Last Day

Well, It’s the last day. Today, along with of doing lots of stuff, we went shopping. Yes. Shopping. Afterwhich, we went and checked out this remake of some racing ship that sunk called the Bluenose. And after that we saw crystal glasses, bowls, ornaments and such in the making. And, we went to a seafood … Continue reading “Last Day”

Well, It’s the last day. Today, along with of doing lots of stuff, we went shopping. Yes. Shopping. Afterwhich, we went and checked out this remake of some racing ship that sunk called the Bluenose. And after that we saw crystal glasses, bowls, ornaments and such in the making. And, we went to a seafood restaurant on a dock. Finally, we headed back to the hotel for a cold swim and bed.
Dennis out.

Mom and I on the Bluenose (2)-
BN2

Thats crystal for ya-
SpinCrystal

A day at the beach

Note: We’ve been having some connectivity problems in the evening, so the updates are a bit sporadic. Just a brief photo essay about yesterday… We made it to Rissers Beach. As you can see by the sign, it wasn’t exactly a warm day. The water was really, very cold, but we all went in. (As … Continue reading “A day at the beach”

Note: We’ve been having some connectivity problems in the evening, so the updates are a bit sporadic.

Just a brief photo essay about yesterday…

We made it to Rissers Beach. As you can see by the sign, it wasn’t exactly a warm day.
rissers

The water was really, very cold, but we all went in. (As usual, the one with the camera doesn’t appear in the shots.)
beach1
beach2

There was also a boardwalk that lead out into a wetland area.
boardwalk

Really, that’s all we did. We got our act together so late that we missed breakfast in the hotel and ended up going to a Cora’s. Then, it was over an hour drive to get there, we spent two or three hours swimming/wandering around, and then we came back. We were going to visit Peggy’s Cove and Lunenburg on the way back, but it was getting late and we were tired.

And then some days, you don’t do anything.

We made it to breakfast for just after 10. Afterwards, Deb and Dennis hung around in the lobby and read Harry Potter while I went for a walk around the neighbourhood outside the hotel. It was a grey, drizzly kind of day, but the walk was still fun. When I got back, we all went … Continue reading “And then some days, you don’t do anything.”

We made it to breakfast for just after 10. Afterwards, Deb and Dennis hung around in the lobby and read Harry Potter while I went for a walk around the neighbourhood outside the hotel. It was a grey, drizzly kind of day, but the walk was still fun. When I got back, we all went up to our room and just stayed there until about 4pm: Dennis and Deb read Harry Potter (Dennis is finished) and I played WoW.

Dennis reading

Around 4 we hopped in the van and drove over to a knitting store that Deb wanted to visit, then we had supper at a little pub that’s across from the Dartmouth library. Then we came back to the hotel and Dennis played some WoW, I browsed the web, Deb finished Harry Potter and we all crashed.

I guess we were in need of a “down” day.

We’re still hoping for enough warmth/sunshine to get to a beach, but it’s looking less likely as time goes on.

Day 2

Today was completely random. First of all, we got up and with little success, looked on the net for something to do. We read about some museum in the general area where we were yesterday. When we got there, however, we couldn’t help notice a tour bus/boat getting ready to head off in a tour. … Continue reading “Day 2”

Today was completely random. First of all, we got up and with little success, looked on the net for something to do. We read about some museum in the general area where we were yesterday. When we got there, however, we couldn’t help notice a tour bus/boat getting ready to head off in a tour. We decided to give it a whirl and get tickets. After debating if we should risk $60 for a supposedly 15-30 minute tour, (with a tour boat with a big happy frog on the side), we risked it and went. After we left we went all around town on a hour long tour! We saw tons of shops around the place and an old fort, similar to Old Fort Henry (more on the inside then the outside)! After we finished our excellent tour which took us through the entire area and through the water where we learned some great stories from the past, my parents and I went UP town (haha) to check out the fort we noticed earlier. On the way we checked out a couple of shops, one of which I got 2 excellent souvenires, one of which was a cool pen with Nova Scotia on it and the other was a very cool pocket knife which was almost an exact replica of my other one. When we got to the fort we went exploring and history was learned in a way that wasn’t infinitely boring, by seeing giant models of the fort as it changed and advanced through time, and old guns with timelines! A FPS players fantasy! We bought various thing, took some pictures, I got pie, good times were had by all and then we noticed that we spent 2 hours there and went for some supper at a fancy and delicious seafood restaurant. Well, there you have a blow-by-blow of my second day in Halifax.
P.S. Did I mention I saw a real Tomas Tugboat?

Prisoner 115-
DennisPrison

The fort-
CitadelModel

Dad with me after pie-
DennisCannon

Two more pictures and a link

Deb posted a summary of the day on her blog, so here are a just a couple more pics that she missed: Deb and Dennis with the Maritime Museum behind them: Dennis at the Alexander Keith’s pub (hint: he got lemonade :-))

Deb posted a summary of the day on her blog, so here are a just a couple more pics that she missed:

Deb and Dennis with the Maritime Museum behind them:
Dennis at Keith's

Dennis at the Alexander Keith’s pub (hint: he got lemonade :-))
Dennis at Keith's

Day 1

WELLLL… Today my parents and I did loads of stuff! First of all, (after I lost the war and got up that is) we went to this place called the Maritime Museum where we saw lots of cool stuff regarding boats and such. Afterwards, we went and checked out this boat that was a real … Continue reading “Day 1”

WELLLL… Today my parents and I did loads of stuff! First of all, (after I lost the war and got up that is) we went to this place called the Maritime Museum where we saw lots of cool stuff regarding boats and such. Afterwards, we went and checked out this boat that was a real warship during WW2, which was where I met my friend, Micheal Helps. My parents talked while Mike and I snuck off and manned a turret! And to finish off the day, we had a ‘Nova Scotian Good Time’ over at the Alexander Kieths Brewery (The Origional)! I got to sample a little bit of my parents free ale. Man, was that good! After all that (and a bit more) we were tired out and ready to go back to the hotel and have some seafood, Goodnight! Dad will post some pictures later.

We’re in.

We pulled up at the Holiday Inn in Dartmouth about an hour ago. Just dropped the luggage in the room, went downstairs and grabbed a bit of munchies, and then came back up so Dennis could crash. It’s 10:35 here. I’m going to get some sleep too. Hopefully, I can convince Dennis to write something … Continue reading “We’re in.”

We pulled up at the Holiday Inn in Dartmouth about an hour ago. Just dropped the luggage in the room, went downstairs and grabbed a bit of munchies, and then came back up so Dennis could crash. It’s 10:35 here. I’m going to get some sleep too. Hopefully, I can convince Dennis to write something tomorrow.

The sorry state of GPS on the Mac

Like most Mac users, I’m a zealot. I love my Macs, so when I find something that they can’t do well, I’m frustrated. GPS software seems to be one of those areas. All I wanted was a nice, simple piece of Canadian, street navigation software that supported GPS and would do voice directions. Well, I’ve … Continue reading “The sorry state of GPS on the Mac”

Like most Mac users, I’m a zealot. I love my Macs, so when I find something that they can’t do well, I’m frustrated. GPS software seems to be one of those areas.

All I wanted was a nice, simple piece of Canadian, street navigation software that supported GPS and would do voice directions. Well, I’ve been searching for several weeks now, and the only software I’ve found that might do it is Route 66.

I haven’t tried it because I haven’t been able to get a copy in Ottawa. [Of course, you basically can’t get any mac software in Ottawa, but that’s the subject of another rant.] Given the rather negative comments I have read about Route 66 (terrible ui, buggy, the cheapest possible port of the windows version, etc.) I’m not willing to buy it before trying it, and there didn’t seem to be a demo version available.

I did buy MacGPS Pro which claims to be “the ultimate Macintosh mapping software for GPS communication”. This may actually be true, given the state of the industry, but it certainly wasn’t what I was looking for: manual waypoints, maps cost extra, no route planning. Basically, it was a total bust. This might be useful if you were doing marine navigation, or some such, but it’s not for road travellers.

I haven’t found anything else for the Mac that looked promising. Part of that is because I am looking for Canadian mapping info. There seemed to be a couple of other choices if you were going to be U.S. only.

So, I tried looking for palm software instead.

I wanted to get TomTom, but it doesn’t look like they sell the “software only” version any more, or if they do, it wasn’t clear from their web site. I asked a question on their tech support pages, but haven’t gotten a response.

After much googling, I found Mapopolis, which is close to being exactly what I wanted. I find the map display to be somewhat ugly, but it has all the features I want. There are two issues with it, however:

  1. As soon as I connect the GPS to it, the HD light on my LifeDrive starts flickering constantly. This continues as long as the GPS is connected. Given that the intended use would be for 8..10 hours of continuous driving, I don’t imagine my drive would last very long. The guys at Mapopolis are aware of the problem, and are looking at fixes (before you write to me: yes, I am running the latest version).
  2. One of the tech guys at Mapopolis claims that there are very few BT GPS solutions that work well with the Palm.

    Most do NOT work reliably with the new Palm architecture. Only the MC BTGPS we sell from our website and the Globalsat 338 have new microcode that handles the Palm LOOKAWAY.

    Needless to say, I don’t have either of those, but an MG668 instead.

So where does that leave us? I found a copy of Microsoft Streets & Trips for Windows, and I’m running it on VirtualPC. It still doesn’t do voice navigation, but it has maps of everywhere I wanted to go in Canada, reasonably good route planning, and a professional looking GUI. Connecting it to the GPS was trivial, and I have proven that it all works together well. Given that we’re leaving this week, that’s likely to be the best I can do, but man is it frustrating.

Oh, well.

Update (14:46): TomTom got back to me. Apparently, you can order just the software by calling them directly. Unfortunately, it’s $150 (probably US), so I guess I’ll have to see if anybody in Ottawa stocks TomTom gear; that’s too much money to just buy it based on reputation alone.