Comments

Navigating the Interwebs — 12 Comments

  1. Heh! I don't have, and have never had a sat-nav in the car purely because I've never really thought about it.

    But I share your enthusiasm for maps. I love them, even (especially?) the old, out of date ones. The Michelin maps are really the best though, aren't they? I've got stacks of them from the various bits of France I've been to / through. Such detail, and available in every petrol station there. Brilliant.

    Also, with maps you can get an overview, and pick your route to take in things that may interest you, which I imagine is not so easy with a sat-nav. You can spread it out on the table in front of you, and study the topography, the wooded areas, the winding mountain roads, the spot altitudes, the archeological sites, the national parks, the rivers, the lakes, the waterfalls. You can get a feel for the area you want to visit and pick your route and destination. Maps are wondrous things. When I bring up maps on the internet, they give me the basic info I need, but they don't offer the same intimacy that a large unfolded paper map does.

    • Maps unfortunately are losing out to technology with the advent of SatNavs and the likes of Google Earth.  That latter is an incredible tool but its "history" only dates back a few years and it doesn't show such details as footpaths and ther such details.  Maps also have the added advantage that their batteries rarely run down?

      One of my favourite websites for a drop of nostalgia – http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/  It's handy for viewing back in time, such as plotting old railways and the like.  I'd like to see a SatNav or G-Earth do that?

  2. People think it strange, but I use an 8 inch tablet as a sat-nav. I love the bigger screen. Its an Android tablet so I don't have to update any maps, the app I use is Navmii, formerly known as FreeNav. It uses OpenStreetmap (https://openstreetmap.org) and refreshes your routes on demand. One little touch I like about it, is that it senses the ambient light from the front camera and automatically goes into night mode at dusk. Navmii has never sent me down the wrong road or tried to kill me.. yet.

    • Not strange at all.  I think the daughter uses her phone.  I tried installing Navmii on my phone but the damn thing won't download maps [it keeps saying I need 1.5 Gb of storage but won't load onto the card which has 32Gb].  Pity.  It looks interesting.  🙁

      • You have to go into the phone settings and choose to download to the SD card, then install Navmii.

        • Meh!  Tried just about everything to change the default.  Went into File Manager and there are several options [Photos, Music etc] which can be changed but Download is greyed out.

          I can install the programme all right and provided I select a small country [e.g. Macedonia] it works fine, but if I try downloading UK & Ireland it whinges that I need more storage.  As I have no intention of moving to Macedonia, I'm stumped.

            • Not bad for less than half an hour's work GD! I'm more used to the screen layout of a Tomtom, having had one for years but the Navmii isn't that different. I think its better than the Tomtom in the sense that it updates automatically in minutes and IMO the Openstreetmap data is more reliable. And of course its free. I'm told that Google Maps is good too but never tried it in sat nav mode.

  3. Down here in the Sydney street directory every page has one phantom street. It's a street on the map which doesn't exist but if the map is copied without authorisation the company can prove it's their property by the simple act of pointing it out on the copy.

    I actually live in one of the streets, moved all my belongings into a house there but haven't been able to get home for years now.

    • Have you thought about using GE to find your way home?  Another method I find quite reliable is to get blind drunk, let "the Force" take over and just rely on homing instincts.

      Just think – no bills!

  4. I still prefer paper map and refuse the tiddlyfiddly Nav things, updating a map takes however long the cashier takes to ring you in. Well worth the money spent, and still cheaper than the Nav thing in the long run, mostly health wise since I almost blow a gasket with swearies when "updating" occurs.

    • The problem is in finding maps for the intended destination.  If I want to travel to an area in Cork for example, the local shops here are unlikely to carry a copy.  I actually bought a set of West Cork [my favourite destination after Wicklow] a couple of years ago and things don't tend to change much there!

      My SatNav eventually updated.  It took eight hours in the end.  With my Interweb connection that allows about 86Gb of download.  Where the fuck did it all go?

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