Insubstantial!
Mar. 27th, 2005 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theducksSo today, in a rare feat of geekery, I finally got around to making something to connect my garmin eTrex GPS to my Mac, having obtained a USB to serial coverter partially for this purpose many moons ago (all praise be unto penguins). I basically did what this guy did, but I feel I deserve extra geek points for the jury rigged nature of construction.
Sure, I *could* have got some IDC ribbon cable, some proper spring loaded contacts, a soldering iron, a hot glue gun or ever one of the Pfranc plugs, but that's too easy. Mine was made with a spare cisco serial cable, a pair of scissors, a hammer, a pair of pliars, some duct tape and a small set of jeweller's screwdrivers (for punching holes in the plastic :D)
I put it all together, opened up Zterm, plugged it all in told Zterm to connect.. and hey presto, the NMEA love was upon me! Instantly! I was pretty impressed. However, problems developed when I tried to use the Garmin proprietary comms protocol. In the garmin setup, there is no baud rate, but after confirming that it did in fact speak serial and it wasn't my USB serial dongle, I figured.. there's three wires.. one ground, one RX data, one TX data.. NMEA only uses the TX data. I pulled the plug out, smooshed (technical term) the RX wire up some more and it worked! Huzzar! Using the Garmin protocol and a handy piece of Mac software, I was able to download all my waypoints out of the eTrex! Being the compulsive hoarder I am, it has lots of places all over the world in it, London Ontario, Trafalgar Square, Aberdeen, Tokyo etc) some of which I may not return to for a while. If the batteries had run flat, I may have lost them! But I now have them as both XML and CSV, so it's all good :)
In other, slightly less geeky news, Liz and Amy have been at swanconn all weekend, but I did get to hang out with Liz this morning and last night, which has been nice. I've also really been enjoying the 4 day weekend. Also this afternoon, I cleaned the shower glass in the bathroom with CLR (mmm glycolic acid). It's very clear and shiney now. I mean to clean the floor also, but I can't find the dustpan and brush. Actually now I type that, I think I know where it is.
And speaking of returning to.. Liz has got some contract work for a guy in Vancouver, and possibily some more work at UWA. This means we may be able to afford to go to travelling! w00t! Japan was fun last year, but the current pondering is Singapore, Vancouver, Toronto (and London Ont.) and maybe Montreal, and/or Paris or Berlin. I'm not sure when. I'm kinda aiming for leaving late July, but we'll see how the money thing goes. This whole living out of home/being a huge geek thing eats up my salary in an indecent manner. Fortunately I'm due for a tax refund in the next two weeks, but it will all go towards paying off my credit card. I get 55 days interest free, and in 55 days, I can easily pay off my credit card's max, but doing it in a lump sum will be helpful. In theory I could pay it off using my savings account, since most of it is due to my new Palm pilot, and the savings account is for stuff like that, but if I take money out, I don't get bonus interest. Mmm interest. I also have credit card points which can be traded in for about $250 in gift vouchers David Jones (big department store) or $250 in petrol, which would be helpful. Since Liz is doing a number of contracts for this BC based company and will presumably meet up with them while we're there, she might even be able to claim part of the cost of the trip to Canada as a tax deduction.
Also dodgey, my accountant suggests I get private health insurance. Not cause he plans to injure me (I assume), but with the new job, lack of unpaid leave taken and some recent salary increases, I will be earning over the magic amount where my contribution to medicare gets increased by 1% of my salary if I don't have it.. and 1% of my salary is about enough for private health insurance. Heh. So if I don't get it, if I did need to go to hospital or something, I'd be treated as a medicare patient (public hospitals), if I do get it, I get ancillary benefits like a free pair of sneakers each year, glasses (if/when I need them) and other stuff, pay about the same amount (1%) .. and I get to claim it as a tax deduction. I like the sounds of this. Yes, I have an accountant. This probably saves me about 3 hours of messing around doing my own tax return, and with some of the more complex bits of tax law I have fallen under in the past, it's been worth it. It also means I can lodge my 2003-2004 tax return in March 2005 without penalty ;)
In another slightly more dodgey move, I've pondered selling this powerbook and buying a new one. Selling this one would get me a reasonably large sum of money quickly, which would be good for travelling, and the new one would be 400mhz faster and with a 20GB bigger HDD! :> On the downside, the new ones DVD-R's aren't able to be made region free and the trackpads apparently suck. So I dunno. I guess I could swap the optical drives and sell this one with the new drive.
And with that dear livejournal, I abandon you again.
Sure, I *could* have got some IDC ribbon cable, some proper spring loaded contacts, a soldering iron, a hot glue gun or ever one of the Pfranc plugs, but that's too easy. Mine was made with a spare cisco serial cable, a pair of scissors, a hammer, a pair of pliars, some duct tape and a small set of jeweller's screwdrivers (for punching holes in the plastic :D)
I put it all together, opened up Zterm, plugged it all in told Zterm to connect.. and hey presto, the NMEA love was upon me! Instantly! I was pretty impressed. However, problems developed when I tried to use the Garmin proprietary comms protocol. In the garmin setup, there is no baud rate, but after confirming that it did in fact speak serial and it wasn't my USB serial dongle, I figured.. there's three wires.. one ground, one RX data, one TX data.. NMEA only uses the TX data. I pulled the plug out, smooshed (technical term) the RX wire up some more and it worked! Huzzar! Using the Garmin protocol and a handy piece of Mac software, I was able to download all my waypoints out of the eTrex! Being the compulsive hoarder I am, it has lots of places all over the world in it, London Ontario, Trafalgar Square, Aberdeen, Tokyo etc) some of which I may not return to for a while. If the batteries had run flat, I may have lost them! But I now have them as both XML and CSV, so it's all good :)
In other, slightly less geeky news, Liz and Amy have been at swanconn all weekend, but I did get to hang out with Liz this morning and last night, which has been nice. I've also really been enjoying the 4 day weekend. Also this afternoon, I cleaned the shower glass in the bathroom with CLR (mmm glycolic acid). It's very clear and shiney now. I mean to clean the floor also, but I can't find the dustpan and brush. Actually now I type that, I think I know where it is.
And speaking of returning to.. Liz has got some contract work for a guy in Vancouver, and possibily some more work at UWA. This means we may be able to afford to go to travelling! w00t! Japan was fun last year, but the current pondering is Singapore, Vancouver, Toronto (and London Ont.) and maybe Montreal, and/or Paris or Berlin. I'm not sure when. I'm kinda aiming for leaving late July, but we'll see how the money thing goes. This whole living out of home/being a huge geek thing eats up my salary in an indecent manner. Fortunately I'm due for a tax refund in the next two weeks, but it will all go towards paying off my credit card. I get 55 days interest free, and in 55 days, I can easily pay off my credit card's max, but doing it in a lump sum will be helpful. In theory I could pay it off using my savings account, since most of it is due to my new Palm pilot, and the savings account is for stuff like that, but if I take money out, I don't get bonus interest. Mmm interest. I also have credit card points which can be traded in for about $250 in gift vouchers David Jones (big department store) or $250 in petrol, which would be helpful. Since Liz is doing a number of contracts for this BC based company and will presumably meet up with them while we're there, she might even be able to claim part of the cost of the trip to Canada as a tax deduction.
Also dodgey, my accountant suggests I get private health insurance. Not cause he plans to injure me (I assume), but with the new job, lack of unpaid leave taken and some recent salary increases, I will be earning over the magic amount where my contribution to medicare gets increased by 1% of my salary if I don't have it.. and 1% of my salary is about enough for private health insurance. Heh. So if I don't get it, if I did need to go to hospital or something, I'd be treated as a medicare patient (public hospitals), if I do get it, I get ancillary benefits like a free pair of sneakers each year, glasses (if/when I need them) and other stuff, pay about the same amount (1%) .. and I get to claim it as a tax deduction. I like the sounds of this. Yes, I have an accountant. This probably saves me about 3 hours of messing around doing my own tax return, and with some of the more complex bits of tax law I have fallen under in the past, it's been worth it. It also means I can lodge my 2003-2004 tax return in March 2005 without penalty ;)
In another slightly more dodgey move, I've pondered selling this powerbook and buying a new one. Selling this one would get me a reasonably large sum of money quickly, which would be good for travelling, and the new one would be 400mhz faster and with a 20GB bigger HDD! :> On the downside, the new ones DVD-R's aren't able to be made region free and the trackpads apparently suck. So I dunno. I guess I could swap the optical drives and sell this one with the new drive.
And with that dear livejournal, I abandon you again.
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as Vader once remarked to me..
Date: 2005-03-27 01:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-03-28 02:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-28 02:08 am (UTC)