Hi. That sounds like a wonderful parlor game. I have also found that the
routes aren't bad within a city, but don't try going from one city to
another, even if the cities are adjacent.
Another interesting game is to look at the restaurants in your favorite
ghetto. We walk or drive past poi's all the time, never knowing what they
are. But, I found the Chinese restaurants in a black ghetto, middle
eastern restaurants in a Jamaican ghetto, and the lack of soul food
restaurants in white suburbia to be quite fascinating.
I have now given my BN a prodigious task: copying several hundred files
from a compact flash card to my new 5 GB microdrive. Yes, the charger is
plugged in, and the lights are dimming in the house. Occasionally, the BN
gives up, requiring several resets. After this, it sure would be nice to
have file selection commands in the BN, such as to copy all the files
starting with f and greater. It would save much time if one could select a
block of files to copy, erase, or whatever. The best we can do now is to
select all files beginning with s, then those beginning with t, etc until
we reach the end of the file list. I hoped I could give a copy command and
not have to babysit the BN.
Recently, my BN has allowed me to provide background music so the family
could sing Christmas carols, and it allowed me to bid on several items on
Ebay from a hospital bed. I spent five days in there, and my only pleasures
were sympathy from my lovely wife and my BrailleNote. Yes, it even played
the blues.
By the way, Ebay is a bit tricky to navigate with the BN because pop-up
windows are always trying to take over.
Aloha,
Doug
At 2, you wrote:
Well, Christmas is now definitely behind us and indeed the new year creeps
on a pace. I can't help thinking back to one afternoon just after
Christmas when, together with fourteen or fifteen members of my family, we
played a sort of parlour game with the mark 2 gps. I asked each to
construct a route from their home to a nearby address; limiting the
destination to about five miles. we then compared these with the route
suggested by the mark 2 gps. There were people from places all over the
UK, thus the routes suggested were a good test of the system. At the end
of the session, some three hours later, all agreed that the gps scored
very well on these local routings, and though, with intimate detailed
knowledge of an area, it was possible to better the system's
recommendations, all agreed that the routes worked well. However, when it
came to inter-city routing, all were astounded by the negative
response. On most routes, the system just gave up and declared
"incompleted route." When routes were completed they were almost
invariably considerably longer than necessary. The system appeared to
shunn motorways, though most people would use them as the best and most
economic routes. Many of the routes were inexplicably complex and offered
no gain by the complexity. The general opinion was that there was still a
lot of work to do before it would be of any practical use; though within
small distances, especially in built-up areas, it could already be of
benefit. There was general amazement of some of the smaller roads of
which the system seemed to be aware, and mystification at the refusal to
accept the presence of many motorways. Incidentally, when I took my
Braillenote with its receiver out on to the road, it told me quite
correctly the number of the motorway I was on, though it refused to
provide a route in virtual mode which used it. Please let's be hearing
soon of improvements that will make this a really worthwhile
purchase. Don Cooper.
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