New Toys
Got some cool new toys yesterday for the trip.
First, our digital camera went kaput last week. It is an HP Photosmart 735. It just stopped working. No error, no warning signs, nah da…nothing. It wasn’t that great of a camera anyway. Pictures were alright, but it sucked up battery power.
I bought it because it came bundled with a photo printer and a 64M memory card. The bundle was only $50 more than the camera by itself. I figured what a deal. I know better now.
So I bought a Kodak DX6490. I already like it better. First, it has a manual mode, so I can actually play with all the settings as if it were a manual SLR (I used to be into photography when I was in high school). Second, the optics on it are high quality, which I understand is more important for getting sharper pictures with digital cameras than the megapixel count.
The next thing I got was a cable allowing me to hook up my eTrex GPS unit to my computer. The reason I bought it was that I had previously purchased a 2001 version of Rand McNally mapping software for 2 bucks at BestBuy. The software can take input from a GPS and plot your position on a map. I always wanted a GPS for the RV, but shelling out $1000 for system is too extravagant of a purchase. So with this cable and the software, I was able to make my own solution for about $65.
I tried it and confirmed, via satellite, that my house really is located in Bangor, Maine. It surprised me, actually. Not that my house is in Bangor, I always knew that. What surprised me is that the GPS acquired a signal while I was sitting at my desk in the house. I always though those things needed a pretty unobstructed view of the sky to work. But nope. Mine got a strong enough signal to plot its position on a map.