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Munin

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Everything posted by Munin

  1. You might be able to check which POI Loader version you have by going to Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Software, scrolling down to the Garmin POI Loader entry, and clicking the "Click here for support information" link - should pop up a little window telling you which version you've got installed. (Works for me on WinXP with POILoader 2.3.2) If you can't tell for sure whether you're running POI Loader 2.3.2 (the current version, released earlier this month) then you might want to just uninstall the one you have and get the current version from Garmin's POI Loader page - might be best to know for sure exactly which version you're dealing with, since some of the previous releases were a bit ...hmmm... "quirky"? Also, if you ran POILoader in "Express" mode, try it again using "Manual" mode and make sure it isn't turning your poor little points into alerts. (Whatever POI Loader defaults to in Manual mode is how it would treat the file in Express mode - so if Manual mode defaults to proximity alerts for your file, then Express mode was turning them into proximity alerts.) Shouldn't be a problem - at worst you ended up with a newer version of MapSource than whatever came packaged with your GPSr. Still, it's probably not the newest version of MapSource - CSv7's been out for a while, and I think MapSource ver 6.11.3 only came out about 3-4 weeks ago. Just fire up MapSource, go to the "Help" menu, then select "Check for Software Update..." - that'll bring you up-to-date if you're not already running the most recent MapSource/CSv7.
  2. If you wanted to give Waymarking a shot, there's a category there for Canadian Benchmarks. CHSM benchmarks aren't explicitly mentioned in that category's detailed description - I'm not sure if they fall under one of the categories listed there or if this would a separate group of benchmarks.
  3. Sounds like we need to ask Garmin about this. I have the same problem. (...) Man In The Wild, TantalCZ - is there any chance either/both of you could take the .csv/.gpx file that you used with POILoader and put it somewhere for folks to download and experiment with? Or if it's a .csv file, maybe just post a few lines from it? I've been trying to replicate this problem since TantalCZ first mentioned it, but haven't had any luck getting it to happen with my own .csv/.gpx files.
  4. I'm not sure about that - you need an unlock code to use the maps, and I certainely wouldn't use one of my two codes just so someone could "try it out". Garmin's US Topo maps don't use the unlock code system - they're totally unlocked straight out the box. Probably against the license agreement , but it won't eat up an unlock code. For my own opinion (summary: you don't need them, but you might find them handy), I'll link back to something I wrote last month in response to another cacher asking the question "What exactly are the topo maps? Do I need that too?" Basically shows an example of the difference between street and topo details, and some thoughts about how I might use the info from a topo map while caching. May give you some ideas about whether it's the type of thing you might find useful.
  5. Turning on JavaScript should be all you need to use the webcam page, but if you just want to peek in on the nest you can go straight to the Osprey Cam Picture - that's a simple JPEG image, no fancy-schmancy Javascript needed.
  6. "I meant what I said and I said what I meant, an osprey is faithful one thousand percent!" (...with apologies to Theodor Geisel... )
  7. To illustrate what apersson850 is warning about, here's a few tracklogs I made while riding on a mass transit train one day. Riding in one direction (shown in red), I had "Lock on Road" turned on, while on my return trip (shown in green) "Lock on Road" was turned off. I'm not routing to any destination - the auto-routing "On Road" vs "Off Road" options don't apply here - I'm just riding along and having the GPSr record a tracklog. For both examples, I'm on the train so you might think the tracklogs would be reasonably close to the train tracks, but that's only true with "Lock on Road" turned off - otherwise the GPSr map display and the tracklog both claim that I'm over on a nearby road: As an example of the distance filtering coming into play, here's another section of the tracklog while "Lock on Road" was turned on - initially there's no roads nearby, and the track sticks quite close to the railroad tracks (where I'm truly located). But as the curving road on the left draws closer, my position gets sucked over to the road. A little further along, it finds an even closer road over on the right and hops over to that one, even though it's on the opposite side of the tracks. And a short distance later, a highway becomes the closest road, and the tracklog shows me making a rather daring leap up onto a major highway. Amusing, but not a very accurate reflection of reality. FWIW, this particular GPSr (a 76CSx) didn't jump from the railroad tracks over to the first road until the road was within approximately 200 ft (60 meters). Like apersson850, I don't have an Etrex Cx, so pretty pictures is about all I can contribute by way of personal experiences.
  8. In a nutshell, yes - if you want the next generation of maps you'd have to buy them. (Minor updates - basically bugfixes - are sometimes issued for specific versions of maps, and those are free if you own that version.) There's a reduced price for upgrading to a new version if you own an older version (for City Nav v8, an upgrade is 75 USD versus around 120 USD for the full retail version). Garmin doesn't run around collecting road data for things like City Nav on their own - they license the street and POI data from other sources such as NavTeq - and NavTeq doesn't give their data away for free. Someone's got to pay the piper (or the fleet of NavTeq drivers and cars in this case). From there, you get into everyday business decisions - Garmin could do a subscription service by charging a higher fee for the maps in the first place (and using part of that money to amortize the cost of the next "x" upgrades worth of data that they'll be licensing for future releases), or they could take their current approach and charge a lower fee based on the cost to get just one particular version of the maps but have to charge for each future release to cover the cost of licensing the new map data. TANSTAAFL It's not all that different from, say, Microsoft releasing bugfixes on existing software for free, but charging all over again for each release - 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, etc - and providing a somewhat discounted option for people owning older versions of their OS. To stretch the analogy a bit further, just like you don't necessarily have to upgrade to each new version of Windows, you don't have to buy each new map version. (And stretching a little further - if you don't upgrade, maybe you'll find some new games that don't run on your computer, or new roads/restaurants that aren't in your GPSr - but if what you've got is mostly "good 'nuff", you just keep using it.)
  9. U.S. Topo covers the entire United States ("lower 48" plus Alaska and Hawaii). There aren't any lock codes needed for U.S. Topo - it's 100% unlocked right out of the box. If you're looking for just U.S. Topo alone (no street maps like City Nav/City Select) then you can fit everything from Denver westwards, plus a little slop into neighboring states just to be safe, in 30.6 MB. I happened to have a screenshot of the coverage that'd provide from some previous question regarding the same area, so here's what that 30.6MB would contain: Taking a quick look at my copy of U.S. Topo, the entire state of CO (with a bit of "safety slop" around the borders) only uses 43.4 MB, so you can fit the entire state on your 64MB card without a problem. Also, it only takes a few minutes to transfer a new set of maps to your GPSr (at least when you're talking relatively small areas like this - doing a gigabyte of maps ain't so quick ) - so for trips to TX/UT/etc you can just download a new set of maps covering the areas you'd be traveling to, and then restore your CO map set once you get back home again.
  10. The light streak first showed up yesterday afternoon between 2:00 pm and 2:20 pm. I didn't catch whatever happened between those times, but there's no streak in prior pictures and it's there in all the ones afterwards. <== streak-free at 2:00pm <== streak appears at 2:20pm I'd have to agree w/Planet that it's not reflected light - it was faintly visible after sunset last night, and very visible before sunrise this morning: <== still visible at 5:40 am (sunrise was 5:54 am) One possibility I might put forth is that ...umm... ...well... there is a kind of white streak that's commonly associated with birds.
  11. Shots from today: <== Breakfast (fish, of course) <== Attempt to hatch a teddy bear <== Out to lunch
  12. Not quite. Check the feet. No match. Oh yes, I meant to revisit this. Planet was right on the money about the fish-eye lens distortion - the pic I'd looked at when I first pondered the bear's size had an osprey in the foreground, which made it look like the bear was about the size of the bird's head. I dug through some other shots I'd saved and found one where the bear and an osprey are both about the same radial distance from the lens, which should reduce the effects of the lens distortion. Measurements with the internationally recognized "Teddy Bear" unit of distance (1 TB == "height of one osprey-adopted blue teddy bear") now lead me to believe that an osprey is approximately 3.3 TBs from beak to tail, or conversely that 1 TB is somewhere around 7 inches. That's pretty close to the regular-size beanie bears - they're usually listed as being 8" tall. Cool! Let me know if that looks like that might happen! I actually ordered an Audubon beanbag osprey the other night, thought it'd be fun to turn it into a travel bug: (If a rescue mission doesn't turn out to be possible, I've also got a McNugget Beanie Bear on the way. Might not be a match for the one in the nest, but I figured it'd be somewhat proportional to the beanie osprey.)
  13. Picked up a stick mid-morning, otherwise pretty quiet from what I've caught.
  14. If you name an icon .bmp the same as your POI file name (such as MyFinds.gpx, and MyFinds.bmp) and put it in the same folder, upon uploading you will get this custom icon displayed. Sputnik has links to a couple of nice icon collections (geocaching and benchmarking) in Question 9 of the Managing and Using Waypoints section of his Garmin FAQ. They were originally designed as waypoint icons, but the bitmap versions can also be used for Custom POI icons. They're handy for folks like me who have no artistic talent.
  15. You know you've been watching the Osprey Cam too much when things like this start popping into your head:
  16. When I first started caching I didn't carry any kind of repair stuff. But it started to bug me when I came across a torn Ziploc and realized that I had a whole box of Ziplocs...at home. Or a worn-out pen, when I had dozens of spares...at home. Or a touch of dampness that a single paper towel would handle, when I had a whole roll of them...at home. Really minor things that I could easily have taken care of, if only I had something that was -- all together now -- at home! Now I keep a little zippered nylon pencil case in my regular caching pack that contains basic "cache first aid" supplies that I've found myself wishing for at one time or another. It holds an assortment of Ziplocs (snack, 1 quart, and 1 gallon sizes) - handy for protecting contents in damp/damaged caches, and also good for protecting cellphones/wallets/etc if I get caught out in the rain. A couple of extra pens and pencils. A little 3x5 notepad to toss into a cache to supplement a full logbook. Small roll of duct tape for impromptu crack/hole repairs. A few yards of 1/8" nylon rope for servicing tree/rope hides. (Can also work for hanging fallen trail signs/markers back up where they can be seen, emergency boot laces, etc.) And usually a good stack of napkins (unused! ) periodically replenished from various eateries when I take a lunch break - obviously handy for drying out cache/contents after a deluge, also doubling as tissues for runny noses and TP for ...ummm... "other emergencies" I figure that if I'm at a cache and it needs a little TLC, well...I'm already there. I'm more than happy to spend a few minutes doing a wipedown on a damp cache rather than having the owner hop in the car, hike to the cache, run a towel around the inside, and then going all the way back home again. Much the same for donating a notepad/writing utensil/ziploc/etc - I'm on site, I've got spares, and it'll either save the owner the time and money for doing a maintenance run or at least buy them a little time to schedule a visit when it's convenient. Sure, sometimes a cache might be so badly damaged that it can't be serviced in the field, but a lot of the time it just needs a few minutes of attention or a few pennies worth of material to keep it ticking along nicely. It's just another way of saying "TFTC!"
  17. Possibly you're thinking of the 12 Volt Usb Converter thread from a few weeks back? The confusion there was whether a 60C could be powered by a USB cigarette lighter adapter. (Answer: it can't.) Summary of power options that I'm aware of: All "x" models will draw power from a USB cable. I know my 76CSx will run just fine with no batteries inside if I've got it plugged into a computer via the USB cable, so it's certainly not relying on battery power in that case. 60C(S) and 76C(S) will not draw power from a USB cable. Been there, tried it, nada/zilch/zippo. Legend C and Vista C will draw power from a USB cable. (See robertlipe's reply in the 12v USB converter thread above, or read through the owner's manuals - it's a documented feature for those models.) (Edddittted fer speelinggg )
  18. Depends a bit on the software you use to download your data. With MapSource, I don't think there's really any difference between the two file formats. Programs like GPSBabel and GSAK can use the additional information contained in a GPX file to do things like create custom waypoint names that include type/size/difficulty information, like naming the waypoint "GC5E0C Mult/Regu (2.0/1.0)" - seeing that on your GPSr tells you that cache GC5E0C is a multistage, regular size container, 2-star difficulty 1-star terrain. I understand that GSAK has an option to store the hint (or as much of it as will fit) in the Notes/Comments section of a waypoint - again information that's only available in a .GPX file, not a .LOC. People have also been experimenting with putting hint info into Custom POI files, since that provides more space for notes than a regular waypoint does. Both .LOC and .GPX work fine for the basic info - creating a waypoint with a simple name (GCxxxx) at a given lat/lon and maybe selecting a particular icon (open/closed treasure chest). That's pretty much the extent of what a .LOC can do - it simply doesn't contain info like D/T rating, hints, container size, etc. Since a .GPX file contains more info, it provides more opportunities for programs to bend/fold/spindle/mutilate the info to create more informative waypoints.
  19. I've tested both cables with my 76CSx while it had rechargeable batteries inside, and it's like 8mmag said - nope, no recharging. Would've been convenient for business trips if I could've hooked it to the laptop for overnight charging - one less thing to carry along. Oh well, my travel charger doesn't take up that much space.
  20. You can use MapSource to open a .gdb file and download the contents to your GPSr. (.gdb is one of the file types that MapSource can create, so it's probably what your friend used to save their track file off their GPSr.) Some of the popular geocaching tools like GPSBabel also support opening/transferring .gdb files.
  21. See question #9 in the Managing and Using Waypoints section of Sputnik's handy-dandy Garmin FAQ.
  22. It's still "stumble around the house clutching morning coffee" time for me. I just came across some good info on POI filename conventions on gpsinformation.org's POI Loader page. Handling POIs based on the filename make sense now that I think about it - Express mode wouldn't be so ...ummm... "express" if you wanted proximity alerts and had to keep stopping and typing speeds/ranges for every single file that POILoader found.
  23. Even with ver 2.3.2, you might want to try running in Manual mode first. I just ran a retest to double-check my earlier experiences, and if POILoader comes up wanting to create proximity alerts in Manual mode for a given file, then it'll create proximity alerts for that file if Express mode is used. I'm beginning to suspect that POILoader 2.3.2's guess on proximity vs point is based on the filename. If I run it on a set of files ending in numbers - ex: foo1.csv, foo2.csv, foo3.csv - then POILoader is defaulting to proximity (speed) alerts. (With the threshold speeds set to 1mph, 2mph, 3mph - at least when set to Feet/MPH for the units.) However, if I simply rename the files to all-alpha names - ex: fooa.csv, foob.csv, fooc.csv - then POILoader defaults to creating regular locations. Anyone care to play with their filenames and see if they can duplicate this behavior? 2.2.0 is still available from gpsinformation.org's website. The file is named POILoader_20.exe, but it's actually 2.2.0. (I bookmarked one of your earlier posts with that handy link, ProsperDK. )
  24. Sounds like POILoader is creating proximity alerts in your POI instead of plain old points, Thrak. If you're running POILoader in express mode, try going to manual mode and unchecking the silly proximity alert box if it comes up checked by default. In manual mode, I'm seeing some of my files default to just being points (alert checkbox unselected), while other files always come up with the alert box checked in manual mode and wacky defaults for speed/distance. Doesn't seem tied to .csv vs .gpx, or large numbers of points vs a handful, or anything that seem particularly obvious to me. Seems like POILoader is trying to automagically guess what the source file contains (alerts vs points), and isn't always guessing right.
  25. *Ding ding ding ding* - I think we have a winner here! Great job, Blue Power Ranger! Good thinking about the size too - a regular beanie baby bear (8") would be about 1/3 as big as an adult osprey (21-23"), and that's clearly not the case with the bear in the nest. A McD Happy Meal sized bear would be right on the money size-wise.
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