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A pretty quiet weekend. Nothing got done on Friday of course, but yesterday I did 2/3 of my grading and I've finished the computational physics assignment that isn't due until Friday. I decided to take a short break and found another geocache, but I paid the price - I dropped my camera and now most of the buttons don't work, and the inside may smell of burnt plastic. Damn.

forget what they said in soho

It was nice out this weekend so today I tried some easy geocaching. Although it wasn't too cold outside it was still pretty muddy, and one of the geocaches was amidst blackberry bushes and some old barbed wire and I ended up having to pull some thorns out when I got home. On the plus side, this was really the first time I've experimented with the new GPS software's street navigation, and that worked out pretty well. It was much easier being given roads than having to suffice with an arrow and a distance.

post-season

Well, I made it through the Christmas season without hearing the damned hippopotamus song once. Christmas truly is the time of miracles. Visiting with extended family was nice except everyone wants to know what I'm going to be doing and I have no idea.

My big Christmas present was a GPS receiver, which is extremely cool and slightly devious. You see, if you just sit around being a bum all it will do is tell you where you are. However, if you get off your butt and leave the house it will tell you where you're going, track where you've been, and then there's the whole geocaching angle. Mine is even able to automatically generate routes on the fly and act like a satnav. Apparently some software will even let you look up ATMs, gas stations, hotels and restaurants.

They have quite a racket going with these GPS receivers though. The one I got isn't cheap, but you could easily spend twice as much for a unit with one or two more unnecessary bells and whistles. The preloaded maps only have main highways, so if you want to see every street you're going to have to drop $100 or so on software. If you want better reception from the satellites you can buy an external antenna. Then of course you're going to want a case to protect your investment.

The furthest I've been from the house since I got my GPS receiver is the mailbox, so I really haven't tested what it can do yet. I just figured out how to load geocache locations this afternoon (the receiver has a steep learning curve) but as soon as I did that it started getting dark out so I couldn't test it out. There is a geocache about a third of a mile from my house and I want to check it out.