Comparative GPS

This morning I had an interesting experience that set me thinking. I will explain the situation later, but first, my history of GPS use.

My first GPS device was a Garmin 62s with a separately purchased map pack that collectively set me back about $750 in 2011 or thereabouts. It's best for hiking (and geocaching) but is capable of navigation. I bought a car mount and tried it out. The results weren't great. It had no idea where Fullarton Road or occasionally, entire suburbs, might be and directed me to take illegal or impossible turns. If made to recalculate more than three times it would stop navigation in a huff. Worst, it could only beep. I returned to using paper maps though still use this otherwise rugged and reliable unit - just not as a driving GPS.

The majority of my experience is with the function built into Samsung Android phones, particularly an s2 and a note 3. This does have peculiar ideas about pronunciation and what constitutes a slight turn vs. a turn but the verbal instructions are timely and clear. I don't even have to remove my phone from my bag once it's set. It is patient with recalculation and has good traffic data that lets me know the best route at the time I want it.

This brings me to the experiences I have had in the last week. I have had the opportunity to drive a 2014 Subaru with inbuilt factory GPS while moving. It's a very nice car. I am already regretting not having cruise control in my own. The first few times I used the inbuilt GPS it went well. I really liked the indication on which lane to pick and the pronunciation was no worse than my phone's. This was until I visited friends last night and had a slightly unfamiliar route to take afterwards. I chose a point along the way rather than the destination as it was easier and I was tired. As I did not stop at the destination the car nav kept telling me to turn around all the way home and I could not see how to cancel it.

In the morning, it attempted to start navigating to the same place. I didn't have time to figure out how to cancel, so just programmed my destination from the device's history - the house I have just left and am cleaning, a trip of around 50km and,  in decent traffic, about an hour. I know the drive between my parents' house and my own very, very well. The route the car chose without benefit of traffic data was absurd. With peak hour in full swing it would go through many of Adelaide's most congested areas. I drove another way - South Road was very congested but quite quickly I was on a series of linked expressways and highways and flying along at 90-110kph with the aid of cruise control and none of the congestion. I thought it would be interesting to see when it recalculated to my route. I was first concerned before I even reached the first expressway as it asked me to turn from the underpass onto a road more than five metres directly overhead. It constantly nagged for u-turns and asked me to take every single expressway exit.

As I drew closer to my destination the game instead became one of seeing how close I could get to my destination without it agreeing with me. The answer amazed me. I arrived,  parked in the driveway and looked at the display informing me that while my car was on the nav map's finish flag I had 92km and over an hour and a half to get to where I already was. Since it's such a strange result I took a picture so you can see the truth of it.

I zoomed out and noticed that it wanted me to go back to a place on its route shortly after I deviated from its plans. I think that I will use my phone from here on. With SA requirements I can't look at that at all, but at least it is not so mind-blowingly daft.

Seeking out art and making my own

Week 20 (11-17 May)

At some point I got ahead of myself, this week is actually week 20...

With a whimsical photo of my fridge and onions at the supermarket, you can see that my week got off to slightly dull start. I did make a bookmark, at least. Thankfully things picked up toward the weekend, on Friday Cibo's offered free coffee for it's first day in Gawler so I took some puzzles and did a little people watching. On Saturday I visited the Art Gallery, which I'm slowly working my way through trying to see everything. I can only properly look at so much art in one day, and at the moment I've almost finished Gallery 3 - the first two galleries only took a visit each, but the third is much, much bigger. A third trip ought to be enough to see it properly. I also took time to check out the unofficial art around Adelaide. This week's feature photo is one of the coolest I've found in a while, if you want to see it for yourself it's behind the ANZ in Rundle Mall.

I'm really proud of the photo I took on Sunday too. It's the last of the small images, and was taken to the theme 'Home' in the photo a day I intermittently take part in. I've enjoyed it so far, but not really drawn any attention. There are some very talented people there. This photo, however, has been something of a success. I didn't really want to take a picture of my house - it's a nice place to live but not terribly photogenic. Instead, I just played with the idea and came up with an image captioned 'Home is where the books are'.

2015: A photo odyssey, part next

This is a catch up post, I'm just going to give you a few photos for the weeks I've missed posting for rather than worrying too much about having one a day. When I set out to take these photos, I promised myself I wouldn't let it get too stressful. It's a personal project taken on for the fun of it. So next month I'm going to try using prompts again because I find them a good source of inspiration - and in the cooler months I find photographic inspiration in much shorter supply than usual.

Moving right along.

Week 13 (16-22 March)

The highlight photo is from the chocolate walking tour I went on - a birthday present from Mum and Dad as this year I decided that I was more interested in doing things with people than coming up with a list of stuff. It was amazing! We stopped at seven venues, tried an amazing variety of chocolatey things and learned quite a bit as we went! This mint iced chocolate from Steven ter Horst was absolutely wonderful.

Week 14 (23-29 March)

 

The most significant thing this week, was that with incredibly inconvenient timing, my phone completely failed. Attempts at bring it back failed, and a new phone was ordered. After a phoneless week, I got the new one... which has a fault with the aux out. So it's gone back for repairs and as I write this I'm using a temporary very cheap phone I bought. It's got an incredibly dreadful camera in it, and I'm eager to have the very nice new phone back.

The highlight photo I chose because I preferred it to the dead phone photo (which is the first little one, I was feeling silly that day). It's part of my back fence, though the gate is in the neighbours' section. It's a heritage listed stable wall and gradually crumbling but it is quite beautiful.

Week 15 (March 30-April 5)

The highlight this week was a camping trip - I spent the long weekend with a great group of people camping, walking, photographing and snorkelling. There's a much bigger album of photos on Facebook if you are interested. The highlight is a fishing boat on the beach at Pondalowie Bay, near our campsite. The oldest graffiti is from 2008, so at a guess that's roughly how long it's been there. It made an amazing photography subject (and backdrop)!

During this week I actually had my new phone, I had some important calls to make/take and hung onto it until I could arrange a substitute. The photo of my feet has a short story - I took a photo much like it for Instagram on my previous phone, but I wasn't able to send it out before my phone shut itself down for the last time, not able to connect to a computer for retrieval (thankfully all but that photo had been backed up).

Week 16 (6-12 April)

A pretty normal week, mostly, and one for getting things done. In the case of the first photo, with a chai and in the Adelaide City Library. After my  haircut, I had work to get done on a deadline. The library proved to be a great place to plug in and get things sorted out.

I also went to a Board Games Day event - and won the door prize! Otherwise it was a good but unremarkable week of getting things done.

Week 17 (13-19 April)

Bacon + Eggs + Pancakes + Maple Syrup is the love story that won me some movie tickets in a twitter competition. There really only was one way to celebrate...

Side note, I actually like this one highlight, other smaller photos format. It's far less time consuming to put together, and I think it looks better too. Just as well I decided to change format for the catch up!

2015 Photo Challenge Week 7

Themes used this week

40 - Energy - I burnt some off in the evening along the river track. I'd like to make this a more frequent occurrence.

41 - This inspires me - I often find street art inspiring, this was done by local artist Jake Sanders for Gawler's Fringe events. I've got a card design sketched out that this inspired, now that the weather's cooled off I'll have to see about making it.

42 - On the wall - I helped a lady put up her exhibition in a library a few years ago - I told her this was my favourite of her works. After I helped her to take it down again, she presented it to me. Such a good memory every time I see it just inside my front door.

43 - Pointy - my most used craft tool, an x-acto knife with a lovely fresh blade in it. I feel more confident with it than I do with a pencil or pen. That said, the circle in the background was cut using an adjustable circle cutter, another most excellent tool.

44 - Temptation - on a very hot day, I felt a great deal of temptation to find a place to immerse myself in water, unfortunately there wasn't a suitable option available. These pigeons found one in the fountain in front of the museum on North Terrace though.

45 - Love - Once again the library in Gawler ran a Blind Date With A Book promotion for Valentine's Day/Library Lovers Day. I made time to sit down with coffee, roses from the garden and some of a favourite chocolate. As hoped, the book 'The Ladies' Paradise' by Emile Zola was one I'd not have picked up on my own. I do love a good chance to try something new and different.

46 - Spot - A lovely spot to spend a couple of evenings this weekend... the laneway event in Gawler in connection with the Fringe, 'The Place Next Door' was nice and relaxed, a pretty ordinary laneway transformed into an art-filled performance venue and hangout spot.

2015 photo challenge week 6

I decided to try out some of the lists of photo prompts, I chose Fat Mum Slim's list for this month, it's weekly so I started on the 2nd.

33 - Mail - Today's mail included a bunch of advertising junk and a letter for a previous occupant of my house. Instead, I made this card as a birthday/congratulations card. I like sending out mail, both the making of it and giving someone something that wasn't automated in their mailbox.

Using a few reference images for ideas I sketched some (well, many) foxes, eventually got one that I thought would work. I don't usually start from scratch like that, I've got no confidence in my drawing ability so used this as an opportunity to stretch myself. I'm more confident in my knife work and did modify the image slightly at that stage. I'm out of practice and can see minor flaws, but am learning to forgive myself those, especially working on the tiny scale here (nose is 2mm wide). Nobody else seems to notice them so perhaps I can allow myself a little leeway.

34 - Water - I had a few errands to run in the Adelaide CBD, once I was done I took the scenic route back to the railway station to enjoy the weather. This photo is from the Adelaide University footbridge.

35 - Reward - A morning of getting jobs around the house done, so ice cream and some time to read made a good reward. I've finished the book now, fifteenth of the year (!) so I'll be reviewing again soon.

36 - Something blue - detail of the pattern on my plates, bowls etc. Inherited from Nanna, so there are happy memories every day when I use them.

37 - Makes me smile - I took this photo on February 6, Grandpa would have been 100 that day. Grandma, Mum, Dad and I visited the cemetery where Grandpa's ashes are interred, took a new bunch of red silk roses to replace the faded ones, and some red roses we'd grown. This is the one I took. It's the memories that make me smile, and it's a big part of why I love growing roses.

38 - Stripes - Buttons are one of my favourite craft materials. The button necklaces I have made have a wonderful colourful stripy-ness. I pulled some buttons out of my jars to put this picture together. Mmm. Buttons.

39 - In my bag - something to read. Never know when I'll have a quiet moment or need a book-y retreat. I often have e-books for use on the go, but just now I'm slowly making my way through this book.

2015 photo challenge week 5

26 - Barbecue in a park, playing cricket and kubb, listening to the hottest 100. Magic. Battery operated radio required so I located my CD/Cassette/Radio from the mid nineties and reacquainted myself with tuning in analogue. The party host tracked down the 6xD batteries needed (apparently a rare size now). Challenge increased as the display is apparently somewhat inaccurate - that photo has it tuned to play 105.5. I was too busy playing cricket and such on the day to take photos, so since the radio played an important part, here it is.

27 - A haircut does wonders for the way I feel about myself. I don't know why,exactly, but it's not something I'm going to complain about. I thought it was time that my photo appeared in my project too. (The one on day 24 wasn't originally intended to be part of it, bit of an afterthought)

28 - Calendars have become part of the Christmas tradition, Mum and Dad get me a different one each year. This one features Monet's work, January was 'The water-lily pond with the Japanese bridge' (1899). A whole month gone... dang.

29 - I'll never get tired of sunsets, you don't even need to go far to appreciate them. This was taken from the end of my driveway. The rest of this commentary's going to head into editing, self-critique and such so if you're not interested, skip ahead ;)

One thing I've been learning this year is how to use my photo editing tools better. If I want a quick edit and I'm on a computer that's cool with the idea, I'll use google's inbuilt stuff (or instagram's), but for better results I'm using GIMP 2.8, rather good set of tools, and free too - I'm mostly editing levels though I also twitched a bit using brightness, contrast, lightness and saturation. Many of my photos, prior to editing, have colours and contrasts that don't really represent what I saw. Learning to use my camera better will help a bit, but editing will always factor in. I'm trying to strike a balance between beautiful colours and pushing things beyond reality. I think this one's a touch overdone - I should have edited it to be more orange than purple as the sky was predominantly orange that evening. It's a nice image that I find visually pleasing, I think the composition's good if not stellar but while enhancing an image is often necessary I want to represent what I saw, which this isn't quite achieving. I'll keep trying...

30 - Movie night at Apex Park in Gawler. It was a lovely night though the turnout was apparently somewhat down from the previous week. While I waited for the sun to set I enjoyed one of the cupcakes... again I realised this photo was very fuzzy when I saw it on a larger screen but I can't retake this. So... here are some flowers I saw on the way too? I got two photos of these, the other is a shade clearer but I prefer the composition of this one.

31 - I bought the wrong kind of feta so rather than have it go to waste, I made spanakopita, a new recipe for me. I'd link you to the recipe but I was rather free with it, halving the quantity, substituting frozen spinach for baby spinach and adjusting a few other things as necessary. Thankfully it's a very forgiving recipe - some cooking is more an art, some cooking is more sciencey... this one seems more at the art end. I think next time I'll add a little grated lemon rind, several recipes included that but the one I used did not. I've not cooked with pastry much before, especially in a savoury context, so I was very pleased with the outcome.

32 - After a night in the fridge, the results were delicious. I'm very proud of the results. I've tried it both cool and warmed, I prefer it warmed in the oven as it causes the pastry to become super-crispy and delicious.