I’m slowly fixing up my collection of websites, and today added a couple of wikis to the mix.
wiki.http://nickt.com will become the place where I store all the information about my vehicles, for example I’ve added my 300 TDi D90s specifications to start the ball rolling. I’m keeping this closed to contributions as it’s just a convenient place to store my personal data. Anyone can read it though.
The codex exerro will contain more general overland vehicle information and as it’s not a personal thing, it’ll be open.
In September, a few friends and I spent a few days in the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park. It’s a wonderfully remote area, and if you like Desert solitude it’s really worth a visit.
I’ve started using animoto to build slideshows, and here’s the result of the high-quality version, uploaded to Vimeo.
I spend a lot of time in the desert, including the Sahara, Rub’ al Khali and less exotically the Colorado Plateau (ok, not a desert, but semi-arid (Köppen BSk) and mostly empty of people so it’s close enough for me), and the people and the places fascinate me. As a traveler, I have an interest in navigation, in fact I used to teach Navigation a long time ago…
It’s a wonderful article, clearly a precursor to his book “A Culture of Desert Survival“, and full of navigation and climatic information in the poetry of the Bedouin.
My favorite is
In tila’ Suhayl-Id tdmin is-sarjl—law kdn ‘aqdb il-layl
Canopus was frequently used as a Southern Pole Star by those in the Northern Hemisphere until it fell out of usage when the magnetic compass became popular. The Bedouin also saw Canopus as a coward, as it would dip seasonally below the horizon – unlike Polaris, the steadfast.
It’s particularly moving to remember that these traditions have persisted until the 21st century through an oral history that pre-dates Islam.
For years I’ve used the Garmin GPSMAP 478, it’s got me across the Rub ‘al Khali, seen service in the Sahara and been all over the USA. It’s a fantastic piece of equipment, rugged, robust and reliable. I’ve not had a single problem with it in the last 3 or 4 years. It’ll do turn-by-turn navigation and chart-plotting – an essential feature not just for mariners, but also for those of us who explore the more remote parts of the world. The 478 has served me well and I have no hesitation in recommending it highly. I only had two minor criticisms - it’s be nice to have a slightly larger screen and let’s stop using the proprietary Garmin Data Cards.
Well, there’s a new kid in town. The Garmin GPSMAP 640 looks like it’s going to be the new favorite of overlanders. It addresses both of my issues with the 478. It takes SD cards, and the display is a 13.2 cm (diagonal) with a resolution of 800×480 WVGA (the 478 is 9.4cm on the diagonal and has a resolution of 480×320). It’ll calculate faster than the GPSMAP 478, with SD cards it can support more memory, but it is a bit bulkier (15.0 x 10.2 x 4.8 cm vs the 478 at 14.5 x 8.1 x 4.8 cm).
There is also a GPSMAP 620, which is physically the same at the 640, but doesn’t support the XM Radio and XM Weather (which I use frequently, very handy having radar overlays when you’re in the mountains in the summer), and doesn’t come with any maps preloaded. It also costs $200 less at MSRP.
For XM Radio and XM Weather, you’ll need the new GXM40 antenna (with the very odd MSRP of 267.84). It seems the old GXM30 won’t work with the 640, and you’ll have to transfer your existing XM subscription to the new antenna.
The GPSMAP 640 isn’t available until Q1 2009, with an MRSP of $1199 (but already available for pre-order from around $950).
As soon as Ram Mounts have their brackets ready, I’ll get one ordered.
Na’in, Iran. A wonderful small town in central Iran, on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir (The Kavir desert).
Kristy and I visited here as part of our “Persia Overland” trip, in April and May 2008.
As well as walking the perimeter of the Narin Ghaleh (the large castle in the center of town), we also got to meet and spend a little time with the weavers of Na’in, in their underground chambers.
It was a wonderful place to visit, and very much off the beaten track. I wrote about it briefly over on exerro.com. Recently, Kristy forwarded an article to me, written by Ryszard Antolak and published on the Persian Journal website. The article, “The Hollow Hills of Na’in” is a well written piece on the fate of the weavers in their underground workshops. It captures the sadness that we both felt when we visited, clearly the men weaving that day were the last of a very long line (in fact, my original quote dating the hills to CE1000, is a thousand years out – they are 1,000 years older than that).
Even though the article is a little sad, it ends with a delightful thought:
I stand and listen, carried away by the tide of his tales. In the music and cadences of his voice, I recognize a serenity and dignity that has all but passed away from the world: a dignity not bestowed by wealth or privilege or birth.
My friends Mark, Mike and myself thought that the Land Rovers and ourselves should get one last camping trip in this summer. We’d camped near Water Crossing 3 on Halfmoon Creekearlier in the year, and decided to camp a bit further up the trail. Given the weather forecast of 15F/10C and snow, the wives declined, so it was just a boys camp.
Anyway, it was cold, wet and overcast when we arrived in Leadville, much the same as it was in Denver. Still, we had bourbon, brats, sushi and Snow Peak Chopsticks, so we were happy.
After out sushi lunch and setting up camp, we drove further up the trail to Champion Mill where we took some photos of the mill in it’s decaying state. It’s a shame to see such a wonderful place making its last stand against the elements.
As the elements were making an appearance, we had a quick look inside (be careful – don’t fall through the floor), before heading back down to our 11,110 ft campsite.
Back at camp, we had some brats and bourbon and given the sleet and cold we turned in early.
The next morning dawned crisp and blue, and made the drive back to Leadville wonderful.
UMapper makes it easy to embed Flash-based maps in your website, blog or popular social networks. If you quickly need to create and share a one-off map for almost any purpose, UMapper is a great way to do it.
UMapper home page
I like UMapper as both a technologist and as a traveler. It has one of the easiest interfaces I’ve used; I created and embedded my first map within 3 minutes.
WIth the ability to choose from map providers Google, Microsoft and OpenStreetMap, and the ability to embed maps easily into Facebook, MySpace, Blogger blogs, Wordpress (hosted) blogs, Orkut and iGoogle – as well as providing a Wordpress plug-in, there is enormous flexibility and ease of use.
There’s also the ability to add custom markers, polygons, circles and lines, making it useful for a whole set of businesses from mining companies to real-estate agents.
Import options supported include KML, GPX, and GeoRSS.
The traveler in me really liked twbr’s map, outlining his route through Africa.
During WW1, Sunderland was bombed at least twice by Zeppelin. As an important shipbuilding town it was a great target, and the acoustic mirror system was deployed over the North East to protect the industrial areas from attack.
This particular example is a grade 2 listed structure, and a scheduled monument. The City of Sunderland website has a good overview.
It’s not every day you learn something new about your hometown!
