Loading custom POIs into a Garmin GPSMap 62s

Just to be thorough, I decided to load the newly minted poi.gpi file into my GPSMap 62s to see if it would work. So I plug in the 62s with the mini-USB cable, fire up POIloader and use express install. For some reason, my first attempt failed. POI loader did not recognize the sdcard as a device because I had not given the card a name. So I had to install the POI file using the Computer option. I pointed it to the SDCARD/Garmin directory. At that time, I had not yet created the SDCARD/Garmin/POI directory. I then manually moved the poi.gpi file into the correct directory. Bad idea. Nothing showed up on the 62s.

So I retraced my steps. First I gave the card a proper name. Then I erased the poi.gpi file in SDCARD/Garmin/POI. Fired up POIloader again. This time, the SDCARD showed up as a device. I chose this and express install. Now, the Extras item appears when I hit the FIND button on the 62s. Hurray!

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Garmin custom POIs on a Mac - revisited

Take a look at http://www8.garmin.com/products/poiloader/creating_custom_poi_files.jsp#mapsource.

Look at the section describing custom POI and MapSource. You can use the same method with BaseCamp. This is yet another way to do it. The good thing about this method is that you can use BaseCamp to organize your custom POI's. The downside is that you will have to assign icons and audio files upfront, when you are creating the POI's. This could potentially be a problem when trying to change proximity or speed alert parameters for a large number of POI's.

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Garmin custom POIs on a Mac

After a recent road trip up North I realized I wasn't all that familiar with my Nuvi 1490T and it's capabilities. Then I came across custom POIs while searching the web for Nuvi related articles. Here are a few useful links:

• Gary Hayman's Garmin GPS, Tricks, Tips, Work Arounds, Secrets and Ideas
• Dave Brillhart's GARMIN GPSCustom POI Alerts & TourGuides
• Garmin's POIloader utility

The CSV method is simple and works nicely but it doesn't allow one to specify both speed and proximity parameters simultaneously when installing into your Nuvi with POI loader in express mode. Preparing CSV files mean having to cut and paste coordinate parameters from Google Earth or Basecamp or some other program.

So here's my preferred approach for generating POI files right now (only good for small lists):

STEP 1: Create and export waypoints in BaseCamp
Fire up BaseCamp on your Mac. Load your map (see previous articles). If you wish to create a waypoint by browsing the map and dropping a pin, select a waypoint tool. Keep things a little better organized by creating a new list under "My Collections". Let's call it MyPOI. Now go to File > Export "MyPOI" and give it a path to save the GPX file. Now you have the GPX "source" file.

STEP 2: Edit and rename the exported waypoint GPX file
There are several methods you can use. Here are several examples:

1. Rename the GPX into a XXX_redlight.gpx file. This will turn all your waypoints into proximity alerts. If you specified a proximity radius while creating your waypoint, that will be the distance used. Otherwise it will default to 400m (assuming you select the metric option in POIloader).
2. Rename the GPX into XXX_speed_NN.gpx file, where NN is the speed. That will turn all your waypoints into speed alerts.
3. Rename the GPX into a XXX_speed.gpx file and include "@NN" at the end of your waypoint name. This allows you to set different speed alerts for POI's in the same file. However, this is probably of limited use since the POI icon and sound file are associated with a single file name -- which means you cannot represent the alerts with different speed icons.

Other than renaming the file, you can also delete portions of it. For example, if you are preparing a speed alert POI file, keep all the speed alert waypoint instances, but delete all the proximity alert instances.

STEP 3: Load POI file into your Nuvi with POIloader
FIre up POIloader and follow on screen instructions. Make sure you have your Nuvi connected.

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Problem communicating with the Garmin device

Got this error message this morning when I started BaseCamp and plugged in my 1490T. A quick search on Google revealed the possibility of a corrupt .GPX file. In this case, I had to remove the current.gpx file from my 1490T. Everything worked nicely after that. Strange. Here's a forum post on the topic: http://forums.gpsreview.net/viewtopic.php?t=22672.

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Installing MalSingMap into Garmin BaseCamp on a Mac

Having only used MapSource on a PC, I was not familiar with the BaseCamp equivalent on a Mac. I had just tried loading maps into BaseCamp (Mac version) by plugging in my GPSr only to discover that it would not detect MalSingMap that was installed on a uSD card.

I came across an article in the MalSingMaps Forums with a brief but incomplete description of the process. So here's my idiot's guide version to getting all this to work on a Mac. I really should get around to including some screenshots. But that's a labour intensive task that will have to wait until I retire or feel industrious. Hopefully this plain text version will get you started for now.

STEP 1 - Install VirtualBox and XP
You are going to need a Windows machine. Or a functioning instance of Windows running in a Virtual Machine on a Mac. This is not as difficult as it sounds. Download VirtualBox from Oracle and install. Start VirtualBox, insert your XP disk and follow instructions. Boot XP and Install all service packs.

STEP 2 - Install mapconverter
You will need to install Garmin's mapconverter utility. Get this from http://www.garmin.com/mapconverter. Do this in your Windows XP virtual machine. I had a problem getting this to install. Windows complained that the program could not run because of a configuration error. Fortunately, there's a workaround. Download and install a copy of WinRAR. Then right click on the mapconverter installer icon and select the extract to here option. Double click on the setup.exe file and follow onscreen instructions.

STEP 3 - Download MapSource version of MSM
Download a copy of the MapSource version of MalSingMap from http://malsingmaps.com. Do this in your Windows XP virtual machine. The file comes in the form of an executable. Double click to run it. Follow on screen instructions and allow the map to install into the default location (unless you really want it to go somewhere else).

STEP 4 - Convert the map
Run the Garmin mapconverter utility. Do this in your Windows XP virtual machine. Follow onscreen instructions and select the map you wish to convert. It finds the maps automatically. At least it did for me. That's why you should let the map install into a default location in STEP 3.

STEP 5 - Move the converted map to Mac filesystem
Set up a shared folder in VirtualBox. This will appear as a network drive in your VirtualBox XP file explorer. Move the *.gmapi file into this folder so it becomes accessible in your native Mac OS X filesystem.

STEP 6 - Download and install Garmin MapManager
You can download and install this Garmin utility from the Mac AppStore. Search for Garmin and it will appear as one of the items.

STEP 7 - Install your newly minted *.gmapi
Now fire up MapManager and use it to install your *.gmapi file. You'll need to tell the program where your *.gmapi file is located. And you are done! Congratulations. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Start BaseCamp and look under the Maps drop down menu. You should find your MSM map listed as one of the available maps. Click to select. Enjoy. Thanks to all the fine folks at MalSingMaps for their labour of love.

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MFM and MSM and Garmin BaseCamp on Mac OS X Lion

Sorry about the clumsy blog title, but I can't think of something else that clearly captures the essence of this post.

This may sound silly, but I had been wondering how to load maps into BaseCamp running on Mac OS X Lion. It turns out that all you have to do is plug in your Garmin GPS receiver (GPSr) via the USB cable and fire up BaseCamp. Wait awhile for the GPSr to boot and BaseCamp will detect and cache any maps it finds in your GPSr (it works with Nuvi and the 62s). The available map titles are displayed at the top of the left hand panel. Click on the map you wish to display and that's it! The maps take some time to load the first time around but are cached so it's really quick after the first time. You may wish to go to BaseCamp > Preferences > Advanced to allocate more disk cache.

Just when everything seemed to be working, I realized that BaseCamp was only detecting the NT North America and MalFreeMap (MFM)but not MalSingMap (MSM). I reinstalled BaseCamp and tried another GPSr to no avail. So it was time to figure out how to install MSM into BaseCamp on a Mac.

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Mac OS X Lion Java Update and Opera 11.52

Java would no longer run in Opera 11.52 after the latest Lion update on the 13" MBA. Re-installing it wouldn't fix the problem. Ended up having to install Opera 11.60 beta to get things running again. At least there's a work around.

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Surly Karate Monkey is no more...

Low crime doesn't mean no crime. Chaining your bike to a lamppost for 3 weeks is a sure way to lose it.


It does say something about locking up your bike with a U-lock though. It works. The frame is still there. Everything else is gone -- even the headset!! Ok, the chain ring, bb and crank are still attached.

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Dude's third beach ride

Dude and I cycled to the beach. It was his first beach ride on the Trek MT60 kids MTB. Unfortunately, someone was not in a mood to be photographed.

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OliveTree BibleReader: first impressions

The decision to take a look at Olivetree came after my iPhone decided to permanently mute it's speaker output despite several resets. In the end, I decided to update iOS 4.3.5 and restore as new phone. This fixed restored my ringer but delete all my apps since I wanted to restore as a new phone to avoid copying back corrupted application data. Since Laridian had not yet been reinstalled, I decided to take a look at Olivetree.


And it looked good. Text formatting looks great with beautifully proportioned margins and line spacing. Footnotes can be configured to display in a pop-out or split screen. Nice. Several book, chapter and verse navigation options are available.


Here's the alphabetical index listing for those of us who can't remember book sequences.


It's nice how the chapter and verse navigation has fine and coarse jumps. Select range on the right hand margin and zero in on the chapter or verse with the horizontal tab entries.

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Introducing Stuart Townend

Just downloaded this album on iTunes and am enjoying all the tracks.

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Paragon NTFS

Decided on Paragon NTFS over Tuxera. It's cheaper. Version 9.0 appears to work fine in the 2011 MacBook Air 13" running Lion. Here's the 32GB SD card that syncs my work stuff between the office computer and the MacBook Air.

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Milestone

The silver tortoise passed the 100k mark yesterday.

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Sticking out

Yep, the SD card definitely sticks out the right side of the MacBook Air -- by about 10mm. Leaving an SD card mounted also slows the shutdown from 4 seconds to... many many seconds.

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Lizard

Lizard sculpture carved from a tree stump. Singapore Botanic Gardens.

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FaceTime on the 2011 MacBook Air 13"

Like quite a number of people, I had problems getting FaceTime to work. First off, it complained about problems with the server. Then it sent a confirmation email to verify my AppleID email address. Problems with verification in FaceTime persisted even after I had followed the link in the confirmation email. I finally got past the verification stage after multiple attempts only to get stuck at the dialog asking for the preferred email to associate with FaceTime. The "Next" button remained greyed out.

It turns out to be a common issue. One workaround is to disable wifi, and connect to the internet using a wired Ethernet cable (I happened to have ordered the USB Ethernet adaptor) instead. Fire up FaceTime again and login. It works. I found this method while Googling for the problem. Apparently switching back to wifi will work fine after the initial successful connection.

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The Dell Replacement

It's here! Well its been here since Saturday, 3 Sep. Placed the order on Sunday, 28 Sep. Missed the first attempted delivery on 2 Sep. Well, here are my impressions so far:

• Nice display despite the smaller colour gamut. It's glossy but is significantly less reflective than honey's 2010 MPB.
• It boots in 20s, wakes from sleep in 1-3s. Goes for hours on one charge (ok this isn't saying much without actual numbers, give me a few days). Shuts down in 4s.
• Applications open after one or two bounces of the dock icon. Not quite instant, but definitely faster than my 7.5 year old Inspiron.
• It's really thin. Not iPad thin, but close enough.

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Rocky the penguin

Introducing Rocky the penguin. Baby Pie's favourite soft toy of the moment. One eye's missing...

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Surly Karate Monkey

Spotted this u-locked to a lamp post on the way to church on Sunday.

It was still there when I passed the spot on Monday. Hmm.

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Bananas!

A bunch of bananas growing in dad and mum's garden.

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Finally succumbed...

My Dell Inspiron 8600. Everyone said it would not last. Well, it has been 7.5 years and it's still soldiering on, though not quite as spritely as it used to be. Converting an 18 megapixel RAW file does require a fair amount of patience. But its 1920x1200 pixel 15.4" screen remains the ultimate notebook screen resolution to this day. It's still a champ.
I finally succumbed to the allure of Mac and ordered a MacBook Air 13" with the i7 processor option. The Dell will be retired from active service.

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The Long Way Home

Commuted to work by bicycle last Friday and took the long way home. I rode home with a colleague, making a left at Seletar West Link instead of the usual right. This took us over the bridge to Pulau Punggol Barat and Pulau Punggol Timor. Traffic was light and we only had trucks for company.

Crossing the Punggol river, we made our way through the Northern perimeter of Punggol new town on several unopened roads.
We picked up the trail to Lorong Halus Wetlands after riding several hundred meters on an unpaved road.
Crossed this bridge over the Serangoon river.

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Changi Coastal park connector

The Principia with front and rear Old Man Mountain Sherpa racks. Panniers are from Abus.

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Honey's Pashley Sonnet

Here's honey's Pashley Sonnet posing amidst the trees in the Changi Coastal Park Connector.

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Cycling home from work

This is what's left of Seletar Camp after it's transmorgrification to an aero-services hub.

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Touring with the Principia: Part 3

I realize the title of this series of posts is rather misleading. I haven't actually done any touring on this bicycle. But I intend to. Hopefully.

Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered two Sherpa racks from Old Man Mountain--one for the front and another for the rear.


The original plan was to order Tubus racks with QR adaptors. When he found out that i wanted to mount racks onto my MTB front suspension fork, Wayne from The Touring Store suggested that I look at Old Man Mountain racks instead. This is advice coming from a store owner who doesn't sell OMM racks. Tubus actually make a Swing rack for suspension fork, but it's a low rider without a top platform. I think Wayne is an amazing guy. If you need Tubus equipment, order it from him.

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Bicycle Commuting in Singapore: Why?

Here's the first in a series of "thinking out loud" articles on bicycle commuting in Singapore. It's an attempt to address a fundamental question: Why? Why should we ride a bike to school? Why should we ride a bike to market? Why cycle to work?

Cost

Convenience

Health

Social Factors

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Bluetooth workaround for Ubuntu 11.04

Bluetooth functionality was broken after upgrading my old Dell Inspiron 8600 to Ubuntu 11.04. The Bluetooth icon was greyed out and I could not get the service running. After Googling around a bit, I saw this:

sudo killall bluetoothd
sudo bluetoothd

That worked. But I had to type this in manually every time I rebooted. Google found a better suggestion. Edit the rc.local file:

sudo vim /etc/rc.local

by adding the following line before "exit 0":

sudo service bluetooth restart

Make it executable:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/rc.local

Tested with a restart and the Bluetooth mouse came back online with no fuss :-). Great!

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Finally, a straight seatpost

The adjustments to the Principia are almost complete. Individually, they might be too small to make a difference, but the sum is greater than its parts. So with a really short reach Sel-Cof stem, a few degrees of sweep in the ITM handlebars and a straight Aerozine seatpost, the old Principia now bits better than it did when I first built it up. Not exactly brand name parts, but they look well made and are light to boot.

What's left? I'm still eyeing the Tubus Logo rack and QR skewer adaptors. And perhaps a front SKS fender? The rack stops most of the spray from the rear wheel, but the front wheel kicks spray right up to my eyes. That needs fixing.

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Trip to the bike shop

Took the Principia to the bicycle shop today. I had wanted to swap out the Maxxis Detonator 1" tyres for the Panaracer Tserv 1.75" only to discover a puncture from the inner tube contacting the rim hole. Turns out the rim tape had degenerated. So off to the bike shop.

It also turns out the the FSA headset had rusted badly enough to seize. That explained the strange tendency for the handlebar to snap back to centre, almost like a center detent. This made it difficult to track a narrow path between cars and the sidewalk since it was impossible to steer fractions of a degree off centre without getting snapped back to dead ahead. So it's now a gun metal gray Prestine headset -- x-brand but steering is smooth as butter now.

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Panaracer Tserv 26x1.75

Decided to try the Panaracer Tservs at 1.75" sizing. The Maxxis Detonator 1" tyres are really nice in terms of rolling resistance and are really light. But it takes a little too much concentration to steer clear of drain gratings and road imperfections. I could not locate the 1.5" Detonators and so decided to give the Tservs a shot. I expect the Principia to feel a little less sprightly than before... Let's see what happens. Will install these puppies over the weekend. Need to source some 1.5" tubes.

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Dude's handwriting

This is dude's attempt at good handwriting. He wrote this for spelling practice. There is hope :-).

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Dude rides to church

Dude and I rode our bicycles to church this morning. We kept to the pavement as much as possible and ventured onto the road only when it was safe. We experimented with dude riding in front and behind. It turns out that it's probably safer to have dude ride ahead. That way I can keep an eye on him while watching out for traffic.

Dude was ecstatic after the ride and proudly announced to everyone he bumped into that he had cycled to church. I think he felt a real sense of accomplishment and freedom.

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To work on my bicycle...

Cycled to work on the Principia hardtail today. It took all of 1hr 20mins to cover the 21km in each direction. It was a refreshing change from the usual driving commute despite my rather inadequate physical condition.

Dark clouds gathered towards the evening and I decided to leave work a little earlier than planned to avoid cycling home in a downpour in the dark--a decidedly poor combination. As it turned out, I had a drizzle accompany me all the way home. The Marmot Precip rain jacket kept my perspiration in and the rain water out. I wasn't sure if I referred this to just getting drenched by the rain. In any case, I decided to keep the bright yellow jacket on for visibility in traffic.

Now if only the government would widen the sidewalks or at least build several park connector highways...

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The Sonnet Bliss joins the fold

Honey decided on the Sonnet Bliss.

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Spelling illustrated

Honey drew this on the chalkboard so the dude could learn his spelling words.

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The Principia gets an update

Finally decided to swap the Easton EA50 110mm stem and straight handlebar for an X-brand 50mm stem and an ITM 10 degree swept back handlebar. Reach is about 3-inches shorter now. Easier on my arms and back. Perhaps a straight seat post next?

Here's a Cateye mirror attached to the bar end on the right. Haven't decided if it should point up or down.

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Dude's first bike ride on 2 wheels...

We managed to convince dude to give two wheels another chance last Sunday. I aired up the tires, lowered the seat and pushed him up and down the driveway several times. Then we took off down the street with him pedalling and me jogging alongside holding on to the collar of his t-shirt. He was pedalling solo within 10 minutes.

Lessons learned:

• Learning to balance on a two-wheeled scooter shortens the time needed to learn how to balance a bicycle on two wheels. This saves on the scrapes and bloodied knees.
• If at first you don't succeed, try again. You never know.

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East Coast Park to Changi Point

Cycled an old route with an old friend :-). About 35km. I am definitely in need of exercise. My old Trek 570 felt lifeless, as did my legs. Some faint "eek, eek" noise from the drive train. I need to take a look. Must have been sapping horsepower from the wheels. My excuse.


View ECP-ChangiPt in a larger map

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The Middlebrook Method

Here's a link to a nice little technique used to simulate open loop transfer functions without having to "break the loop." See this article.

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Opera 11 bookmark panel favicons

For some reason, the bookmark panel favicons were not displaying. In their place were these boring "star in book" icons. It turns out that someone much smarter than me had already figured it out here. To save you from having to navigate further, here's the solution rehashed in my own words specifically for Ubuntu 10.10:

• In your favourite terminal, type: rm -rf ~/.opera/icons<enter>
• Restart Opera.
• Click on your bookmark in the bookmark pane. The favicon should update as the page is loaded (unless you opened the page in a Private Tab). 

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Miking a choir

Was helping out at the sound board trying to get the best set up for a 40-strong choir with ~8 men. We had a problem trying to tone down the edginess and harshness in the sound.

In the end we moved the mics back another 2 feet and up 3 feet, and had them aimed at the top row. We rang it out for feedback with some pulsed pink noise and decided not to adulterate the EQ too much--hoping to keep things smooth as possible. Only problem was that the choir had left by then and we'll have to wait for the actual performance to find out if it works, or not...

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Beverage can stove

Dude and I attempted a beverage can stove yesterday evening. We fashioned one out of two emptied cans of Jolly Shandy. It sort of worked. We can see Mark II down the road. It's too cool to leave it as is. We are aiming for a better version next weekend. I need to post some pictures.

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Touring with the Principia: Part Two

The Principia is an old (circa 2001/2002) 18.5" Mac SL aluminium hardtail frame. It was built with Shimano XT components, Avid Single Digit Ultimate rim brakes, Easton stem, handlebar and seatposts, X brand saddle, Panaracer TrailBlaster tires, Mavic rims with DT Swiss butted spokes and a RockShox SID Race (2000 model). The frame is a little too large for me, but it rides fine.

For some reason, I've never ridden it as much as my old Trek 470 (1997 model). The two bicycles feel very different.

Problem No. 1

How to mount racks? The Principia has no eyelets on the dropouts and there's a suspension fork up front!

Possible Solution

Tubus Logo for the rear and Tubus Swing for the front. Tubus makes a bunch of attachment accessories, including a quick release skewer adaptor for the rear rack. But who sells this in Singapore? I've sent Fall Factor an email requesting more information.

Update (21 Apr 2011)

It turns out I was mistaken and that Fall Factor does not carry Tubus racks locally... this is going to be difficult -- as I expected.

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Opera 11.10 and Speed Dial thumbnails...

Opera 11.10 is out! Still my favourite browser, but still with niggling problems like Google Docs compatibility issues. Google Spreadsheets still suffers from cell alignment problems when you click on a cell.

Speed Dial now auto-zooms into a web-page when presenting thumbnails:

It works for some pages, but is really ugly for others. If you want the old style full page thumbnails, right click on the thumbnail. Set refresh Reload Every > 30mins. Then right click again and select Reload. Viola. I read this here. THe article specifies another method that involves editing opera:config. But I have not tried it.

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Touring with the Principia: Part One

Back when I decided to purchase the Principia, bicycle touring was the furthest thing on my mind. Today, the allure of a leisurely bicycle tour through a European country seems almost impossible to refuse.

Since the Principia is the finest bicycle in my inventory, it makes sense to perform a thought experiment (a.k.a. daydream) about the possibility of converting a lightweight, single-track hardtail mountain bike into a fully loaded tourer? Is that even possible?

Stay tuned...

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Dude does math

Dude appears to have broken the 2nd decade barrier for addition. He wrote himself a sum on the chalkboard:

10+11=?
Whipped out his fingers and managed to add to 21. All by himself. This is progress. So as dude's dad, I said, "Great job! I'm impressed." Dude was over-the-moon. But there's a possibility, as with all real-life experiences, that it may be 3 steps forward and 1 step back.

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Lens test: sharpness

Stay tuned for a shootout between a Canon EOS550D and two Canon point and shoots. We will be using the technique described in Norman Koren's tutorial.

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Psalm 46:10 (kiddy version)

"God says, "Be quiet and know that I am God.""

Not wanting to be left out of the hip and cool memory verse craze, baby pie has requested to memorise this one.

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Galatians 2:20 (ESV)

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Dude has been assigned to memorise this verse. This means daddy has to memorise it too. Good for dude and good for daddy.

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Afternoon tea

Tea break on a budget.

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Why no inventors?

An epiphany struck me today. I have been reminded an uncountable number of times about the dearth of great inventors on this tiny little red dot of an island. Then it struck me: inventions come from garages. How many homes in Singapore have one?

See the problem? There is no infrastructure.

:-).

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Displaying Garmin tracklogs on Google Maps

This is how I did it with my Garmin GPSMAP 62S:

• Connect the GPS to Dell Latitude E4310 with supplied USB cable.
• GPS powers up automatically and enters USB mass storage mode. The USB icon shows up on the GPS screen and a Garmin icon shows up on my Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit desktop. If you have a micro-SD card installed in the GPS, that will show up too. 
• Double click on the Garmin icon. You'll see a Garmin folder. Keep going into Garmin -> GPX -> Current. In this directory, you'll see a file named Current.gpx. This is what you need. Unless the track you're after has been archived. If so, back out one level and look for your .gpx file there.
• Copy Current.gpx to your Desktop or some convenient location.
• Fire up Prune. You can install this from Synatic Package Manager where it is listed as "gpsprune".
• In Prune, go to File>Open file and load your Current.gpx track file.
• To delete extraneous track points, use the Range menu tools. It's quite intuitive.
• When you're done,  go to File > Export KML. Choose your track colour, type in your file name and you're done!
• Go to maps.google.com on your favourite browser. Sign into your Google account. Click on My Maps. Click on the "Create new map" link that appears just below "Get Directions" and "My Maps". Type in your Title and Description and then click on "Import". Upload your KML file and viola!

This is the result! And yes, I should have chosen another colour for the tracks. Next time.


View Marina Bay Circumnavigation in a larger map

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Little Maps gets a makeover

Got a little bored with the old template and switched to Simple. This variant of Simple even comes with a map image in the banner! It's now customized with Kranky and Coming Soon fonts, and some minor tweaks to the column widths.

Finally, something I rather like. Hope you like it too.

Now to concentrate on content.

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Farewell Corgi...

Corgi was euthanized today. The vet said he would have had about a week to live otherwise. He was 13 years and 4 months old.

He had been ill since Saturday, not eating and walking with difficulty. This was a relapse of his first bout of illness 3 week ago.

We'll miss him.

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Circumnavigation of Marina Bay

We took a leisurely cycle ride around Marina Bay on Saturday. Here's a photograph of MBS taken from the Lower Boardwalk.


Here's the route we took.


View Marina Bay Circumnavigation in a larger map

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A jaunt up North

Honey, dude, baby pie and I took a road trip up to Kuala Lumpur to attend a wedding last weekend.

The Silver Tortoise made its way there and back with an average fuel consumption of 17km/L. This isn't a good number. We have done previous trips to Malacca at 20km/L. My excuse for the poor showing this time around is the frequent attempts to follow a lead car through KL traffic. Not an ideal situation for hypermiling.

** Silver Tortoise is a 2007 Nissan Latio with a HR15DE and CVT under the bonnet. Also known as the Nissan Versa or Nissan Tiida in other regions.

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Bleach...

Household bleach is amazing stuff. General consensus on the Internet is that bleach isn't the chemical of choice in the fight against mold. My take is that it can be the ultimate solution in two common household scenarios:

• A mold and scum infested washing machine

• Moldy silicone sealant on the bathroom sink

For the first problem, add two small cups of the stuff into the detergent tray and run a hot wash without any clothes. Never ever keep the door closed on a front load washing machine after a wash. Always leave the door ajar so that moisture can evaporate.

To take out mold on the silicone strips around your bathroom fixtures, apply a 1:1 dilution bleach to some paper towels. Lay the rolled up, soaked paper against the affected areas and wait 12hrs. Ensure that the bleach solution in the paper towel contacts the moldy silicone. The black stuff just disappear. It's amazing. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this actually works!

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10 excuses to buy a Gpsmap 62s

Here's a short list of excuses to justify that toy you always wanted...

• The Battery Contrary to popular belief, the iPad/2 is not the only device with 10hrs of battery life. The Gpsmap 62s chugs along for 15hrs on a pair of NiMH AA cells. Really. Now, can your Nuvi do that? Besides, you can always pop into a store and pick up alkaline cells for those rare emergencies.
• MCX Connector The Gpsmap 62s has an MCX connector for external antennas. You won't find this on an Oregon nor a Dakota. And only the older discontinued Nuvis have them. It's great for those who have fancy windshield solar films that block out more stuff than it should. You can stick the antenna on the car roof. The best thing about it is that the amplified antennas like the Gilsson are available for a very reasonable USD$25.
• IPX 7 Is your iPhone waterproof? Well, mine isn't. Whip out the Gpsmap 62s when everyone else is packing away their iPhones. It's true you can waterproof your phone by tucking it into a Ziplock bag. But then, you'll loose The Touch. And by the way, if you're into iPhones and trails or hobby mapping projects, check out Motion-X GPS.
• The Stubby It's different. There's an antenna sticking out of the casing! How cool is that. You can tell all your friends that it has a quadrifilar helix antenna. It'll pick up signals from satellite close to the horizon that patch antennas cannot see. Of course you may also want to downplay the fact that you might end up with more multipath interference in urban canyons.
• Buttons It's got BUTTONS! Did I mention it's different? Buttons are great for some things but I wish it had voice commands for when you need to key in addresses.
• The Display It's got a retro 65k colour transflective LCD screen with a purposeful 160x240 pixels. Unbelievably low tech by today's standards. But wait till you mount it on your bicycle and ride into the high noon sun. Your trusty Gpsmap 62s display will your maps in full glory with the backlight OFF while the others just fade away. No contest.
• Custom Maps and Bird's Eye imagery. It's like having cached Google Satellite maps overlaid on your Garmin maps. About time. It's available on Oregon and Dakota GPSRs too. Not supported on Nuvis.
• Barometer It's like having your own weather station. The algorithms used to measure altitude with both GPS coordinates and barometric pressure are somewhat obscure. I do not understand it. Both are problematic.
• Compass This is a lot like the iPhone compass except more highly damped so the needle doesn't do a rain dance when a truck or some other unidentified magnetic object blows past.
• For some reason, I can't come up with Excuse No. 10...

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iPad 2 imminent?

Looks like Apple is preparing to launch the iPad 2... Singapore online store is temporarily unavailable.

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Gilsson GPS Antenna

Here's my Gilsson active GPS antenna with the MCX connector. Comes with a suction
mount for the windshield. The antenna itself is magnetic so you can stick it on the car roof. But that would ruin the aerodynamics...

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At the playground

Dude working out... his smile.

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Frangipani Grove, Part 2

Baby pie scootering through The Frangipani Grove.

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Frangipani Grove

Frangipani flowers. Singapore Botanic Gardens, urban refuge.

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Graffiti

Graffiti on the Bedok Reservoir floating boardwalk.

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MalFreeMap postal code search on Gpsmap 62s

Hit the Find button. Click By Address. Leave the house number field blank, proceed with Done. Key in the postal code in the street address field. Hit Done on the soft keyboard. Viola. Okay, okay, you knew that already.

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Gpsmap 62s backlight settings

I've found that it's easier to have the backlight set to "on always" in the main menu and to rely on the backlight level screen to turn it on or off. This is quicker since backlight level adjustment is accessed by a short press of the power button while the backlight duration configuration item is buried in a submenu.

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Lovely aren't they?

My mum planted these for us. They are sitting next to the window. Gorgeous.

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Not again!?

I like Apple products. But sometimes ownership can be a pain. This is the second time we've been hit by the vertical pixel wide strip of stuck pixels. I hope the next screen replacement fixes the issue.

Contrast this with my 7 yr old Dell Inspiron 8600 with the 1920*1200 pixel screen. Beaten up, but still soldering on flawlessly.

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16hrs and still going...

Here's a picture of the Gpsmap 62s after 16 hrs on a set of Imedion 2400's. Good enough for a trip to KL and back with plenty of juice to spare.

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GPSMAP 62s

The new toy :-). Brimming with old world charm... When was the last time you saw an RF device with an external antenna? My kids thought it was a walkie-talkie.

A Gilsson active antenna and Garmin bike mount came in the same package. Figured that the Gilsson would be a potentially useful gadget to have under heavy tree cover. This was one reason why I chose the 62s over the Oregon 450. Now to take it to the great outdoors!

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Ubuntu 10.10 and RawTherapee

Installed Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit into my old Dell Inspiron 8600 over the Chinese New Year weekend. Took a while to work out the BCM4306/2 wireless driver (bc43legacy) because of a bug in the firmware installer package. Anyway, I now have a working installation of Maverick on a 27GB ext-4 partition on my little 120GB hard disk.

Turns out that http://www.rawtherapee.com/releases_head/linux/ does not offer a 32-bit build for RawTherapee and that the Maverick package doesn't like EOS 550D raw files... So that left me with no choice but to compile the program from source. It turned out to be relatively painless thanks to the superb instructions located here. Use the suggested "branch_3.0" option. Just change the line that had "drslony" in it to your own home directory name or you will get an error from the tar command.

Took quite awhile on my old machine, but finally:

RawTherapee compiled, installed, and build written to /tmp

Nice...

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Why do they all have to be 16-by-9?

Why is it that all new laptops and computer displays come in 16:9 aspect ratio? Laptops aren't just for watching movies. I miss the old 1920x1200 or even the 1600x1200 displays. 16:9 aspect ratio screens just aren't great for the rest of us who work with documents, spreadsheets and CAE tools. Here's hoping that the industry will come to its senses and end the infatuation with "full HD" screens. We need more vertical pixels.

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My first OpenStreetMap edit...

OpenStreetMap is to maps what Wikipedia is to encyclopedias.

Made my first contribution to the OSM database. Decided not to be too ambitious and restricted the changes to one realignment of a street in Kembangan, Singapore. The tool of choice was JOSM running in Ubuntu 10.10.

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Hello World!

So this is it. My own blog. Hello World!

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