Category: Geekery

Adventures in GPS

As well as a chance to use my new (used) Garmin GPSMAP-296 in flight for the first time, I also got a chance to use it in auto mode to navigate around a strange city.

Before we left, I made sure I’d loaded the detail maps for Pittsburgh and surrounds into the data card. (BTW: can somebody please tell me why Garmin used a proprietary data card instead of CF or SMC? Oh yeah, so they could force you to buy it from them, right.) I also entered the addresses for Laura’s dorm and our hotel as user waypoints.

I brought along all the car stuff – the special charger adaptor with the speaker so the GPS can tell you verbally where to turn, the bean-bag holder to put it on the dashboard.

When driving, the GPS was great some times – it got us from the airport to Laura’s dorm, and from there to the hotel perfectly. But other times, it was both the cause of, and solution to, all the problems we had.

First problem – we decided after dinner Saturday night to make a run out to the airport to load the stuff that we’d gotten from Laura’s room to load it into the plane so we’d have more room in the car on Sunday. The route it gave us seemed like it took every narrow stop-sign laden low-speed-limit street through scary neighbourhoods. There wasn’t a single leg over 2 miles long.

The second problem was the way back. The route looked way better – long legs with instructions like “take the ramp to the left”. The problem was the execution – Pittsburgh has a lot of intersections where two or more streets go off on the same side in very short order. And it seems like the GPS wasn’t very good at differentiating, plus I wasn’t very good at estimating distances when it said things like “turn left in 400 feet”. After we got off course, the other problem surfaced – the accuracy wasn’t all that good. So I’d be on a road that was parallel to the one I was supposed to be on the GPS wouldn’t know until I was way off. I never saw the GPS pick up WAAS while I was on the ground, which is too bad because that’s where the extra accuracy would have really come in handly. And then I got into the high buildings, and the GPS accuracy got even worse. At one point it totally lost signal and just kept extrapolating the last direction it had seen me on, which indicated that I was driving through the middle of a park. Eventually we got back to the hotel.

Now in flight, I did pick up WAAS. So when I’m following an airway that I need to be within 4 miles of the center line, I had 5 foot accuracy available, but when I was trying to tell whether I’m on one of two parallel streets that are 30 feet apart, I had 100 feet accuracy. Such is life. I have to wonder if the inability to pick up WAAS in the car was due to using the small stick antenna instead of an external one? I’ll have to look into that.

In flight, I was using the arc mode, which isn’t like the HSI I’m used to, but it had the information I needed to follow the route, without obscuring the information below. And the information below was mostly there for information and entertainment – town, highway, and river names and the like, although it was good to keep track of where the nearest airports where. At 8,000 feet in the flat terrain of New York and Pennsylvania, the terrain page is pretty useless. The “panel” page is nifty. I can see how useful it would be in IMC to check the built in instruments, or even as an emergency backup if they fail.

That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence…

In my continuing efforts to someday fly a deHavilland Beaver, I was having a look at the Murphy Aircraft site. They make a kit built plane that is very similar to the deHavilland Beaver, called the Murphy Moose. It’s smaller than the Beaver, but it’s got a big round engine, and they have a float kit for it. It would almost be perfect for me.

The problem is their web site. It sucks. The very first page has an announcement that they hired their first full time webmaster, and either this webmaster is an idiot, or they haven’t had time to fix the crap. Part of the problem is that there are a lot of broken links. Part of the problem is that some of those links are the classic “thinks they’re a web master because they stole a copy of FrontPage” mistake of a href="file:///S|/Kelly%20Eros/Order%20Info.htm".

But the worst mistake is I went to their order info page (no thanks to that link) to order an information package and DVD. And whoever wrote that page is a moron. First mistake – after you enter your name, you get a pop up telling you that you haven’t put in all the other required fields. No shit Sherlock, that’s why I haven’t hit Submit yet. But then the real problem: you put in your information and your credit card data, and click “Submit”, and instead of getting any sort of confirmation that your information was received, you get two Thunderbird “Compose Mail” windows popping up with an empty mail to “secretary@murphyair.com”. Because for some bizarre reason, the Submit button, as well as being a real form submit button, it’s also a mailto: link. WTF?

Examining the web source, you can also see the biggest newbie mistake ever: the web form has the email recipient coded as a hidden field in the form itself (which means that a spammer could use their server to send spam by changing the email address), and the form action is _vti_bin/shtml.exe/Order%20Info.htm. Looking at my web logs, I can see that _vti_bin/shtml.exe is a known open mail relay program searched for and used by spammers.

This company’s web presence is done by amateurs, and not very competent amateurs. That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence about giving them $50,000 (or however much a kit costs) of my money.

Targetted spam or a referral from somebody who knows me?

Normally, spammers hit millions of email addresses in hopes of finding one match. But today I got one that was so precisely targetted I can only think it was directed specifically at me.

Our client designs and manfactures various products which are used in
navigation and security applications. Much of their technology’s purpose
is to turn visual information (such as vehicle and people positions and
landscape features) into usably displayed visuals in a real time
process.

As they build their advanced, next generation platform that integrates
moving map and sensor functions, an opportunity has opened up for a
high-energy, self-motivated senior software engineer to join their
growing team in Falls Church Virginia.

This is a technology leadership position for a software professional who
has developed complex applications. Experience in intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance would be a major plus, but are not
required.

Required skills include:

Strong database background
C
open GL
at least some exposure to Python scripting
Oracle
The individual must have a strong knowledge of display technology.
GIS (geographical information systems) expertise would be a big plus.
Vector engine Technology
Attention to details and documentation.
Strong communications skills in both spoken and written English.
Proven success in a developmental environment.

Education:
University degree in Electrical, Software or Systems Engineering, or
comparable, is required. An advanced degree is preferred.
All successful applicants must be eligible to meet requirements for U.S.
government security clearance and substance screening.

MPEG4, JPEG2000 experience would be a big plus.

US Citizens only.

Qualified candidates will please submit their MS Word resume, and cover
letter (which includes salary and citizenship details) for immediate and
confidential consideration.

Company offers an excellent salary and superior benefits.

Well, aside from the fact that I can’t move to Falls Church VA and I’m not a US citizen, this job would be perfect for me. Some of the best job satisfaction I ever had was working at GeoVision, a GIS company working in C and Oracle. From the location and the security requirements, it’s definitely government, and probably either military or NRO.

If I were free to move and a US citizen, I’d be on this job like speeding tickets on a JRH.

The comment spam scourge

A while back I was revelling in the fact that the comment spammers appeared to still be targetting my blog through the old Moveable Type comment URLS (which don’t work) instead of the new WordPress comment URLs. Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed that I’d get a spate of 7 or 8 comment spams over a weekend, and then nothing for weeks or months at a time. But then they found me, and I’ve been cleaning stuff out of my SpamKarma 2 interface daily. But the volume is going up and up and up – last night I cleaned out all the spam before bed-time, and woke up this morning to find 217 new comment spams to clean up.

Because of this volume, I’ve activated the “auto cleanup” function on SpamKarma 2, and I will no longer be examing the comments that it flags as spam to see if they were mis-characterized. So if your comment got flagged as spam, and you failed the capcha check, I’m sorry, but it’s gone. I hate to take this step, but by the same token I haven’t seen any false positives in a while.

Bummer

When you or I advertise a piece of used equipment for sale, it means “I have a piece of used equipment, and I want to sell it”. On the other hand, when Aircraft Spruce and Specialty advertises a piece of used equipment for sale, it means “I might get some used equipment some day, and when I do, I’ll sell it to you”. They sent me an email today to say that they don’t have the advertised unit, and don’t know when they’re going to get it, but if I want I can cancel my order.

What’s the point?

Oh well, back to eBay.