Engraving

I guess you could say that I have odd hobbies. During my most recent stint in grad school I came to appreciate typesetting since I produced a number of manuscripts intended for publication. For this I used LaTeX. LaTeX is about as far away from WYSIWYG "Word Processing" as you can get these days [there are editors to help with that, but I prefer text editors] , but I think the results are superior, and it is certainly easier in my opinion to do scientific publication preparation in LaTeX than, say, Microsoft Word. But I digress...

As you might have gathered, I like to sing, and I do sing in a couple of choirs. Without naming any names, suffice it to say that one of my choir directors hand-writes descants and the like for use with certain hymns we perform. Admittedly his fist is better than mine, but I still prefer a typeset look, or, as I recently learned, an engraved look. So I've taken up engraving, in part to reproduce his work in a more legible form, but also because I get some kind of (perverse?) pleasure in doing it. As a sample, the picture is of Breedlove's I'm Going Home. I've transformed it from shape-notation to a more modern form. [There are likely errors in transcription; use at your own risk. ]

Garmin POI loader

Another neat garmin utility that I hadn't played around with before is the custom point of interest (POI) loader. This is another free download from the Garmin site. It allows you to upload comma-separated value (CSV) and gpx files to your Garmin unit.
[ Check the Garmin site for POI Loader compatibility with your unit. ]

On X units (i.e. those with microSD cards), these files are stored on the card rather than in the unit's memory. While this isn't a replacement for the built-in geocache functionality, it does offer some interesting options.:

• the number of POIs is limited only by the size of the microSD card, rather than the hard limit (<1000?)>
• each entry can contain a latitude/longitude, name, and description (though there is a limit to the amount of text each entry can contain)
  
• Some people are using this feature to generated expanded listings, including difficulty/terrain - even decoded clues - for their geocache waypoints.
  
• custom POI's can be searched for and even used in auto-routing
• several different POI files (databases, according to Garmin) can be loaded at once, and the user can select which is displayed
• according to the documentation, custom waypoint icons can be associated with each POI file (though several people are having difficulty with this feature, and I have not tested it)

There is a GSAK macro that produces entries in a useful CSV format, though some are simply uploading custom GPX files. I'll write more after I have used this software.

Garmin xImage utility

While surfing the 'net the other night I came across a couple of articles describing utilities that work in conjunction with several models of Garmin GPS units. One is a utility called 'xImage' that allows you to send/receive screenshots and waypoint images(?) to/from your Garmin GPS. xImage is a free download from the Garmin site. To use it, you

• install it on a computer that already has the Garmin GPS USB drivers
• connect your Garmin GPS to the computer
• turn on the GPS and wait for your computer to recognize the device
• run the xImage utility

By default, xImage will capture a screenshot of whatever is currently on the Garmin GPS display. You can then save the image as a bit-mapped (BMP) file. The image above is a test that I just downloaded.

Nevada

An old buddy of mine from my college days (the second time, not the first or third) has seen fit to join the blogging and the caching world. No - not Uncle Mack - he already belongs to both. I'm talking about Nevada Mouse, "the World's Greatest Mouse Adventurer." Yawn.

Sorry, where was I? Oh, right, Nevada. Of course, in typical Nevada fashion he's doing it completely backwards, having decided on his caching name first (well, see below), having created a blog to boast of his exploits, and soon to be signing up for the Geocachers of West Tennessee forums. We'll see if he actually manages to find a cache. Mackheath has promised to take him out soon, I think, and I may drag him out for a little cache maintenance that I have do around town. [ I have a side bet stating that he will become completely disenchanted before he hits 100 finds, but you never know. ]

Nevada has been known by that name for some time now; as you might guess, it has some loose connection to a certain archeologist movie hero, which, coincidently, is his profession, and how we first met as grad students back in the day. Admittedly he's spent a lot more time outdoors than I have since then, including a few exotic locales. Thankfully he's given me authoring privileges on his site so that I can add some, ahem, realistic perspective on his exploits.

Nothing to see here

Until recently I didn't know there was a picture of an event that I'm famous for - the breaking of a chandelier at a Mexican restaurant in Jackson, TN. Thankfully BigDaddyD grabbed this one, taken shortly after I had uttered what has become one of my taglines - Nothing to see here. The restaurant was very nice about the whole thing, which is good, because I really did give that light fixture a good knock.

Vehicle repair

At a recent CITO event I noticed the tale-tell signs that my vehicle needed some brake work. Today I followed my wife downtown and dropped off the cachemobile at Reed's Auto Safety Service, Inc., at 711 Monroe Ext. A while back they patched my wife's tire for free (courtesy of an intro from a friend); for payment they asked that she remember them if she ever needed additional repairs. I've been a fan of that sort of policy from my AutoZone days. I'll let you know how things go.

Follow up: Good service, reasonable price. Recommended.

Okay, I lied.

I said that would post more. Obviously, I didn't, given that it is now 6 months or so since my last post. In fact, the greatest continuity between my last post and this is that now I'm entering that period of the year when I yearn to shave my beard off. At least this year I won't be reading the 'Jesus' portion of the Passion according to St. Luke; last year I shaved prematurely, it seems, and disappointed the head of the lectors.

Singing today was Petrarch's Ah Jesus. Unfortunately, Joe wasn't in attendance, which meant that the sounds that have been in my left ear for all of the rehearsals was missing and replaced with a different voice. Not a bad voice, either, but, still, different, which tends to throw me off a little. The whole piece was tentative, both temporally and harmonically, made worse by the fact that the piece had odd, minor chords that don't come readily to the ear or voice. I loused up Section IV, though I did make a strong entrance on III. Oh well, we get another try during the Vigil.

I've just done a query on Geocaching.com and see that there are 20 caches within 3.3 miles of my house, including several that I have no good reason not to go for. I need to dig out the scraps of paper that have solutions for several of the puzzle caches - I would be much further along if I didn't keep losing my work. I hope my new GSAK scheme helps that.