Shiny Things - January 30th, 2008
Jan. 30th, 2008
08:17 am - Vehicle Navigation Systems
We recently got a good deal on a Garmin Nuvi car navigation system. Mostly it's very nifty: it shows how to get to your destination, and it shows where you are and what streets are coming up. It also has some silly stuff added to it that I don't understand: currency converter? digital photo display? And if you choose not to follow its directions, it will recalculate and come up with new directions for you.
It's the quality of the directions that I sometimes have issue with. It did show us a better way to get from our house to my good pal Scotto's house. But I tried it on the way home last night, just to see what it would suggest, and it was obsessed with Meridian avenue. If you're familiar with the drive between downtown Indianapolis and the north side of town, you know that you _never_ drive on Meridian south of the river. You take Capitol south and Illinois north, because they are each one-way with well-sequenced stoplights. But the Nuvi desperately wanted me on Meridian. Every street that I passed on my way north prompted it to say "Recalculating" as it looked for the next way to get me off my nice, efficient route and one block over to the street with fewer lanes and unsequenced lights. I had to turn it off to make it shut up. It was giving me mapmaker's directions: Meridian is a major street that runs longer than Illinois and Capitol, so it assumed it was the better route. When you get directions, you really want them from a native, who knows about traffic patterns as well as geography.
Am I glad to have the thing? Absolutely. I love having the map to show my location and options as I drive, and I love knowing that if I want to go someplace unfamiliar that I _will_ find it... eventually.
02:07 pm - The Lies of Locke Lamora
Thanks to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
reynaudfor recommending The Lies of Locke Lamora. Lots of fun. I was laughing like crazy by the end of the prologue. Scott Lynch is a vile, evil man, and I look forward to the sequel coming out in paperback. (And the movie???)
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