

In the meantime my calendar has been filling up. As of today I am booked almost solid through mid-to-end of May.

Summary:
On the 3rd I’m back in Sweden for a client visit.
2 days later my mother and grandmother will be flying in for a visit.
On the 15th I’m flying back with them to Pittsburgh.
I’ll be in the ‘burgh until the end of April for yet more training at work.
The week of the 8th of May I’ll be at a client near Manchester for the week.
The week after it looks like I may be in Madrid.

We had a satellite dish installed this week. Pay a one time fee for the box & install (~£150) + £20 for the Sky card that enables “Free to View” channels, and you are good to go. No additional fees.

I’m guessing we have well over 200 channels. A surprising amount of good free content, sports channels being the notable exception. At least 20-30 of the channels are music video channels, which can be captivating for those of us with short attention spans.

I had been wondering if the content available would reflect a more European attitude towards moral issues. It wasn’t as noticeable on the few broadcast channels we had been receiving (basically the Beeb and ITV1), which seemed to edit out some gun violence and allowed some swearing. However, it’s boobies galore on the freesat channels. After 10pm, even the SciFi channel is showing Cinemax-style softcore (no penetration, no wieners.)

The real bonus has been all the TopGear. I’m quickly getting caught up on all the back episodes. Deb is now a fan too. I signed up for studio tickets, which have a 1-2year wait list. Maybe we’ll get a pair before we head back.

American Express sent me my year end summary for 2006. I only got the card in June, but in that time I managed to charge $41,426 on it.