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Wednesday 13 June 2012

Caching again, and more software

40 caches today, mostly on the Technobike, but with some on foot. The ground is still very squishy.

Soon after I started, I discovered that the cache info that I thought I had on the Loox, was only partly there. I got round this by using the info on the Mio, which seemed to work fine, but as a general thing, I don't want to carry two PDAs.

I thought of using the Mio for navigating, but I'd given it all 37,000 caches, and Memory Map crashed. I think it will work fine if I just feed it the same half-database that I give the Loox, because I know it's handled that many before.

Back home, I looked into why the Loox wasn't showing me the cache page info. It seems that when I copy data from a linux box to the CF card in the card reader, only the first 16kb works, and after that the file doesn't read. I don't know why.

My solution was to switch to a Windows box to do the copying. I'd tried that before without success (I couldn't address the card in the Loox as a drive letter), but this time, I decided not to copy via the Loox, but to copy straight to the card, in a card reader, which calls it drive G. That seems to work fine - I tested it, and the Loox now seems to be able to read the file.

Another thing I don't know why, is why it takes so long to do the copying via the Loox, compared to via the card reader. Plus there's the advantage that I can copy only the files that have changed. This means that a process that used to take two hours, now takes a couple of minutes.

When I got back to the car after the first circuit, I got my lunch sandwich open and looked for my book. Uh. After checking the usual places, I realised that I must have left it in Tesco when I bought my sandwich. What an idiot, and it's so annoying to be in the middle of a book and then lose it.

So after the day was over, I popped into Tesco on my way home. "Have you had a book handed in?" They have a Lost Propery Database, and the Tescoman checked it. No book. So I left my phone number, and a description of the book "It's a paperback, Luna Marine". "Oh," said Tescoman. And he checked his database again. There was still no book, but there was a paperback. "Could that be it?" he asked.

I was so pleased to get my book back that I didn't make any remarks about book == paperback.


2 comments:

  1. Oh My!!

    The Doc. having to admit that there are actually aspects of disc storage, retention and retrieval that he doesn't know why about!!

    Has the world ENDED!

    Arh, now I see you use a Mio GPS, but how do they compare to the Garmin range?

    And.. are the 37,000 caches you fed into the loox?, the only ones left in the world that you haven't found :)

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  2. It isn't a disk, it's a CF card. I'm still pretty good on disks :-)

    I use a Mio running tomtom for satnav and running memory map as a backup for a gps. As a satnav it's better than a dedicated tomtom because I can upload thousands of POIs to it, I don't think you can with a dedicated tomtom.

    I don't know how it compares with a garmin, I've never used one. But the Loox (which is what I use for walking) gives me a 640 by 480 screen, replacable batteries, OS maps 1:25000 and 1:50000, the full cache page, the last N logs (I choose N) and the hint. I don't know what garmins offer.

    The 37,000 caches are all the caches I haven't done within 150 km of my home.

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