bioneural.net » Travel

Castles in the sand

Bruce — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:55:02 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Taken at Sugar Beach, Flic en Flac, Republic of Mauritius. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageCastles in the sand

Kayaking with alligators

Bruce — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:46:11 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Our first joint trip to the USA was to NYC; our second was a holiday in Central Florida, which we shared with friends from Jamaica. We did the Disney thing (twice was enough), fulfilled a childhood ambition to visit the Space Center at Cape Canaveral, damaged our hearing on an airboat, went kayaking with American alligators, and got some experience driving in the US. What we got up to in pictures We rented an apartment in Bella Piazza, located in Davenport, Polk County, Florida. The location made an ideal base for exploring the attractions of Central Florida, with a nearby supermarket and adjacent eateries. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageBella Piazza's communal pool Disney's Epcot theme park occupied us for a full day. Lots of animatronics. Each ride or pavillion supplements a sales opportunity (shouldn't that be the other way around?). It's one of those things you (almost) have to do, and probably works best if you have/ borrow children. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageThe monorail at Epcot The Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral was a highlight. The shuttle Atlantis was already on the pad, ready for mission STS-125. Being able to walk beneath the Saturn V rocket (used in the Apollo moon landings) was awesome. We went back to KSC on our last day (tickets are valid for re-entry within 7 days) and watched a 3D IMAX movie about the International Space Station; 45 minutes of the most riveting footage I've ever seen. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageAtlantis on the pad at Kennedy Since the Everglades were ...

The Scottish Highlands in eleven days

Bruce — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:48:59 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Scotland. Even the name of the country causes something to stir in my McKenzie blood. The last time I was there in 1994 we didn't get to the North Western Highlands and so in early September, between the high season/ school holidays and autumn proper, we drove 2845km (1768 miles) in our tiny 698cc car to scratch that itch. Here is our admittedly full but rewarding route and accommodation plan, complete with downloadable maps, KML files for Google Earth, and itinerary/ POI files for TomTom navigation devices. For more photographs, see here. Day 1: Home to Glasgow Although not itself in the Highlands (as demarcated roughly by the Highland Boundary Fault), Glasgow served as the staging point for our expedition. We arrived mid-afternoon after a long drive so had several hours in which to visit Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the overrated SECC beside the black waters of the Clyde (not comparable to the Sydney Opera House as suggested), and the civic centre. We stayed centrally at the Thistle, a tired hotel not deserving of four stars (the window sill in our room had been used as an ashtray; we were flabbergasted to see a smoker puffing away in the corridor beneath a smoke alarm; housekeeping fit pillow cases inside-out, etc.). There's free WiFi for patrons at the Kama Sutra Indian restaurant—if you find yourself in the, err... position without it (excellent food with excellent service too). Day 2: Glasgow to Kilchoan Click thumbnail to enlarge imageRoute and points of interest for Day 2 Not far from ...

Get your GPS fix with RouteBuddy 2.2

Bruce — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:11:27 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

RouteBuddy is an application for Mac marketed as "iTunes for your GPS" in reflection of some interface similarities. It works with most GPS receivers to plot your live position on high-quality street maps, but can also import and export saved data to/ from some devices, applications, and online services. With full-featured and highly portable personal navigation devices increasingly affordable (e.g. TomTom, Garmin) and free tools available for direction-finding and location-sharing (e.g. Google Maps, Google Earth), you may be forgiven for wondering what gap in the market RouteBuddy aims to fill. This question set the brief for my review as I determined to assess its strengths and weakness against the tools you may use already. Disclosure: A single user license for RouteBuddy 2.1.1–2.2 with UK & Ireland maps was provided by RouteBuddy Ltd. for the purposes of this review. Tested using a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook with 2GB RAM. Skip to: Prelude The RouteBuddy interface in brief RouteBuddy and GPS device compatibility Have software, need map Tracking Planning Navigating Importing Exporting Sharing Analyzing Plotting Managing Finding Summary and conclusion Prelude I gave up on Route 66 (now defunct route-planning software) with the arrival of Google Maps, but still largely relied on a spiral-bound paper road atlas—until I hired a car with "sat nav". After a false start with Navman, I migrated to the more Mac-friendly TomTom platform, which led me to discover the sport of geocaching. Then it was back to Navman, and then TomTom again, by which time I had caught up with photo geotagging—and that has become something of a preoccupation. Why am I boring you with ...

The incredible dissolution of being

Bruce — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:25:51 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Another former communist-occupied country visited, another monument to the fallen photographed. How did communism's lofty ideal of equality become so twisted and evil, delivering oppression and brutality wherever it was (or is) practised? Having seen the poignant sculpture in Moscow commemorating Stalin's victims, and the collected skulls from the Killing Fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia, I wasn't expecting to find a similar memorial in the Czech Republic so moving. But death is only one way you can hurt people: how do you physically capture the dissolution of a man's spirit? The Memorial to the Victims of Communism is located in Prague's Lesser Town, on the lower slopes of Petrín Hill (since my image and this post are geotagged, you can retrieve the exact coordinates). This work by Olbram Zoubek, Jan Kerel, and Zdenêk Holzel was unveiled in 2002 and is succinctly described in this passage: It contains seven "phases" of a man living in a totalitarian state—from the first statue being a full man, up to the last statue where only a part of him remains. This evaporation represents the gradual physical and [psychological] destruction of a man who is ruled by any undemocratic regime. The man disappears due to censorship, secret police, no freedom of thoughts and expressions etc. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageThe incredible dissolution of being Very powerful imagery, I think reinforced by the shallow depth-of-field in this photograph which helps to blur the detail (and even the existence) of the more distant figures. It's not a great shot—taken in light ...

New Zealand progressive on fair use laws

Bruce — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:12:48 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

As reported by Ars Technica, the New Zealand House of Representatives passed a bill on 8 April 2008 reforming copyright law for the "digital age". Most netizens even outside the US will have come across the American DMCA: any mention seems tainted by the taste of bile. The DMCA criminalises circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) technologies and access controls—many folk argue at the expense of "fair use". Do the NZ reforms provide workable compromise? Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand [© iStockPhoto] Ars cite a Canadian law professor as saying: The anti-circumvention provisions are arguably the best of any country, since they are compliant with WIPO, limited in scope, and seek to preserve fair dealing rights. Having looked at the new Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill I find myself almost as confused as I was before; it raises at least as many questions as it answers. Time and format shifting I've always wondered exactly how recording a TV programme to VHS tape, DVD+RW, or PVR hard drives sat with current copyright laws. It must be pretty unusual to walk into a living room and not find the home owner's favourite TV series or movie archived on recordable media for repeated viewing at their leisure. Fortunately the bill specifies that anyone watching TV that isn't "live" is no longer engaged in a criminal act (recording of an on-demand broadcast isn't allowed). It does mean, however, that domestic recording libraries are still illegal: you must watch your recordings within a "reasonable" time frame and then delete them. No ...

An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac

Bruce — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:30:54 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

This article considers geotagging photos from a Mac perspective, looking at automatic and manual methods, and explaining terms such as data loggers, track points, waypoints, and routes. It lists OS X software options for connecting to data loggers, converting track log formats, geo-locating photos, and writing that data to EXIF for both raw and JPEG images. It also covers the importance of time synchronization, what you can do with geotagged photos, workflow, choosing a data logger and controlling it from your Mac. Introduction With my blog articles geotagged and mapped, and the launch of geotagicons.com behind me, the next challenge was to consider geotagging my photos in future. Some time ago I blogged about doing this in iPhoto, and although workable for a small selection of images this manual/ best guess option doesn't scale well to 2-3 week vacations when you return with several hundred images and a poor recollection of what was taken exactly where. Before getting started on something (i.e. spending money!) I like to try and gain a reasonable overview of what I'm about to get into. What follows is a summary of my research into the terminology, technology, hardware and software that a budding Mac photo geotagger will want to get to grips with. If you also like to look before you leap then this article may be of service to you. Although written with fellow Mac users in mind, if you're afflicted with Windows much of the article is still relevant. What is geotagging? In a photographic context, geotagging ...

A web standard icon for geotagging

Bruce — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:35:39 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Geotagging (or geocoding if you prefer) is the act of associating your content (blog posts, photos, feeds, etc.) with a geographic location (e.g. via latitude and longitude co-ordinates). Thus tagged authors can "mash" their content together with the likes of Google Maps, or the Flickr Map if photography is your thing. However, co-ordinates are typically encoded within metadata (or microformat) tags making them visible to machines but hidden from people. We have de facto web standard icons to help identify feeds, OPML, and sharing—so why not for geotagged content? Update 29.02.08: Thanks to everyone who gave feedback or otherwise contributed to the process of taking this proposal forward. Comments are now closed and further feedback should now be directed to geotagicons.com, where you can now download the new community-designed geotag icon. The goods I propose a web standard Geotag Icon, to be used freely by any geotagger or geotagging service. Here is what it looks like at 128px: At 32px: And at 16px: Important: These images are not final; this is a proposal. Please do not hotlink to these images. You can download them individually by right-clicking the one you want, or as part of the draft Geotag Icon Development Kit here. Family line-up The family resemblance is obvious: Why not complete the set? Grab the Feed icon, the OPML icon, and the Open Share icon. Update 27.03.08: The Open Share Icon Project offers a free, open, community-driven alternative to the trademarked and brand-linked ShareThis.com icon. Icon specification It should be similar in style to existing de facto web standard icons (hereafter ...

Argentine Iguazu

Bruce — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 09:58:15 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

As noted, we were recently in Brazil. We also crossed into Argentina for a day, in order to view the Iguazu Falls from their side of the Rio Iguazu. The falls are probably the single most impressive natural phenomenon we've seen. I've uploaded a short video to YouTube here, showing the impressive "Devil's Throat" and views from the Upper Circuit walkway. This YouTube video requires Adobe Flash Player. As you might imagine, filming a waterfall system over 1.5 miles across and cascading 1.3–1.5 million litres of water per second is wet work. Hence the water drops on the lens! The soundtrack is Morricone's The Mission (Remix B.O.F. La Mission).

Three weeks in Brazil

Bruce — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:13:40 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

We spent most of November in Brazil, part of the entourage for Simone's cousin who was attending a couple of conferences there. It was an unmissible opportunity for us to see Brazil in the company of someone who spoke the language, and to meet Brazilians outside the usual touristic environment. We didn't realize just how big the country is, loosing several days from our itinerary in just getting from place to place. Lisbon Thursday 1 November A walk through the old city took us to a traditional Portuguese restaurant that did not deserve its reputation nor popularity. A dinner comprising uncooked kebab, cold fries, and a seafood stew of sorts with rice that tasted of nothing but fish was not the most auspicious start. Friday 2 November We found a nice Italian café for breakfast, then walked past the former now facade-only rail station with its double horseshoe arches, the square in front of the museum, and down Rua Augusta noting the elevator to higher levels of the city. At the large square reached through the Triumphal Arch and beside the river (Lisbon is 15km inland) we got on an open-deck bus. We drove past the art deco theatre, patterned paving, the bull ring in Moorish style, Edward VII Park, 25 April Bridge, Discoveries Monument, the Tower of Belém, and cut short the tour at Hieronymites Monastery in order to get to the airport. Tower of Belém Fortaleza Saturday 3 November The almost 7 hour flight from Lisbon to Fortaleza was not so nice with a cold. It was ...