Dr. Blair Harff, Another Free Local Hotspot, Show or Hide Maps on eTrex Venture HC, Lockie Road/Scotch Settlement House Video

Dr. Blair Harff, Local Vet
Unfortunately we lost a great local person, Dr. Blair Harff. He was a kind and gentle and very knowledgeable local vet, cut down in middle age by an accident on his farm. He also helped local kids see their potential by working with them in a local hockey league, and he and his wife Nina ran a successful, caring veterinary clinic - The Animal Doctors.

Another Free Local Hotspot

I forgot an important one - the Flower Memorial Library. You have to ask the librarians for set up info, but this one's free also.

Show or Hide Maps on eTrex Venture HC

While in Setup go into the Map setup screens and press the MENU button (bottom button on the side, left).

From here you can select which maps to display or not display. Pretty useful if you have overlaps.

Lockie Road/Scotch Settlement House

Some great old ruins in St. Lawrence County, off the Lockie Road in the Pleasant Lake Wildlife Area. Quite a find, and I spent a fair amount of time going over this old building and the surrounding area.

As you may or may not know I have a pretty popular site called 'Old Abandoned Buildings of Northern NY'. Urban Exploration, Vadding, Reality Hacking, Psychogeography, whatever you want to call it - is a big concept now.

Personally, I'm not into the whole trespassing thing - I take the photos from public property or get permission from the owner if I take closer or interior shots.

Anyway, I got a bunch of great shots on my page for this building here. Even took lots of video. I plan on uploading my video to my storage site when I get the chance but for now here's a video (great example of why not to use YouTube if you want good quality videos - the original is a nice quality and this is crap, once it's uploaded to YouTube):

USB to Virtual Serial Ports for GPS's, Garmin GPS Screen Capture, My Own Successful Map Upload

USB to Virtual Serial Ports for GPS'es

Really enjoying this Garmin eTrex Venture HC, and with nicer weather on it's way it's time to get back into GPS'ing and mapping with it.

Good little unit, of course if you are looking for something for road navigating it can be used for that, sure; but it is more geared toward your outdoor activities.

Yesterday I used the road navigation features, both out in the boonies as well as in the village of Gouverneur. Worked quite nicely.

Right now, I'm still just learning the in's and out's of the device, and learning a lot more about mapping and vector maps and converting everything to Garmin format.

I did discover that there are a number of mapping programs that assume the GPS that is connected to the computer uses a serial port, instead of a more 'modern' USB.

Throw in Google Earth and other programs that SHOULD have GPS interfaces but don't (Google Earth Plus does, but not regular free Google Earth)...

Fortunately there's ways around that for both.

For example - Franson GPSgate. This is a shareware program with a 14 day expiration date that creates virtual serial ports from USB connections.

But there must be a freeware or Opensource driver or program that does the same somewhere - something that takes a USB port and makes some virtual serial ports for other programs to use? If anyone knows of one drop me a line so I can post the link, and try it out.

I gave a free program from Garmin called Spanner a try, which is supposed to do the same thing. It's made for particular models of Garmin GPS'es but the rumor was that it worked with many other Garmin GPS'es also. No luck with mine, stuck with GPSGate for now.

GPSGate seemed to work fine on everything I tried it on - including an older version of MS Streets & Trips as well as the excellent radio mapping program RMWDLX.

A few good helper programs are the free Earth Bridge and the free version of GooPS (there's also a pay version with more options). Both are good as a sort of go-between between GPSGate and your serial-only GPS application, though the GPSGate seems to work for this fine by itself. These programs just make it easier.

Of course, ideally the GPS mapping and waypoint programs themselves would be upgraded so that the regular Garmin USB driver would work, instead of relying on using serial ports; but that's not always the case.

So far the free EasyGPS (freeware), Topofusion (shareware), Quakemap (shareware), MS Streets & Maps 2002, ExpertGPS (shareware), Google Earth, & USAPhotoMaps (highly recommended freeware) all work fine. I haven't found one thing that doesn't work. I've yet to try Netstumbler though, but I assume it will also (if it doesn't already have a USB option).

With ExpertGPS I did discover there was a trick to using this program with the built-in USB option instead of serial - you have to pick the "C" version of your particular Garmin GPS. So the virtual serial port wasn't needed for it after all, though it worked fine.

And in USAPhotoMaps it actually works better with the virtual serial port then the native built-in USAPhotoMaps Garmin USB setup, at least for me.

Also, GPSGate has to be shut down before you can use any program that will use the Garmin USB drivers themselves. In other words - you can't use the Garmin Mapsource program while GPSGate is running. Though I found that you could get around this by making Mapsource use a serial port instead, but why would you want to?

Another program I want to try is the new GPSBabelGUI which now interfaces directly with GPS receivers and can output any kind of file, including KML files that Google Earth uses.

I imagine using the live waypoint files from the GPSBabel program would allow programs like WorldWind to work with a GPS too, in real-time? I could be wrong, but is on my list of things to try.

Google Earth is amazing when using the above programs. Here's a screenshot:

Garmin GPS Screen Capture

Cool little program from Garmin called 'ximage'. This basically lets you do a screen capture from your Garmin GPS. See the examples under the next heading.

You can also upload screens. Supposedly you could change the startup screen, etc.

But the other interesting thing is that you can also download and upload the POI icons, individually. So I assume you could make your own custom icons and put them on the GPS. Another thing for me to try at some point. Some of the GPS programs I listed above also let you do this.

Why isn't there an icon for water? I'll have to make my own.

My Own First Map Upload

First success of creating (from downloads) my own maps and uploading them to the GPS. Above in these screen captures (taken with the ximage program mentioned above) you can see my improved Watertown road maps (improved over the basemap that came on the GPS).

On the left is the street map level zoom. I did just Watertown at first, but then added various other parts of Jefferson County and then parts of St. Lawrence County that I needed more detail on. See more about stitching maps below.

In the pics above; if you're not familiar with the GC#### designators and the little boxes - those are Geocaches. You'll also see some Benchmarks that I have added too, as well as congruences.

The whole process of converting the maps is kinda complicated, and takes about four different programs to complete the whole process but it is well worth it. But now that I have gotten used to doing it, I can grab and convert a map in no time.

And I need to start uploading some of my maps to some of the free Garmin map sites that don't have improved coverage for my area yet. And at some point I also need to upload these all to my blog here for other's to use.

Next I want to put on some topographical maps too.

Here's some great help from Leszek Pawlowicz on how to do the above. Indispensable, as the instructions I had read before were much worse, and there were more steps and calibration (gah) involved.

http://freegeographytools.com/2007/converting-openstreetmap-data-into-gpx-or-garmin-img-format

http://freegeographytools.com/2007/adding-garmin-img-files-to-mapsource

Using the JAVA application JOSM made it ten times easier then using the assorted other programs that would need to be used, and you can even just pick a section of a map using one of JOSM's plug-ins, latitudes and longitudes in a square, or use OpenStreepMap.org to find and zoom in on a location and then select OSM maps.

Once it's in JOSM you just save it as an .OSM file in a new directory (best under the Garmin program's root), use mkgmap (or the nice GUI interface Mr. Pawlowicz created - I found that you need the .JAR file as well as the GUI in the same dir as the map you are converting), then use MapSetTool to add it to Mapsource for upload.

The only problem is the JOSM program won't download real large areas due to server limitations. For a larger area I used the free version of GPSMapEdit (as per Mr. Pawlowicz's instructions) to stitch together maps, instead of overlaying them in Mapsource (of which I didn't have much luck with).

For example - I downloaded the Watertown street map (MUCH better then the stock basemap of course) from OpenStreetMap.org using JOSM, then a part of Jefferson County with a little overlap. Then I did the whole conversion deal, and stitched the maps together, had the GPSMapEdit check for problems (which there were - overlaps, duplicates, etc), fixed them, and then re-created the a new map and uploaded it to the Garmin. Worked great.

Heston & Gun Control, OLED TV's, Free Local WIFI Hotspots, Garmin eTrex Venture HC, Draft.blogger.com

Heston & Gun Control

I've always tried to be a supporter of the rights of America. Gun rights included. I've pretty much always owned guns, not for hunting (no, never ever for hunting) or anything like that but as the last line of defense in protecting myself, others close to me, and my stuff.

But I've never had any illusion about the average American's ability to handle the responsibility of a gun.

Heck, the average guy on the street can barely use his car responsibly - neither in the ability to just plain drive it around normally nor to restrain himself from using it as a weapon when something pisses him off.

We're an angry people, angry about what - I don't think most of us know. But give an angry person a gun and any shred of residual reason goes out the window. Give a person a license to shoot things with it and a good number of people are going to abuse that. Believe me.

Sure, there's plenty of responsible hunters out there, and gun owners. Probably the majority, and I'd never want to take away that freedom even if a heck of a lot of people are dumb about it.

I've chased off so many hunters, even with No Trespassing signs up some redneck with a bunch of dogs, dirty clothes, a rusty car, and missing teeth will wonder onto the land and then give every excuse and lie that he can that he should be there. Again, I wouldn't take their right away but an intelligence and empathy test for hunters wouldn't help either...

Anyway, this isn't about hunters and I'm drifting from the subject at hand.

A good portion of humankind can't even handle free speech, like we have on the Internet, and have to abuse and take advantage of it. Let alone having the freedom to own a gun.

Not to say I think our freedoms to own a gun or anything else should be taken away, as I said and I want to say again (still I will receive nasty e-mails I'm sure). But, like so many things, there has to be a happy, fair middle ground and sometimes that ground moves with evolution, technology, and the current condition of humankind.

Despite what some think - our governing ancestors knew this and didn't expect the ideas they set up wouldn't evolve also.

Charlton Heston just died, which brought me to this entry.

He was a great actor, no doubt about it. And in his younger days he was a fighter for liberal freedoms and damn good at it, and damn vocal about it as well as committed.

But in his later years he went more conservative. Some people's personalities don't change over time, some change somewhat over time, and some people's change a LOT.

It's one thing to fight for a freedom or cause, it's another to become fanatical about it. I don't think fanaticism helps any cause.

Firstly it makes you look like a loon, secondly it alienates many of the average people who might be drawn to your cause normally; but won't be or will be totally turned off from it if you act like a nutcase. Thirdly fanaticism slows or stops you from organizing and accomplishing what you need to do.

Again - moderation, keeping your head about you and rational presentation of your ideas and facts accomplishes much more, and policing your own personality with self-awareness. Whether it is gun rights, the NRA, PETA (another group that has crossed over into that realm in many people's minds and is inadvertently doing just the opposite of what it should be sometimes), tree-hugging, Global Warming, religion, or getting pissed off because someone cut you off in traffic, etc. Fanatics and fanaticism only hurts a cause and losing your head only makes a situation worse.

OLED TV's

Even I have a hard time keeping up on technology sometimes, and learning about what I already have!

The newest television technology that will probably one day be replacing plasma is OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode).

All the reviewers and tech people who have seen it claim that it is by far better then even the best plasma tv's. But there's some limitations - the organic material tends to, er fade over time. If the technology is so much better I imagine that this will be overcome, as well as the price for it at this time (wow).

The good thing is that since it's a light emitting diode no back light is needed, less power usage and power drain (like for laptops).

Free Local WIFI Hotspots

If you're in the Jefferson County area of New York state you can find some free (and legal to use) hotspots for your wireless laptop.

*Wendy's on State Street has a good coverage, including into the parking lot. A friend of mine set up the wireless for this particular Wendy's and the one that used to be on Arsenal Street (due to some sort of strange rigmarole with leasing the property - that Wendy's is now gone).

*Arby's on Arsenal Street has indoor coverage, not so much out in the parking lot.

*Panera Bread on Towne Center Drive off Arsenal Street probably has the best and fastest broadband connection and coverage. Great inside, great out in the parking lot.

*JRECK Subs in Black River also does, from what I have been told (I haven't tried this one).

*The Black River Brewing Company in the Paddock Arcade also had free WIFI but I believe this business in not running any longer, anyone confirm?

Of course, you can just drive around until you pick up an individual's or business' WIFI that isn't encrypted. But this would be illegal (what, you didn't know that?).

McDonald's also has WIFI but you have to sign up and pay for it from them.

You can also try Holiday Inn, Econolodge, they will likely have WIFI. As well as some other hotels. But you really need to be a patron to use it.

Same goes for the above fast food places - it's just polite to buy a burger or a side salad once in a while if you're going to use their WIFI, even if you're just sitting out in the parking lot and checking your e-mail.

Check out the WIFI finder links over in my right column, BTW.

Garmin eTrex Venture HC

I got my new GPS receiver, a Garmin eTrex Venture HC.

First, I want to point you toward TheNerds.net which is where I got it from. I've ordered some stuff from this company in the past so I had no problem doing so again, especially since they were one of the cheapest to get it from. Surprisingly Walmart sells the same one for twice the price as most places on the Internet.

The shipping was fast, even though I had selected the cheapest they had.

Awesome little piece of equipment. It's even smaller then my eXplorist 100, and the color screen is incredible.

The basemaps are a bit lacking but once I figure out how to vectorize and transfer my own I plan on sticking on a bunch of terrain and road maps.

The rest of the features are great, the joystick works well, many buttons are multiple functions, transfer to and from the computer is fast, and the electronic compass works much better then the eXplorist. The Geocaching functions are nice too, as well as the calendar and such. The calculator works as expected, something most people may not use but for us map junkies it's great for figuring square area, etc.

Start up is real fast, and puts the eXplorist to shame. I even get most sats from inside our house - through solid limestone over a foot thick! Wow.

The software that comes with it works well, but is fairly simple but does the job. I prefer to use USAPhotoMaps instead for heavy-duty mapping and map retrieval and waypoint management, and GPSBabelGui to convert the USAPhotoMaps data back and forth (I don't like to use USAPhotoMaps itself for data transfer as I lose the nice little icons for various waypoints).

I also found that this fits well in my BucketBoss cellphone holster. Basically, this is a padded, Carhart-looking heavy-duty cellphone holster I bought at Sears (I hate Sears and their third-world produced products, not that they are specifically different then Walmart in that aspect). When I got a new cellphone (Motorola Razr V3xxx) it wouldn't fit and I started putting my GPS in it, this Venture fits in it even better.

I have to get working, otherwise I'd ramble on about this unit. The features are numerous.

I can't wait for the weather to get even better so I can do some biking and hiking with it, and mapping too.

Yesterday we sat out in shorts and t-shirts it was so nice. Today a bit cooler but still looking real good. I'm no big fan of summer temps, but it's been a long winter nonetheless.

Draft.Blogger.com

If you blog on Blogger.com and don't mind playing around with Beta functions check out their http://draft.blogger.com

You can try out upcoming functions. Check out the top of the right column - a nice searcher I've added from draft.blogger.com. You can search my blog, search the blog and comments, and even search external links that I have referenced in my blog. Real nice.

Take Action: Save the Internet

A little something from the petition website:

"A new bill has been introduced in U.S. House that would stop Comcast, Verizon and AT&T from controlling what you do, and where you go online.

In 2006, 1.6 million people stopped mighty phone and cable companies from gutting Net Neutrality. In 2007, more than a quarter-million people sent comments to the FCC and opened up cell-phone networks to user choice and innovation.

This year, we're going to stop Internet blocking and censorship once and for all. When you fill out the information below and push submit, we will automatically send it to your members of Congress."

Link to sign it here. Help keep the Internet free, as in 'freedom'.

April Fool's Day, Craigslist Missing Son Ad, Best Thing Anyone's Said To Me All Year, High Dynamic Range (HDR), eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver

April Fool's Day

Yea, it's always good to take a break on April 1st if you're blogging or writing any sort of article on the Internet; just to make sure someone doesn't take what you say as an April Fool's Day joke. Believe me, heh heh.

On a webboard I started up and ran for many years (and no longer do) we used to have a heck of a lot of fun on April Fool's Day. We discovered that the 'bad word' filter could also be used to substitute pretty much any word or phrase for any other word or phrase. You can just imagine the chaos that follows something like that, especially with a moderately high-traffic discussion system.

The funniest people were always those who cried that their free speech was being violated, their messages were being edited because someone had something against them, or those who were just too damn 'dumb' to realize what day it was (and there were many, many many many).

I always advocated (tongue-in-cheek of course) kicking the latter people off. Survival of the fittest sort of thing. I've always said that you should never overestimate people nor underestimate them - especially their potential for mind-blowing ditsyness.

We'd also change the graphics, or have the same graphics but with little flashes of amusing things going on in those graphics - just so you saw it out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes change people's handles, etc. What a great time.

Craigslist Missing Son Ad

Did you see the local Craigslist entry where the mother posted a want ad looking for her missing son? It's was an amusingly-worded, cutesy-yet-underlying-seriously-toned message. Well, amazingly it worked. Someone spotted the kid and they found him, except he apparently stole something from his mom and he got popped for that.

Some thought the whole ad things was funny, some not so much. As my wifey said - "She's going to be sorry if they find him dead somewhere." Lots of discussion on the Craigslist site about it.

A couple only-slightly-related thoughts on the above.

Firstly, likely this entry will be gone soon. Some sites have permalinks but most don't so. So it's something to consider whether you are blogging or just referencing something on a website or discussion area, or even mail. Especially when the link is from a news site, classifieds site, or what-have-you. Give it a good description in case the link is gone next year, next month, next week, or tomorrow.

Of course you could just copy the info or text, but most sites have some sort of copyright or implied copyright (unless it has a specific copyright that allows sharing the data from the site with an attribution, like Wikipedia does). So be careful of that of course.

Secondly; Craigslist is a good example of a very simple website design succeeding. And you can't get much simpler then the format of Craigslist.

I always tell my customers - I can build you a graphics-heavy monstrously eye-catching site with all the bells and whistles and video and music and sound and animation; but if it has no substance, or nothing anyone is interested in; then it will die.

Here's a good example of the most basic website; visually and bells-and-whistles-wise, there can be. And it is successful. Of course,

I certainly wouldn't advocate you setting up a website quite as plain but it is a good example.

Best Thing Anyone's Said To Me All Year

If you need a little mood enhancement and motivation in your day check out Mary's Motivational Blog.

One of my good friends lives in Canada. We daily discuss this or that - computers, cameras, video, websites, politics, etc. Great guy, one of those smart, artistic dudes that the world needs lots more of.

I mentioned that I am getting into experimenting with High Dynamic Range photos. It's an incredible new technique in photography (and some cameras are coming out with it built-in). More about this later...

Part of a day went by and then I received a short message from my Canadian bud. A message that not only made my day but also my whole year. Best thing anyone's said to me this year, I'd say (and I hope he doesn't mind me relaying it here):

"I hate you 
You force me to try and think - and learn new stuff."

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

Now, about HDR itself...

Say you are taking a picture with your camera, doesn't matter whether it is a film or digital. Say the scene is an outdoor scene at dusk. You're taking a shot of a an open field, facing away from the sun with a gaping cave mouth off to one side. How do you adjust your exposure or how does your camera's automatic settings interpret the scene?

Some part of the scene is going to be too dark and if you spot-adjust for the dark parts the rest will be over-exposed.

With High Dynamic Range photos you take a number of pictures of the same scene, adjusting your exposure at each one; from under-exposed to over-exposed. The software (in my case the excellent Qtpfsgui, there are also other programs like Photomax Free and Photomax Pro and the newer Adobe Photoshops, which have a simplistic version in them) takes those pictures and adds them all together so that hopefully (and it does require manual tweaking) everything can be seen at a good exposure. I'm simplifying it here for those who aren't into photography.

So EVERYTHING can be seen; the field, the inside of the cave, the hill the cave is on, etc.

But probably the best way to see it's effects is to go to this Flickr group.

Pretty amazing stuff. Some are overdone in my opinion and look more like bad special effects.

But most are very good to mind-blowing. They look almost like computer-rendered, painted, or computer-painted scenes. There are no dark underexposed areas - you can see every nook, cranny, and normally shadowed spot in the photo.

Some the photographer's have used the HDR and tonal software to go beyond the realistic for various special effects.

Here's my first efforts.


Interesting, but I have a long way to go of course. I think one of the major things is; like most photography, finding a suitable scene or subject. These were quick shots without much in the way of contrasting areas.

eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver

I rarely buy casual stuff for myself that doesn't directly involve my computer business or something necessary in general, at least for myself.

But, as you might know from my previous entries, I've enjoyed using my GPS receiver (and even made a few bucks from using it once). But it is an el cheapo one - a Magellan eXplorist 100. Basic but with some good features. The ones it was lacking though were hard to live without once I got into using it more and more.

Like the lack of a computer interface (you can only transfer so many latitudes and longitudes to and from the GPS and computer by hand before it gets real old-hat). A company in another country is selling an interface for it but I felt this was a bit iffy. There seemed to be some dispute among those who bought them as to the use of it, and some people didn't have any luck getting the interface to work in the first place. Plus, you had to take the batteries out to use the interface, necessitating using an external power source. Awkward.

Also, the GPS didn't have any maps nor ability (and not much extra memory) to put them on. No road maps, no terrain maps, nottin'. Apparently, using the computer interface it was possible to put some simplistic ones on, again 'iffy'.

There were a number of other minor things too. But it was a good unit to get my feet wet with, and I got it in exchange from a job I did.

So I set out to buy an upgraded one. At first I wanted to go up to the eXplorist 200 but most of the sites had, well, negligible reviews for this and most of the eXplorist series. I never had any trouble with my 100 and felt that it was built well. But others didn't agree (the 200 is basically the same case and model with the interface and memory added, from the looks of it).

I'd always heard about the eTrex models and saw many of them in local stores. Always seemed strange that there were no eXplorists. After looking at the reviews for the eTrex models it seemed that the reviews were great across the board. Also, lots of good reviews from Geocachers themselves. They may be geeky but they know what they're talking about.

Now, I don't necessarily go with other's opinions, but this seemed pretty overwhelming.

I found that the Garmin Trex Venture HC was the best fit for me. A good price yet a heck of a lot of features. I think it is lacking the electronic compass (there are a few different models of the HC, which is conusing), not to be confused with a magnetic compass. My eXplorist had the electronic compass based on the GPS reception - which was nearly useless. I relied on the magnetic compass on my survival watch instead.

Anyway, this has lots of extra memory, comes with an interface cord and map software (which is almost as exciting for me to get my hands onto as the device itself), and has it's own basemaps and can have more uploaded to it. It also can calculate square area, has special Geocacher's (Geocaching is got to be the most geeky sport ever, it's fun but only in small doses, for me at least) and fisherman's and hunter's functions (the latter two I won't be using), color screen, GPS games, a 1000 waypoints and lots of highway/route/track functions, WAAS for more accurate location, and a crapload of other stuff. Can't wait to get it (already downloaded the manual and read through it a few times!).

So if you're in the market for a Magellan eXplorist 100 let me know, I'll give you a good price and show you my new eTrex Venture (when it gets here).