randomosity

I made a few quick references to the mode by which I transfer my long and lat data to Google Earth for route display. I was asked whether I was capturing altitude information along with 2D position and the answer to this is yes. In fact, there are a variety of interesting ways of visualising this data. Although Google Earth does allow for some manipulation of this, I recently started using GPS Visualizer to play with this dimension. If you point it at your data file it can provide you with some interesting perspectives on your trips.

The weekend jaunt down country looks like this:

A second cool way of showing this same altitude mapping is to simply colour code the 2D route for altitude. This map was also generated at GPS Visualizer using the same dataset:

Having used the RoyalTek RGM-3800 for a week now I am very pleased with it. The biggest test to date came yesterday when I grabbed a couple new AAA batteries for it and made the fix at the apartment. I popped it in my suit jacket and headed off on a road trip down country with my friend Mary. The little unit kept a fix all the way south, whether in the car, inside buildings, in the train and the batteries lasted an even 10 hours (perfectly timed for me re-entering the apartment.

I wish the unit could sync with OSX rather than having to use Parallels to use the supplied data sync software.

Read the complete article… »

Today’s gadget du jour is the Royaltek RGM-3800 GPS Receiver and Datalogger. I have long wanted to experiment with one of these and today one arrived in the post from the UK. It’s a small ticket item (€50), but after a short test here I am very, very impressed. A GPS datalogger is just like your fancy GPS car receiver that projects your track on an LCD screen with the difference being, there’s no screen, and it simply records your position to flash memory at regular intervals. You can then download the datafile to your computer and plot the data on a map using google maps or similar.

It arrived this morning and I popped the batteries into it. It’s not much of a test as I sit here in the office, but Matt had to go out to run some errands and I asked if he would take it with him. I installed the software (Windows only unfortunately - Parallels to the rescue). The install was smooth and the device was recognized immediately. I access it and changed to logging interval to 15 seconds. The device itself is about half the size of a current mobile phone. It is powered by two AA batteries which supposed allow it to fill the memory a few times.

Read the complete article… »

Last night marked a first visit to the IFI (Irish Film Institute). The IFI, I have gathered and can now confirm is a wonderful

venue for those in the know. They feature a full slate of movies, largely European indie flicks, definitely of eclectic rather than popular taste. Last night for example featured: Paris, City of Men, L’Heure d’été and Ledjis.
Last night’s objective was to see the rather innocuously named Paris. Read the movie summary, but went in with little idea about what we were going to see. This 2008 film from Cédric Klapisch earns a very strong must see recommendation! It centres on the flamboyant professional dancer Pierre (Romain Duris), who has been diagnosed with a terminal heart condition and his sister (Juliette Binoche) who sheds work responsibilities to move in and care for him. Much in the style of his earlier, and superb L’Auberge Espangnole, Klapisch ingeniously webs a series of tangentially interlocking story lines. He keeps you guessing at to when and where the stories will intersect, and aside from some rather clumsy foreshadowing in one of the tragic sequences, he plays his hand well.

Cross-posted to Dublinica.

Read the complete article… »

Video on the other blog

We all know I love my gadgets. As I blogged earlier in the week one of the first things I picked up on arrival was a new disposable cell phone. I chose a little Sony Ericsson 530i from 3.ie because it allowed unlimited Skype usage. I have been blown away by how well the Skype functionlity is implemented on this phone and the mobile itself has demonstrated a few other neat features. My original plan was to get the cheapest thing I could for the interim and purely utilitarian considerations. Then come July 11th ponder the 3G iPhone. However, I have to admit that I am rather pleasantly surprised by the little 530i. Its a solid little phone and pure candy bar form factor. I am glad to be back to candybars and from experience will not use a slider or a flip in the future. I put a crystal case on the 530i to protect the screen (experience with my last SE).
The camera on the 530i is a common 2Mb. I love having a camera with me at all times and the resulting photos are quite fine. Being able to bluetooth these back and forth with my MacBook Pro is brilliantly convenient. And then I noticed that the photo menu offered an option to Blog This…
When I pressed the blog this button it was clearly linked to blogger and I figured (intriguing) I’ll attach this to my existing blogger account at some point and try this. As it turns out its much easier than this and I am very impressed.
To blog one’s life on a Sony Ericsson 530i with 3, you snap a pic, choose blog this and leave the rest to the phone. 3.ie creates a brand new blog on blogger for you, uploads the picture and then emails to your phone a special token. The phone is now linked to this blog. You claim your token via a browser and are then given the option of personalising the blog that was autocreated or simply linking the incomming posts to an existing blog. I happened to have an old one sitting around (NapoleonicTourist…unused since 2006). I pointed to this one and lo and behold there was the pic (not too exciting as I grabbed an image of the wood floor in the apartment). However, this is a very slick and smooth process. It would be very cool if I could send it to my own wp blog, but haven’t figured this one out yet…maybe. But as it stands…very cool and I am going to play with this, see what happens and make 3.ie a little richer for every post ;-)

There was a time when the the brilliant illuminated manuscripts of Irish Monasteries represented the passionate collection of the works of the solitary monk/artisan/craftsman. The intricate knot patterns are a study in a real pattern language. Years ago, when my creative juices were sought a middle ground between a clear systematic approach and yearning to find break out of these same systems, I discovered the work of George and Iain Bain. - father and son. The elder Bain made a lifetime study of finding the patterns in the knotwork and devising techniques to allow others to appreciate these and to replicate these celtic masterworks for themselves. His son built on these techniques to devise a an even simpler way of creating the elabourate designs. I was hooked and produced some large scale knot patterns. I also discovered the wonder of doodling in square and triangular knot patterns. At one point I even delved into zoomorphical celtic artwork and dicsovered and even larger challenge.

Read the complete article… »

Faced with finding a place to live in Dublin, I decided to quickly attempt to create a mashup of potential properties mapped throughout the city. This is, I sense, an increasingly common sort of mashup. But when I did a quick scan, I couldn’t find anything that accomplished this for the area I wanted. Yes, you could plot each place manually in either the My Maps section of Google Maps or create a KML overlay for Google Earth. Viable, but I wanted a tool that would allow the list to be dynamically generated and capture the list current to when I was looking at it. I would note that many sites have their own spatial displays, and there are a lot of mashups involving craigslist, but none for me and the Dublin scene. The site I was using to look for rental opportunities is daft.ie. It’s got a great search engine, and it will map your selections on a rental by rental basis, or will present all (unfiltered) listings in the area of the listing you have chosen. You can additionally select a particular agency and have their listings plotted on a Google Map, but this was not quite what I wanted. My objective was to create a custom search, take the detailed results, identify the location, geocode it, and then pipe it into Google Maps. In concept simple - in practise subject to the vagaries of daft and the tools used.

Read the complete article… »

As I was wandering to the whole food store tonight I heard the droning of an aircraft I couldn’t identify. There was the beat of a helicopter blade, but I could identify the comingled drone of a heavy engine. Then as the sounds grew closer a huge Ford Tri-motor roared over the trees a block away. The Tri-motor was cruising at no more than 1000ft accompanied by a helicopter shooting video. It was an amazing sight. The sun was at a lovely evening height giving a wonderful orangey ambience, the sky clear and I was transported to another era. I was drawn back to a time when an airplane was the novelty (rarity) that the Tri-motor is today. What would it have been like to have seen this virilely powerful metal beast soaring over a small town bringing the hope/promise/threat? of a faster communication and transport? The sheer size and mechanical wonder must have inspired an awe even more substantial than my serendipitous amaze.

The helicopter buzzing about the larger ship seemed like a hawk being menaced by a sparrow or two. Especially as another helicopter came shooting across the skyline heading in for a closer look as well. I will have to find out where the magnificent beast was heading. A new addition to the Canadian Warplane Heritage at the airport perhaps. Given that only 18 are known to still exist, I was blessed with a rare experience tonight.

Marvin McInnis challenges the widely held belief that Canadian agriculture was adversely affected by the First World War. His talk at the University of Guelph Rural Roundtable yesterday, presented a nuanced and revisionary look at the common story that wartime demand drove Canadian farmers to double acreage devoted to wheat and unwittingly create a dangerous monoculture. A situation that led to a massive collapse in GNP when the price of wheat collapsed after the war. McInnis’ earlier paper “Canadian Economic Development in the Wheat Boom Era” sets an appropriate stage for this further discussion. In this paper, McInnis questions the conclusion that Canada’s rapid economic growth during the first decade and a half of the twentieth century rested on western settlement and the ‘wheat boom.’ This has been a persistent and widely accepted view until more recent re-examination has questioned the role of wheat in this growth and determination that other factors were of greater consequence to this growth. This story though has supported the consequent one that envisions wartime demand and response to it as greatly affecting Canada’s agricultural economy.

Read the complete article… »