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June 16, 2007
New toy...
I've found a new toy for the travelling man - a gps receiver. There's nothing new about GPS. It's been around for years and more than a decade or two in the military. But until now I've never really thought about gettting one. I've never done much camping, hiking or driving where I was that far off the beaten path that I'd need satellites to get me unlost, found, or out of quagmire.
So why did I get one now? Well, I borrowed Stu's GPS to play around with and took it on some bike rides down the surrounding station's fencerows. When I got back I had a complete track of my ride and a better idea of distances travelled and what directions I'd set off in. This was helpful as the first time I'd ridden off in search of new things and adventure I ended up 2km up the Stuart Highway. Stu's GPS was several years old and still worked quite well, so I convinced myself that in getting a relatively nice one now, I'd have something to use for years to come. It's always easier to justify buying a new toy when you can amortize it over several years.
Being in Daly Waters and the middle of nowhere has led me to step up my use of eBay. Found a good deal online and within a week I had a brand new Garmin eTrex Legend CX to play with.
Along with spending a bit of time mapping out bike routes along fencerows, I've also been having a look at satellite images of Daly Waters, the old airport and the surrounding area. A view that originates in outer space and shows a bike ride is quite the testament to our technological advances. Google Earth is a great program to use and if nothing else provides the party trick of 'let's see what your house looks like from space'. Apart from that it's also a very powerful tool that can be added to and modified by its users.
Stuck on dialup internet, I don't quite have the freedoms to explore multimedia blogging that broadband provided. I am going to attempt some rough combinations of gps, photos and blogging. With a camera, gps and google earth, a whole trip can be plotted and recorded with the photos taken attached to a location on earth. There is some new word for this like geoblogging or geophotography, etc. I'm not sure if it will work very well but I'm going to see what I can put together.
So keep an eye out for some geocrazy stuff going on in Dr.Unk's Office.
Posted by Dr.Unk at June 16, 2007 8:09 PM
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