Used this card – Ambicom CF gps – with my toshiba pocketpc on a recent road trip from Seattle to LA. Pros: hardware install flawless, acquired GPS signals right away. Very painless to get working. And map data seemed accurate. Cons: actually assembling your route and map data is painful. You run software on the PC to define your route, and then download the supporting maps to the pocketpc (since you can’t fit them all on the pocketpc). The software couldn’t determine a route from Seattle to LA for some reason, and so I had to create a bunch of subroutes, and then at some point pick counties by hand to download. It is very painful to pick counties by hand, I admit to not knowing the names and layouts of all the counties in WA, OR, and CA.

I picked this card because it was the cheapest. It might be wise to spend a little more to get a better software experience.

Looking for some shows to see in London in June – I hear that this is awesome – National Theatre : Production Seasons : His Dark Materials – not clear it runs til June. The books were enjoyable.

My 4th magazine of the year is The Believer.  Literary and arts criticism, waaaaay outside of my comfort zone – I’ve never read a magazine from this genre before so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

I have to admit I enjoyed it thoroughly.  I expected that it would take  itself way too seriously, but I was pleasantly surprised.  One significant theme in the December/January issue was a focus on pop culture, pop literature, pop art.  Somewhat lightweight works, but the articles in the mag brought the full weight of literary analysis to bear.  Very interesting to read deconstruction and criticism of the Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew series of novels (“the training bras of literature”), a thorough review of the domain of “how to become a novelist” self-help books, an interview discussing the films and music of Ice Cube, an analysis of Howard Cosell.  The mixing of serious analysis with lighter material was entertaining. 

There were weightier pieces too  – on genetic engineering of humans, the relative merits of The Pianist vs Schindler’s List.  I found these less compelling. 

No ads.  I’d buy again.

My 3rd magazine of 52 this year. Boating is the largest circulation boating mag in the US – nearly 250,000 paid copies a month, predominantly male, median age 46, middle class. While I don’t normally read this mag, I have at times been a boating nut – I had my first motorboat when I was 7 years old, I had my first boating accident when I was 7 years and 2 days old.

Stream of consciousness: 369 boaters killed in 2001, usually people in the middle of the experience curve with 3-5 years boating 50 hrs a year (hey this is way more dangerous than mad cow, why aren’t we destroying boats?)…advertisement for the boston whaler – my teen years boat, what a great boat…some dude spent 12 days in a diving suit walking the bottom of loch ness, impressive…Schaefer is rated the best cheap beer for a long day in the sun…no surprise here, you can get great deals on marine electronics on ebay…Anchor effectiveness is a function of fluke area, not weight..tilefish is the hot new dish, tastes like lobster…the Multi-Agency Craft Conference sounds way cool, the military boat show: Outboards that run on any fuel (even whiskey) – completely submersible outboard engines for SEAL missions – electrical supply from outboards for boat electronics – bulletproof inflatable RIB boats – shock absorbing decking and seating for human cargo – roostertail-free designs for reduced radar signatures…

Overall a good read. A large variety of boating info, product reviews, color articles, etc.

smartskins.com – from our buddies at Wildseed.

seattlepi.com Microsoft Blog: Their slogan. His gripe.

Wildseed rides again and I’ve been playing with the latest production phones this week, they are looking great. Congrats to the whole team!

Planet CCRMA at home – very cool, a linux distribution tuned for music and audio production. Good review of it in Electronic Musician this month.

CRN : Daily Archives : Microsoft Exchange Gets New Boss : 2:03 PM EST Mon., Jan. 12, 2004

CBS.SportsLine.com - Ohio State’s Clarett plea bargains out of jail time

My 2nd of 52 magazines this year (see here for setup).

I am fairly apolitical, usually voting for “none of the above”, and I never read political rags. I knew The American Spectator was a political rag when I picked it up, wasn’t sure of the orientation tho – the lead article on the cover was about the “CIA’s Baghdad blunders” which made me think this mag might be critical of the current administration. Boy was I wrong.

Anyway, the stream of consciousness…Page 5, big ad for Ann Coulter’s latest, OK I must be in a right wing magazine…ok some funny stuff in here at times – “the Ba’athist wing of the Democratic Party”, a lot of shots at Rush, some sense of humour…very critical of the CIA in Iraq over the last several administrations (can’t find the article on the website, the website sucks)…long seemingly well-written article about tensions in Iraq between US military and civilian administrations…two-page ad for the Conservative Book Club – don’t inflict new ideas on your brain…a very ugly article by Tom Bethell suggesting that democracies would be better off if we restricted the voting franchise to the people who really understand the issues, well-educated and successful men…some nice travel points by Ben Stein – Hill’s Resort and the Edgewater in Idaho…Circulation: 46,300…some truly whacky quotes from other media – Bush similarities to Bundy, an “I Hate Bush” screech by Jonathan Chait.

Net/net – this is a weird magazine to get your head around. Some truly hateful ideas, some articles that seem more well-written, a sign of a sense of humour at times – it seems like there must be 3-4 editors that each get to push their content into the mag – kind of like the latest Outkast CD. Overall it left me feeling a little dirty though, I definitely could not read this magazine regularly. As someone outside the normal target reader market, the magazine left me feeling less sympathetic toward’s its viewpoint, not more, because at times it is so strident – which will probably be my reaction to most political rags.

Holt Uncensored :: A Candid Look at Books and the Book Industry : Publishing News : Booksellers : Bookstores : Reviews Interviews

Tong Family Blog: Easy way to price video cards and CPUs – rich finds another great site with price data.

I found Lord John and the Private Matterto be a very engaging light mystery. Decent characters for a short story, a lot of period atmosphere. I’ve not read anything else by Gabaldon, apparently this is off-genre for her and a lot of readers on Amazon aren’t thrilled with the book, but I felt it was a good yarn.

Marc’s Outlook on Productivity: Calendar Update for Outlook – cool, get your favorite teams events into Outlook. and with Outlook 2003’s ability to have overlay calendars, this is very nice to work with.