Not mine. Spin out one or two miracles/year and they lap it up! -- Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration, Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN GSX600F, RG250WD, DT175MX "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO# 003, 005 WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon) KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".
One of my "lost in Belgium" episodes occurred whe I knew I wanted to get to Brussels from Luxembourg. There are *NO* signs to Brussels in Luxembourg. When I realised I'd started on the third circle of the ring road and that the traffic cops were waving to me as an old friend I pulled off [1] to find a closer waypoint[2] that _was_ on the direction signs. [1] Which was nearly a disaster as I pulled off into a bus-stop with a cunningly-disguised raised kerb that caught the front wheel as I veered right. [2] Arlon, perhaps? -- Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration, Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN GSX600F, RG250WD, DT175MX "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO# 003, 005 WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon) KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".
*If* I'd had a map of the area when I got lost in TOG's non-orthogonal neighbourhood last week, it would have probably have still taken me longer to navigate back to the Chateau. With a map you need to first find out where you are, then where you want to be, then work out a route between them. Thus you need to find a street or landmark that's in the map's index to work out the first, and indeed the second. ...and be able to navigate the route. With a "hot" (i.e. already locked in) GPS, the first is solved. A little foresight solves the second. Then given decent software it's just "follow the arrow" for the third part of the equation. I was slightly handicapped in not having a mount so I had to pull off every few hundred metres to see which way the arrow was pointing (admittedly the field of view is much less than a map) but if I overshot an intersection it'd do an instant recalc anyhow. I just took it as a successive approximation problem. :-/ I mean, I'm notorious for not being able to remember more than about two streets ahead so I'd have stopped nearly as often to check a paper map anyway. -- Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration, Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN GSX600F, RG250WD, DT175MX "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO# 003, 005 WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon) KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".
Dr Ivan D. Reid says... But Ivan, you're a special case. It's the old trade off of intelligence against common sense thing.
This gets better all the time. The few GPS SatNav units I have used always seem to be very fixed with their course. One can leave the designated route (If I didn't fancy going on a motorway, for example) but they have always wanted me to get back to the motorway at the next turning, unless I tell it to block the road. One device I used demanded I get back on the motorway so much that I had actually reached my destination and it was still trying to get me back on to the motorway. Bad programming on that occasion.
<heh!> -- Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration, Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN GSX600F, RG250WD, DT175MX "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO# 003, 005 WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon) KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".
Jeez, it's not rocket science. Any point North would have been sufficient to get out of the city in the right direction. Having a vague mental map of the continent, and knowing that Calais is North, Paris is West and Lyon is South, for example is, to my mind, an essential part of bike touring.
