Free Maps of the Whole US for your Garmin, Customized Engraving Company - Warning Blatant Advertisement

Free Maps of the Whole US for your Garmin

If you buy a Garmin eTrex GPS you know that the basemap for roads is, er, a bit questionable in the amount of data department.  Of course - you're not buying the thing for the roadmaps; are you? 

Well, I want it all so I had a friend (a big thanks to G, always a good guy) download the 1 gig+ IbycusUSA US maps, due to my crippling broadband problem ('crippling' as in the local cable company bites). They're free and so I didn't expect a whole lot, despite people raving about how good they are.

I was wrong and they seem to cover everything I've been trying to do (I spend many hours learning the process and making maps, heh heh;  but now I can concentrate on creating topo maps - a much harder process).  They even include ponds, streams, lakes, and rivers as well as parks, POI's, etc.  They even have the small dirt road tracks that I am used to including in my maps.

Pretty damn good, and they seem to be from the same sources I'm using, the pretty good government-sourced Tigermaps (proof that something sanctioned by the gov't actually can work).  BTW, I believe these are due to be updated this year?  Every 10 years?  Correct me if I'm wrong.

I HIGHLY recommend the IbycusUSA US maps, just download and install and you can access every individual county in the US via your regular Mapsource software (some people on some of the mapping groups I'm a member of say not to download the newest version, as it's 'breaking' the ability of the software to access some third-party maps.  Deliberate by Garmin, or accidental?).

You can also upload these to other Garmin products, including the road navigator Nüvi - from what I have read; to update the existing US maps on it.  I assume the transparency setting for the IbycusUSA US maps is set.

Also, a P.S. and BTW here - another nice mapping website; ACME Mapper 2.0 if you're a mapping nut.  It has links for other sites from the coordinates you enter and you can get Google Maps, Google sat, Google hybrid, topo maps, NEXRAD, and DOQ (Terraserver) and lots of other stuff.

Customized Engraving Company - Warning Blatant Advertisement

I agreed to give these guys a plug in exchange for sending me a very nice (free) nameplate for my desk. 

They did a beautiful job of it for my plaque so here's their website and company - Customized Engraving, check 'em out if you're in the market for these.  You can get plaques, nameplates, photo plaques, signs, etc.  And good prices too, you can order right through their website.

 

Power Crisis, Wind Power, Updated Garmin Maps, Fort Drum Air Show

Power Crisis, Wind Power



Interesting.  For quite sometime I've been saying that we're all dumb.



Everyone in the US should have learned from the oil problems of the 70's (whether we were alive during this time or not), and we should have seen this coming.  We should have been pushing our lawmakers and manufacturers and scientists and everyone else to start looking at alternatives before this high-priced energy problem got so bad.  We shouldn't have been making a bunch of people rich on our backs, especially people who have no like for us or our way of life in the first place.



We knew it was coming, or we should have.  All of us.



Now all the ways to fix the problems will be decades in the making.



And finally someone of high profile has said it, billionaire T. Boone Pickens.  I like this guy, despite his redneck, backwoods-sounding name.



Mostly because he parallels my exact ideas.  That we should have all known better, starting right in the 70's, and should have tried to change things and decrease our reliance on oil. 



In addition his idea is to use wind power for the long-term solution, propane for the short-term.  A lot of sense there since even propane is going to eventually run low, if we overwhelmingly start using that in our cars and furnaces.  I'm not so sold on the whole propane thing, but definitely wind power is going to be a major boon to the US electrical and power need.



Yea, we have a major problem here, and we're going to have to start doing something about it.



My father's idea is to cut back, more and more, and that's what we're all starting to do.  But is that really what we should be doing?  Do we want to keep taking steps backwards?



We may have to in the short-term, until we can get away from the sometimes-Republicanesque attitude of head-in-the-sand turning-a-blind-eye to a problem or using stopgap measures or just plain throwing money in the wrong directions.



Take, for example, hybrid cars.  There's many small cars that get better mileage then even cars like the Prius hybrid. 



And the number of resources going into making that car, and then recycling it at the end of it's life - is certainly high right now.  Maybe more then justifies making the car as a hybrid in the first place.  The naysayers are quick to point out all of these short-comings.



But guess what?  That's the way everything works.  Once people start using a product a manufacturer improves the entire process, as well as science and engineering - from production to product-death, it's stream-lined and the whole operation is bettered.



Look at the first Model-T's.  They were pricey by the standards of the day, and broke down often.  The driver had to be the mechanic too, if he wanted to keep it going.



Once Ford's came along with his assembly line and improvements were made in both the car itself as well as the standardization of parts and consistency of them - the whole thing took off.  Prices dropped, for the consumer and the car maker.  Garages cropped up, more bodies and options were added; and we had a revolution that caused the country (and the world) to go from horse carriages to moderately cheap over-powered machines that could take you anywhere in a short time, and even a teenager could afford a used one.



But what would have happened if people hadn't taken a chance on them in the first place?  And paid a little more, or took some extra trouble to fix a cranky engine?



We need the same general attitude with hybrids, hydrogen cars, electric cars, propane cars, alternative power for cars and homes and businesses in general.  Even if there may be an initial high price for it, both in money itself as well as maintenance and recycling. 



Once we get the demand up there and improve the whole mess we'll start looking to be in much better shape, decades from here very likely (unless we can have a computer-like revolution in energy production).



On a related note - one of the most weirdest things I've seen was local anti-wind power nuts saying they'd rather have a nuke power plant beside them then a wind tower!  Whoa.



Okay, I can understand why some people might think a wind tower is ugly (I personally don't) but who would rather have nukes right beside them then clean wind?



Some of the stuff these people come up with is laughable - the motion of the turbine causing health problems according to an obscure study, decades old, from a quack who was shunned by his peers.



The anti-wind power group seems to have developed a cult following around here, beyond all reason.



On the level of some of the anti-pro-choice nuts and such (and though I'm an animals rights believer I can throw in some of the animal rights groups to the nut category, same with the gun nuts.  Again, I'm a longtime gun rights advocate also, but some of these people are crazy as hell).



What would happen with these anti-wind tower people if their power starting going out on a random basis?  Or their electricity prices sky-rocketed beyond all reason?

 Updated Garmin Maps



These are yet more updated, cleaned up maps for this area.



There's two sets - one with all the major and minor streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes in the area; and one without.



These of course should work on many of the Garmin GPS units, and can be converted to other formats.



Here's the directory.  Disclaimer - use at your own risk, I make no guarantees about accuracy.



You should be able to make a directory for which ever file you download (upperny.zip is just the roads, water.zip is roads and the water - both are transparent so they let the basemap show through), and then unzip the .zip into it, then click the .reg file.  This will add the map to your registry and allow Mapsource to access it.

Fort Drum Air Show

Fort Drum had it's centennial celebration complete with a large air show.



Dumb of me - I didn't go!  Despite my life-long interest in flying and airplanes!



My wife and my father weren't interested, and frankly with the high gas prices I don't do much that's unnecessary in the way of driving.



But none of those were a good excuse for me not wanting to go to something I was extremely interested in.  I can't explain it.



Ah well.  Here's some pics, courtesy of my niece Heidi.

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.