Itty Bitty Rants

Infrequent posts about stuff.

New toys

So I've got a couple of new toys, but the one that I am the most excited about is the bluetooth GPS receiver. I went ahead and got the [PalmOne GPS Navigator](http://www.palmone.com/us/products/accessories/peripherals/3166NA.html) (Good price at [buy.com](http://www.buy.com)) to use with my [Tungsten T3](http://www.palmone.com/us/products/handhelds/tungsten-t3/) that I bought this last summer. I've only had it for less than 48 hours, but I'm already having a lot of fun with it.



It ships with [TomTom Navigator](http://www.tomtom.com/) for driving directions, and I'm reasonably happy with it though it looks like every map source I can find has not updated their data for several of the construction projects in my area that have happened in the last few years. Oh, and they have the house numbers on the wrong side of the street I live on. I've been reporting all sorts of errors in their coverage, and hopefully something good comes of it all.



But the really cool part is that I can finally do commute analysis, and hopefully after I have enough data even some decent route optimization to make it just that much faster to and from work. I imagine it's going to show me mostly what I already know, but hard data to back some of it up will be very nice and I wouldn't be too surprised if there were some surprises hidden in there.



The only problem was that the GPS package did not come with a data logger so that I could just collect information about my driving. After doing just a little bit of searching though, I ran across [Cetus GPS](http://www.cetusgps.dk/), which is an incredibly good freeware GPS tool that includes a very nice data logger.



While looking for that, I also found the really cool tool: [GPS Visualizer](http://www.gpsvisualizer.com). Basically someone sat down and wrote an application that will take the route logs and output maps based on those logs with the option to superimpose the data on several varieties of maps.



Amazingly cool stuff, and even better when some of it's free.