Pre-Trip Stuff I Wanted to Put up Weeks Ago
Note: This post was actually written in mid-June of 2006 and is just now seeing the light of day.
What follows are some completely random notes that I had intended to put online before leaving for my camping trip two weeks ago, but for various reasons am just now jotting down in a hostel in Buenos Aires.
First: some general comments on the Macintosh version of National Geographic's "Topo!" software. After having long admired it at REI, I finally let myself get talked into buying it. Naturally, I didn't end up needing to print any maps using it, but it did come in handy for trip planning a few times, and I have high hopes for its use in the future. I had expected the OSX port to be yet another crappy, half-assed port of a Windows program. I was almost completely wrong on that point--- whoever did the port did a bang-up job. Not only does it function quite well, it looks and feels more or less like a native Mac program should. It uses various OSX UI features such as sheets and drawers appropriately, and performs pretty well to boot. Being the massive geek I am, my first thoughts were along the lines of "I wonder which cross-platform framework they used?". When it comes to Windows & OSX, there are several options--- WxWidgets and Qt being chief among them. I could definitely be wrong, but Topo! doesn't look or feel like it was built with either of those. It actually feels like a "real" OSX app.
The software itself is fantastic--- every USGS map for the entire state of Oregon, plus a pretty good chunk of the parts of Washington and Idaho that border Oregon. I suspect that there is similar coverage coverage of California and Nevada as well, but haven't checked. My only significant gripe is with the printing--- the maps that come out are disappointingly low-resolution (in terms of dots-per-inch of ink on the page, not scale). They are perfectly usable, but could be much better. I'm guessing it's because the map data are stored in some raster file format, and space was at a premium. Future versions would do well to improve this aspect of the software, however.
Two more minor gripes are with export capabilities and a minor bug in the waypoint list feature. There are various ways to export maps from the software, but none of them are meant to be used with other GIS or mapping software applications, such as Google Earth. These programs typically want input images that are projected in a certain way, and also frequently want scale information. There is a standard file format called GeoTIFF which is designed for this; however, the only way that I've found to get GeoTIFFs out of the software is to buy the more expensive "Pro" version. Since this capability seems to be the major difference between the "Consumer" and "Pro" versions, I suspect that the limitation is artificial and has more to do with marketing than with software.
The second aforementioned minor gripe is that, on the Mac version, the GPS waypoint list display widget seems to max out at 1,000 items. While this might seem like a relatively rarely-encountered use-case, many datasets from the USGS include far more than 1,000 points. For example, the USGS master list of coordinates for the nation's hot springs contains well over 1,800 points. While Topo! imports and overlays these files perfectly on the map display, any information in the "note" field of the waypoint is only accessible from the waypoint list view, which, as previously mentioned, only displays the first 1,000 points. Since Oregon's points start just after point number 1,000, this causes some problems.
Luckily, the solution was pretty easy. There is an excellent OS X interface to a program called "GPS Babel" which is designed for reading, writing, and transforming various GPS-related file formats. It is able to read in the ".tpg" file provided by the USGS. It is also able to filter out points based on a variety of criteria, including distance from a particular set of coordinates. So, I was able to open the file, remove any points more than 300 miles from Portland, and then re-import into Topo!. This did the trick, and I was able to get the information I needed.
The other item to mention is REI's "Half-Dome 2" tent. For the price, it is extremely solid and held up well under a week of camping. It packs down reasonably small, and is also light enough (around 5.5 lbs) that would be possible to take it backpacking if needed. We found that one person working alone can erect the tent in under five minutes, and two can do it even faster. The only slightly complicated part is the rain fly--- it is pretty irregularly shaped, which makes it kind of tricky to drape and then later re-fold.
The tent itself is plenty roomy for two people, though the vestibules are a little on the small side. Actually, if I had to come up with a complaint about the tent, it would be with the rain fly. It is just a tiny bit too small, which results in the vestibules being a little bit tight. It also results in the fly being in contact with parts of the tent that you really don't want rainfall runoff directed to, i.e. the head and foot sections. During the one rainstorm we encountered on our trip, it performed well enough... but I'm a little bit concerned about how it would handle longer bouts of precipitation.
All in all, though, the "Half-Dome 2" is a good tent at a great price. Definitely worth looking into.
W.r.t. the camping trip the tent was used for, others have done an superb job of writing it up, so I won't. It was a ton of fun, the weather was great, we saw lots of beautiful stuff. I got some decent pictures, particularly of squirrels and a few nice macro shots of a hover-bug that paid my water bottle an extended visit. For some reason, many of my pictures were apparently taken at something of a slanting angle, which is kind of annoying. My camera can display hairlines in the viewfinder to aid in composition, and I almost always leave these enabled. In the past, this has helped me keep everything more or less level. So, when I saw that a lot of my (otherwise pretty decent) pictures from Crater Lake were about 15 degrees off of horizontal, it was a real surprise. A few other pictures came out slanted as well, but those were probably due to the odd angle I had to take them from--- perched on uneven rocks with a tripod at an odd angle, etc. I suppose another possible explanation is that I myself am at some sort of odd angle, and what I think of as being "level" is actually a few degrees off.
At any rate, because of this, I'm trying to pay very close attention to my leveling these days. This inevitably seems to result in my over-thinking the whole thing, which undoubtedly has resulted in more off-kilter pictures. We shall see...
Note: I have since concluded that the problem is, in fact, with me being slightly off-level, and I've been getting better at correcting for it.
What follows are some completely random notes that I had intended to put online before leaving for my camping trip two weeks ago, but for various reasons am just now jotting down in a hostel in Buenos Aires.
First: some general comments on the Macintosh version of National Geographic's "Topo!" software. After having long admired it at REI, I finally let myself get talked into buying it. Naturally, I didn't end up needing to print any maps using it, but it did come in handy for trip planning a few times, and I have high hopes for its use in the future. I had expected the OSX port to be yet another crappy, half-assed port of a Windows program. I was almost completely wrong on that point--- whoever did the port did a bang-up job. Not only does it function quite well, it looks and feels more or less like a native Mac program should. It uses various OSX UI features such as sheets and drawers appropriately, and performs pretty well to boot. Being the massive geek I am, my first thoughts were along the lines of "I wonder which cross-platform framework they used?". When it comes to Windows & OSX, there are several options--- WxWidgets and Qt being chief among them. I could definitely be wrong, but Topo! doesn't look or feel like it was built with either of those. It actually feels like a "real" OSX app.
The software itself is fantastic--- every USGS map for the entire state of Oregon, plus a pretty good chunk of the parts of Washington and Idaho that border Oregon. I suspect that there is similar coverage coverage of California and Nevada as well, but haven't checked. My only significant gripe is with the printing--- the maps that come out are disappointingly low-resolution (in terms of dots-per-inch of ink on the page, not scale). They are perfectly usable, but could be much better. I'm guessing it's because the map data are stored in some raster file format, and space was at a premium. Future versions would do well to improve this aspect of the software, however.
Two more minor gripes are with export capabilities and a minor bug in the waypoint list feature. There are various ways to export maps from the software, but none of them are meant to be used with other GIS or mapping software applications, such as Google Earth. These programs typically want input images that are projected in a certain way, and also frequently want scale information. There is a standard file format called GeoTIFF which is designed for this; however, the only way that I've found to get GeoTIFFs out of the software is to buy the more expensive "Pro" version. Since this capability seems to be the major difference between the "Consumer" and "Pro" versions, I suspect that the limitation is artificial and has more to do with marketing than with software.
The second aforementioned minor gripe is that, on the Mac version, the GPS waypoint list display widget seems to max out at 1,000 items. While this might seem like a relatively rarely-encountered use-case, many datasets from the USGS include far more than 1,000 points. For example, the USGS master list of coordinates for the nation's hot springs contains well over 1,800 points. While Topo! imports and overlays these files perfectly on the map display, any information in the "note" field of the waypoint is only accessible from the waypoint list view, which, as previously mentioned, only displays the first 1,000 points. Since Oregon's points start just after point number 1,000, this causes some problems.
Luckily, the solution was pretty easy. There is an excellent OS X interface to a program called "GPS Babel" which is designed for reading, writing, and transforming various GPS-related file formats. It is able to read in the ".tpg" file provided by the USGS. It is also able to filter out points based on a variety of criteria, including distance from a particular set of coordinates. So, I was able to open the file, remove any points more than 300 miles from Portland, and then re-import into Topo!. This did the trick, and I was able to get the information I needed.
The other item to mention is REI's "Half-Dome 2" tent. For the price, it is extremely solid and held up well under a week of camping. It packs down reasonably small, and is also light enough (around 5.5 lbs) that would be possible to take it backpacking if needed. We found that one person working alone can erect the tent in under five minutes, and two can do it even faster. The only slightly complicated part is the rain fly--- it is pretty irregularly shaped, which makes it kind of tricky to drape and then later re-fold.
The tent itself is plenty roomy for two people, though the vestibules are a little on the small side. Actually, if I had to come up with a complaint about the tent, it would be with the rain fly. It is just a tiny bit too small, which results in the vestibules being a little bit tight. It also results in the fly being in contact with parts of the tent that you really don't want rainfall runoff directed to, i.e. the head and foot sections. During the one rainstorm we encountered on our trip, it performed well enough... but I'm a little bit concerned about how it would handle longer bouts of precipitation.
All in all, though, the "Half-Dome 2" is a good tent at a great price. Definitely worth looking into.
W.r.t. the camping trip the tent was used for, others have done an superb job of writing it up, so I won't. It was a ton of fun, the weather was great, we saw lots of beautiful stuff. I got some decent pictures, particularly of squirrels and a few nice macro shots of a hover-bug that paid my water bottle an extended visit. For some reason, many of my pictures were apparently taken at something of a slanting angle, which is kind of annoying. My camera can display hairlines in the viewfinder to aid in composition, and I almost always leave these enabled. In the past, this has helped me keep everything more or less level. So, when I saw that a lot of my (otherwise pretty decent) pictures from Crater Lake were about 15 degrees off of horizontal, it was a real surprise. A few other pictures came out slanted as well, but those were probably due to the odd angle I had to take them from--- perched on uneven rocks with a tripod at an odd angle, etc. I suppose another possible explanation is that I myself am at some sort of odd angle, and what I think of as being "level" is actually a few degrees off.
At any rate, because of this, I'm trying to pay very close attention to my leveling these days. This inevitably seems to result in my over-thinking the whole thing, which undoubtedly has resulted in more off-kilter pictures. We shall see...
Note: I have since concluded that the problem is, in fact, with me being slightly off-level, and I've been getting better at correcting for it.
posted by steve | 5:21 PM
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