Family – Page 15 – News from Great Castle Wilson

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 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.”

Made it half way.

We’re in Riviere-du-loup. It took less time than we expected: approx. 7.5 hours.

The traveling geek

Does anyone else think that this is silly: And that doesn’t include the laptop, the digital still camera, the dv camera, the…

Does anyone else think that this is silly:

And that doesn’t include the laptop, the digital still camera, the dv camera, the…

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:

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).
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.

Well. It’s done.

I just finished reading it. Yes, it was good. No, I’m not going to tell you anything more about it.

Dennis and the Pepsi Fac- I mean Ipod Mini

Well… There isn’t alot to tell here, but it was a day to celebrate! First of all, it was the the night after the last day of school so I was already pretty happy and celebrating as dad brought home tidings of pizza and Pepsi, he also granted us a new movie to watch! After … Continue reading “Dennis and the Pepsi Fac- I mean Ipod Mini”

Well… There isn’t alot to tell here, but it was a day to celebrate! First of all, it was the the night after the last day of school so I was already pretty happy and celebrating as dad brought home tidings of pizza and Pepsi, he also granted us a new movie to watch! After the movie I checked under the pepsi cap and there was FREE IPOD MINI staring right at me! I had won 1 of 10 000 of those beautiful ipods! Ok, this is getting boring, let me start over:

It was the last day of school, but our teacher wouldn’t let us leave! It was hopeless! We wouldn’t get out of the class until September! The irony! The pain! The suffering! Suddenly, some kid got mad and turned all green like the hulk, he didn’t really look as scary though. The teacher went to get him a barf bag. As soon as the two of them were gone, the class tried the door, it was blocked with a chair or something. So I found a vent and single file the class squeezed through. While we were in the vent we thought we escaped the teacher and all was well but we were wrong. As I turned the corner we ran into a Mouse-Monster!!! Some unlucky kid in the back of the vent smelt like cheese. Poor guy didn’t stand a chance, as the mouse went into his pants to find the cheese, he burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. The rest of us made it out fine and went home to our familys… And a T.V.
On my way home I saw a news man that looked like some actor from the movie ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ who said that the last of the five of the golden rubber things under the Pepsi caps had been found, they anounced the winners of a trip to the Pepsi Fac- I mean an Ipod Mini. I was sad so I bought a pepsi anyway. Just as I opened the pepsi the man went on on how the last person had been a fraud and the last cap was out there, I checked under the cap and I WON! Some 15 year olds saw and started to take it from me but some other guy pushed out of the way, he shouted “RUN KID RUN!” So i did. As I was running home to tell my beloved parents some wierd guy started singing some song, it sounded kind of like this: Cause he won a golden PepsithingthatsrubberunderthebottlecapyouknowwhatImean! The song wasn’t to good. I ran faster.
The End

Mom’s Away

Well, Mom went away to Knitting Camp in Wisconsin yesterday. Alas, Dad the dogs and I are on our own, wrestling with the vacuum, braving the laundry, and scrubbing the dishes. Man, do I miss mom! Mom should be back late on Wednesday, and I am counting down the days until I have to make … Continue reading “Mom’s Away”

Night 1:
Last night was a thunderstorm so our Rottweiler, Sunshine, was scared to death. (She was found in the wild before we got her from the Humane Society.) She was huddled in my bed until sometime after I fell asleep. Sunshine’s son, Lucky, (He seems mostly German Shepherd and part some other dogs) isn’t scared of anything though, he probably doesn’t even know what he should feel. He would just stand in the rain, get wet and then come inside. Other than that there isn’t much else to tell, so I’ll just leave it at that for our first night without mom.

Night 2:
Well, for night #2 I got to stay up later than usual as Dad and I went to a party sort of thing for the opening for the 6th Harry Potter book. Since The Harry Potter books can’t sell until midnight the store was ready to open but the doors didn’t until 12:00AM. Of course the second we showed one of the people that works there our pre-order form she said “Oh, you’re the Wilsons? We love Debbie.” (lol- laugh out loud) From Bookstores to Knitting and Quilting stores, everybody knows my mom!
(Once again, my dad read the entire book the next day.)