I’m back from Boston, where Navionics showed a bunch of boating writers what Platinum cartography looks like on the water, and also laid out its overall product plan for 2006. Panbo-wise, it’s all a little frustrating. I’ve been beta testing Platinum on a Raymarine E-120 all summer, and have tons of photos and screen shots to illustrate its features in detail. However, I agreed to Raymarine’s understandable request that I not use anything until the code is finalized. Soon, I’m told, very soon. (I got the shot above, and bigger here, during the demo; on the left screen you can see how big the oblique marina and port entrance photos are. Incidentally, when there was a chart on that screen, it was neat to see how well it could synchronize with the 3D screen at right, something I hadn’t seen in my testing).
Similarly, I can’t yet talk about what Navionics is up to in 2006 (very interesting). Instant Panbo publishing is a little too fast for these guys! I may run into this situation a lot this fall, as electronics companies reveal their new products, often timed to magazine cycles two or more months long. Plus my Panbo posting schedule is going to be choppy. In the next six weeks I’ve got a ‘research’ cruise with my daughter on the Hudson river, a press junket to the French Riviera, two trips to Florida (NMEA conference and Ft. Lauderdale boat show), and a completely non nautical but spectacular conference (Pop!Tech) where I volunteer so I can hear what some really large brains are thinking about our tech future. I think of this fall period as a regime of fattening my own brain for the winter ahead.
How freakin coincidental! I was going to write a post today following up on “Geeks versus the evil M.E. empire”, but damned if some software didn’t hijack my computer, and my attention, for a significant chunk of the day. It was Adobe Acrobat, a big time program, and one that’s been running fine since I bought this top-of-the-line Dell and installed my fav software on it last December. All of a sudden Acrobat just wouldn’t open a .pdf file, hanging up on the opening splash screen. I tried everything. I installed updates; didn’t work. I went into the Add/Remove Programs dialog and asked Acrobat to “repair” itself; not. (Along the way, I rebooted the machine many times, and quite lost track of all the tasks on my desk today). I used Window XP System Restore (twice) in an attempt to go back a few days to when Acrobat did work; nada. I completely uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat; still it hung up! That’s when I fled to the gym to watch CNN and sweat for a while.
Finally I Goggled “adobe won't open” and—bingo—learned from some other users somewhere that a glitch in Acrobat can sometimes cause it to create, then choke on, thousands of .tmp files in an obscure directory. Sure enough, there they are above. Even this powerhouse couldn’t delete them all at once. I had to hack through them 6–10 thousand at a time. There must have been over 100,000 files created in just the last few days (and XP’s “clean up” disk utility doesn’t go near them). Finally I can open a .pdf file, though Acrobat is asking me register again (for the 4th or 5th time, I think). So even now I’m not quite back to where I was before this glitch, and I have no assurance that it won’t happen again.
Please don’t write that I should have Googled, or gone to Adobe help, first…you know that can be a wild goose chase. And please don’t tell me that I should be using a Mac or Linux or something…if you haven’t had problems with those it’s largely because can’t fool with a fraction of the software I use.
Most days I love computers, and I’ve had pretty good luck using them on boats. But today is a day I certainly understand people who despise them, and are happy to spend good money for a dedicated plotter instead of chancing navigation on one of these FUBAR machines.
I still can’t load NOAA’s extra hi res aerial images of Katrina into Google Earth, but did succeed with some hi res black and white imagery from Image America. Above is a small section of the marina, lower middle in the images below. There are also thousands of helicopter photos collected by G.E. users who create and share geopositioned links to them. My excuse for writing about Google Earth on Panbo is that it seems evident that eventually we navigators will have access to something even higher resolution and fresher right from our cockpits...hopefully for viewing more cheerful images, like which slips are free in a rebuilt New Orleans marina. Unfortunately Katrina may be a harbinger of another future. At the risk of spending an even more somber Sunday, check out this essay by the brilliant environmental writer Bill McKibben.
I was a bit taken aback when the wonderful Keyhole was rebranded as Google Earth; it sounds so pretentious. But, geez, it just keeps getting better. Now there’s a free version of G.E., plus they’ve just posted hi res sat photos of New Orleans after Katrina and made it easy to compare them with “before”. These particular images actually came from Google Maps, which is easy to access with a Web browser, but they are also available in G.E., along with super high res daily overlays from NOAA (though I haven’t been able to make the link work yet).
This a marina on Lake Pontchartrain that obviously got walloped by Katrina, despite pretty good protection. That’s a big pile of boats lower right, quite visible zoomed in (I’m hoping no one was there trying to save their ship). I think this marina is where I once began a wild ride on a power yacht aptly named “Bontemps Roulez”. That was way back in 1972, while spending a winter in N.O. working on oil field boats and falling in love with the Music City. Unfortunately I’ve never been back, and now the good times have clearly stopped rolling, at least for a while.
Nova Marine recently brought out a compass deviation and correction program called Swingship. Even the free download version could help you at least document just how out of whack, or accurate, your steering compass really is. If you care. It’s interesting how differently even very experienced boaters think on this subject. “The magnetic compass is the primary navigation instrument on any vessel,” writes the developer of Swingship, who I’ve heard is a solo trans ocean sailor. But the salty gent who took me out on his big Eastbay doesn’t much care that his beautifully mounted compass is off. Jeff Kauffman—a compass adjuster for 17 years, a serious delivery skipper even longer—told me this morning, “It’s a bitter pill for guys like me, but there is no question that the magnetic compass has become the secondary heading device on most boats.” I didn’t get to tag along with Jeff on that adjustment job last week, but today I got an interesting blow by blow description. I’ll write up the story soon. In the meantime, I’m deep into compass study. Sorry to report that while the online version of Bowditch (American Practical Navigator) still has a useful chapter on compass technology, gone is the detailed one on compass error that I see in my 1984 print edition. Also took another look at Alan Gurney’s Compass, a history I read last spring. What a fine book.
The race to get hard drives into cell phones and PDAs may result in drives that really lend themselves to tough marine environments. Hitachi just announced a 1”, 8 gigabyte drive with ESP (“Extra Sensory Protection”). It uses a 3-axis accelerometer to detect a fall in as short as four inches and switch into non-operational mode, which according to Hitachi can handle 2000 Gs of shock. It’s hard to imagine where such tiny, rugged drives will take us… or to fathom what it means about the future when tech companies name a hard drive "Mikey" and promote it as “the new bling!” Is it politically incorrect to laugh, imagining a roomful of Asian marketing execs discussing “bling”?
Update 9/7: How timely; today Apple announced a new iPod “nano” that obviously uses a drive like "Mikey". Walt Mossberg, the gadget guy at The Wall Street Journal, is in love with it.
Last week, when I enthused about plotters displaying DVDs, reader Don Parker unloaded on me about how easy this is to do with an onboard PC. He further expressed his general disgust with the “megalomaniacal” marine electronics industry and took a shot at me for failing to point out “when the value added doesn't justify the price”. And Don is not the only smart, techy reader who has a bad attitude toward the electronics companies, and thinks I’m too positive about them. A recent e-mail from Mike took me to the woodshed over the enthusiasm I’ve expressed for NMEA 2000 here and in PMY, and ended with, “You need to think hard about whether you are a reviewer, columnist, or cheerleader for the industry.” Ouch!
Don and Mike are both computer industry veterans and both have some points worth discussing, but first some generalities. Fellas, I have no dog in this fight! In fact I don’t even see a fight. There are perfectly good reasons that some boaters like dedicated electronics, others like computer centric solutions. I use both, and am enthusiastic that both are advancing (and, hey, I write for what are called “enthusiast” publications). The marine electronics industry is not a big nasty monolith out to do you you harm. It’s comprised of tiny to medium size companies, and a lot of generally decent people, competing to make products that make money. If one thought it could do that peddling a generic radar sensor, for instance, there’s nothing to stop them from trying. (I wish this would happen too, Don, but don’t see anyone to blame). And what is value? Getting a powerful system cheap, even if you have to do a lot of friggin around to make it all work? Getting a proprietary system that works pretty well and is all supported by one company, though expensive? There are many angles on this subject. Don, for instance, is using an expensive SeaView computer monitor (right) that came out a few years ago with much hoopla (so waterproof that it was exhibited in a fish tank). The brand didn’t last much longer than a year, and I’m not sure Don can even get his repaired at this point. Was that good value? Unfortunately this sort of thing has happened fairly often with marine computer gear, which has turned some boaters off on that choice. (I’m seeing boaters who used to navigate with laptops switching to plotters, because they’ve gotten so much better, and in a situation like Don’s—a 42’ sailboat—they can be mounted and used right at the helm). At any rate, I don’t get the anger, but will deal with more of Mike and Don’s feedback soon.
I’ve got a cold today, and need a break. Meanwhile, it’s Labor Day Weekend here in the States, and that’s a little depressing too. On one hand, it’s becoming abundantly clear that the folks hurt the most by hurricane Katrina were the residents of New Orleans too poor to get out, and statistics suggest that the number of such people in our country is increasing. On the other hand, the biggest change I’ve seen in 35 years of watching my little harbor in Maine is the arrival of megayachts like Northern Star above, which charters for $425,000 per week, plus expenses. Last weekend I watched the three crew above labor half a day to wash down the 210’ hull, which already shone like a mirror. I’m not sure that’s labor we should be celebrating. I’m going to take a long weekend, refresh, and will get back to marine electronics next Tuesday.
Volvo Penta won an Innovation award at MAATS for its new QL Boat Trim system. Instead of tabs and hydraulic rams, QL uses vertical blades housed in these rectangular blocks (two sizes, right), which mount on the transom. I’m not sure if the actuators are hydraulic or electric but do know they are contained right in the housing, making for a tidy install. Volvo claims they are quite fast acting, but I do wonder if they offer the same lift and stability as flaps? On the other hand, I’ve bitched in the past about how tabs can be hard to use without good indicators and am pleased to see that the QL control module (top) not only has built-in indicators but also very clear command keys. Nice.
The marine electronics industry is not a big nasty monolith out to do you you harm. It’s comprised of tiny to medium size companies, and a lot of generally decent people, competing to make products that make money. If one thought it could do that peddling a generic radar sensor, for instance, there’s nothing to stop them from trying. (I wish this would happen too, Don, but don’t see anyone to blame). And what is value? Getting a powerful system cheap, even if you have to do a lot of friggin around to make it all work? Getting a proprietary system that works pretty well and is all supported by one company, though expensive? There are many angles on this subject. Don, for instance, is using an expensive SeaView computer monitor (right) that came out a few years ago with much hoopla (so waterproof that it was exhibited in a fish tank). The brand didn’t last much longer than a year, and I’m not sure Don can even get his repaired at this point. Was that good value? Unfortunately this sort of thing has happened fairly often with marine computer gear, which has turned some boaters off on that choice. (I’m seeing boaters who used to navigate with laptops switching to plotters, because they’ve gotten so much better, and in a situation like Don’s—a 42’ sailboat—they can be mounted and used right at the helm). At any rate, I don’t get the anger, but will deal with more of Mike and Don’s feedback soon.
Instead of tabs and hydraulic rams, QL uses vertical blades housed in these rectangular blocks (two sizes, right), which mount on the transom. I’m not sure if the actuators are hydraulic or electric but do know they are contained right in the housing, making for a tidy install. Volvo claims they are quite fast acting, but I do wonder if they offer the same lift and stability as flaps? On the other hand, I’ve