Entries this day: So_far Work World_of_Where

So far

3:27pm JST Tuesday 14 September 2004

Except for hanging out with Hitomi last night, I've been reading and trying and doing stuff to learn about GPS and GPX. Here is kindof a summary that I've learned so far:

I've recently decided to ride my bicycle around Japan, southeast Asia, and China. I think it would be cool to have my position tracked in realtime, but I've found limited resources to support such an endeavor in Asia. Around the US and Europe there is a system called APRS that (to the best of my knowledge so far) uses a system of radios and receivers to broadcast location information. (www.aprsworld.com and www.findu.com can keep track of that data, and present maps of where certain radios (vehicles, people, animals) are located. Perfect!) But the system is not readily available in China, and it's difficult for a visitor to get a license.

The next best solution suggested was for me to collect my tracklog data and post it delayed.

- - - -

So far, after a few days of digging through the internet, I have found the following possible solution:

Garmin Geko 201 (not yet purchased) from tvnav.com
data cables (not yet acquired) from pfranc.com
computer (my Macintosh G4 powerbook)
GPSbabel to convert Garmin proprietary format into GPX format
GPSVisualizer.com to create and display maps based on my uploaded GPX data

Notable mentions during my searching: GPS Connect from Chimosoft.com, but it only imports waypoints, not tracklogs.

Work

11:31pm JST Tuesday 14 September 2004

Work was pretty cool today. Had six lessons, 2/3rds of which were with notably fun students. Hiromi showed me her daily diary, and at some random time during the lesson she showed me her new shoes and picked her foot up into my hands and I was like, woah and wondered if it was a bit of a come-on or just a friendly shoe-showing...(!)

Kyoko scheduled two lessons with me to finish out the day. Fun times. She had a bit of trouble with my/your and at first I could trick her and say, "is this my pen?" and she would parse the question without changing literally and say "yes," wanting to mean it was her pen, but meaning it was my pen.

(( I'm not clear how to simply describe what was happening in her brain. She repeated the 'sounds' that I had uttered in her mind, and it all lined up when she converted the question "is this my pen?" into a sentence "this is my pen." and answered "yes [this is my pen.]" But she didn't remember that the word "my" must have its meaning changed when different people say it. ))

I said, "thank you," and took her pen each time she said it was mine, and the reparsed the sentence and realized her mistake. Once she seemed to have the hang of it, I inquired if her suit jacket was mine. She never errored when I asked about her jacket.

I gave her pen back when she asked for it, and explained some different levels of politeness:

May I borrow my pen?
May I have my pen back?
I want to use my pen.
Give me my pen.

and explained that the first one was too polite, but I had to translate "too" and "polite." I couldn't explain "too" quickly without using Japanese, plus I couldn't remember the Japanese translation, plus the bell had rung for the end of the lesson, so I snagged my Japanese book and translated it using the grammar I had seen, but apparently not learned well enough.

She's so cute. (and not just because she didn't know "too" nor "polite")

I was never able to get her jacket, though.

World of Where

9:58am JST Wednesday 15 September 2004

World of Where is a weird name, but a kinda cool software thing that helped me learn the names of all the countries in South America yesterday. Even the little ones. I haven't confirmed the accuracy of the names with a "real" map, but it seems unlikely that they would be wrong.

I can't use this software to learn the other countries unless I have a registration code. Also I found a bug in the software, which I reproduced consistently and reported to the author. In the same email offered to correct the program's readme file (grammatical and internal inconsistencies) in exchange for a regisration code. He thanked me for the bug report (and said he fixed it) but didn't say anything about the grammar fix offer.

I might fix the grammar just to do the right thing.