C’mon mother nature, birth us some spring weather already!
This whole upcoming week looks like winter still! I am really happy to see the sunshine today. And it’s warm enough to go outside for a few minutes without massive shivering. But really? 24 hours of snow starting tonight, then cloudy, then more snow and rain and freezing rain and ice pellets round out today’s long-range forecasts… I see daytime temperatures above 0, which is at least a bit comforting… But we need hardcore sunlight to melt this hardcore snow pack.
The crap winter we had here made for very packed snow and even the last few days of warm weather isn’t melting it very fast. The popular weather services seem to agree that we won’t really see a real spring before May… So I suppose I have another entire month of whining and complaining before I can get down and dirty in some relatively thawed muddy mud holes.
The good news, at least for the time being, is that I’ve found some nice GPS tools to use… For anyone curious what my hiking setup looks like, keep reading!
So I have a cellphone that I use as a cellphone. It’s got no cellular data, and mostly gets used for texting and the occasional phone call. I say occasional, but what I really mean is I spend all of about 20 minutes a year actually talking on the phone. I hate it so much. Email or text, please! For the last 2 years or so, my hikes have mostly been within walking distance of my home, since cars are expensive and whatnot, so I have the luxury of cellphone service and the ability to call for help should it be needed.
What I didn’t have previously was a reliable GPS. I’ve bitched about that before. After considering buying one, and deciding not to, I went on to looking for GPS software I can run on portable devices I already own. So, with that in mind, I found another old cellphone, with a big battery and large screen. This particular device came to me for free because a) the sim card slot is messed up and isn’t usable as a cellphone, and b) the screen is nicely spider-webbed, and there are chunks of the glass missing… A sad looking device to say the least, but since it is fully functional otherwise (and supports both the american GPS network, and GLONASS), I charged it up and went looking for a good GPS app.
Ulysse Gizmos
This is a pretty neat looking set of tools for watching all of the device’s sensors, including the GPS receiver. The bonus to this software is I can see whether or not I’m getting a good signal from the GPS satellites. Other than that it’s usefulness for hiking is kind of limited. But it’s neat to have. Here it is on Google Play.
GPS Essentials
It took quite a while to find this little gem. It’s got many features that I really like. I can use Google Maps (especially the satellite layer). As I surf around the map while on wifi, it will remember the tiles and I am still able to see the map as I’m out in the bush without any network. The app also allows me to use several other maps, including OpenTopoMap, which allows me to download a section of map to the device for offline use. This is fucking great! There are still more maps that I can use. Hiking maps, trail maps, etc, but most of them do not allow downloading and therefore are pretty useless out of network range.
But just as importantly, there are many other features of this set of tools that make it the best choice for my needs. For example, I can have 2/3 of the screen be a map, and the remaining space used to display a number of widgets. There are quite a few widgets available, but the ones I use are… Position (lat/long), distance to target, target’s position (lat/long)… number of satellites visible/number of satellites used to calculate current position, estimated accuracy, current altitude… A pointer to the target, distance travelled, air pressure… Time of sunrise, time until sunset, time of sunset…
Very useful. Some more than others, like air pressure isn’t really much useful, but neat anyway.
So I can view maps, or just widgets, or both at once… I can see a sky map that shows me where each visible satellite is relative to my position on the ground… The satellites are nicely color coded so I can tell which ones are visible (to the GPS receiver that is), and which ones are actually being used at any given moment… I can keep track of my hikes and view or retrace them later, which is great for remembering how I managed to find a particular mud hole without ending up in an unrelated swamp!
I’m working on mapping all my current happy places onto this thing, so I will hopefully have a solid reference to go on should I decide I want to visit a specific place. I plan to color code the point markers to help me remember which mud holes are best during which time of year… Sorry, I won’t be making these points public…
All-in-all, this app is a great score and I expect I will get a lot of use out of it during this coming (it is coming, right?) mud season. Oh yeah, here’s it’s Google Play page.
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