dryfter: (gir_muffin)
Had a great time at [livejournal.com profile] rillaith's place - lots of games, including a mammoth Munchkin session, and also got to put a few more faces to names.

There's a trend forming here. I keep spending my weekends outside of London:
In the last few weeks I've been to Chideock, Surbiton, Cambridge, and Tadley.
I'm certainly putting a good few miles onto the bike lately - I didn't think I'd hit the 16,000 mile service until next year, as I assumed I wouldn't be riding it much until after winter. .. but it's almost due it now.

Another downside to these extremely short days: I don't particularly like riding on motorways in the dark for long periods; it's just less pleasant. It is, however, better than the alternatives - ie. my arch-nemesis, public transport.

I noticed that the GPS receiver works better once you're outside of ultra-urban areas. Here, all the tall buildings block the satellite signals that are lower on the horizon, and so the triangulation is less accurate when you're only using signals that are right overhead. I imagine that fact that my receiver isn't much larger than a matchbox doesn't help - it must have a tiny antenna in there.
Still seems to do the job though.

GPS stuff

Dec. 2nd, 2005 06:30 pm
dryfter: (Default)
The GPS receiver arrived today, so my phone is now directionally unchallenged. Unfortunately the big SD memory card hasn't arrived yet, so I couldn't fit the entire of the UK onto the phone (100Mb) - just central London (~8Mb) (Which covers about the same area as the small A-Z map books).

The software I'm using also supports voice output for driving directions, so in theory I can use it with the motorbike when going on journeys too. There are some helmets with bluetooth headsets built into them, so if I got one of those, I wouldn't have to fiddle about trying to get a headphone to stay in my ear whilst putting the helmet on.

Bluetooth GPS receivers were surprisingly cheap on ebay. I thought this sort of gear used to be quite expensive, and only available as fairly expensive CF or SD cards for PDAs. The dedicated hardware goes for hundreds of pounds, too.

Using a Phone/PDA has some benefits, too, such as the ability to share your location with other people via GPRS. Could be handy if you were touring on the road or something, I guess.

Profile

dryfter: (Default)
Toby "dryfter" Wintermute

December 2010

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
1213 1415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios