This is a cracker. Use your existing PDA’s GPS receiver to write a GPX log, and then use it to tag your photos with the exact location where they were taken later, with no connection between the GPS receiver and the camera necessary!

Here’s how it works. It’s all about time. A GPX log just records the raw data coming from the GPS receiver - basically just a very accurate time together with an exact location, at intervals along your journey. Digital cameras tag the photos you take with the time and date they were taken - so all you need is a piece of software that’s smart enough to take the timestamp and use the GPS log to turn it into a position.

Here’s one way to do it:

First, I needed a program for my PDA phone: a t-mobile MDA Vario (also known as iMate K-JAM, Qtek 9100, HTC Wizard, etc. etc. - man, I hate re-badging like that) running Windows Mobile 5. It doesn’t have a buit-in GPS receiver - my next phone will (HTC Kaizer) - but I do have a Bluetooth GPS unit which works just fine for the moment. I wanted a program that would also allow the GPS port to be connected to another program while the logger was active, so I could still use it for navigation. What I found does exactly that: I can still use TomTom Navigator at the same time. The logging program is called SunsetGPSLogger and it works a treat. It does have a couple of foibles, but what do you want for free? It doesn’t remember what port your GPS receiver is connected to, so you have to set that every time you launch it. It has a hard-wired path to the place where it will write the logs - and that path is in /Storage Card, so you’d better not have an empty expansion slot. It also has some useful smarts, though: not least the clever algorithm which only writes “good quality” waypoints to the log. Anyway, it writes lovely, compact logs - now I need something to use those logs to tag my photos.

That’s where GPicSync comes in. Again, it’s free, and again, it’s nifty. You point it at the GPS log, and you tell it where the photos are, and you press a button. Actually, it’s also a good idea to tell it the difference between your camera’s clock and the proper GPS time: it’s less easy to keep camera clocks spot on than those of a PDA.

Press the button Synchronise button, and off it goes - writing to the EXIF tags of your photos, and even backing them up if you want, in case it messes things up. It even has a button to show the results in Google Earth once you’re done. Very, very nifty.

When I was last in the U.S. I picked up a Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro. It’s a little USB flash drive-sized audio output interface. It has a single 3.5mm jack socket which works either as an analogue electrical output, for headphones, or as an optical digital output. Snazzy. It was pretty cheap - can’t remember exactly how much, but little enough for me to think that if it delivers better quality than I already have on my laptop, which let’s face it isn’t hard, then it was worth it.

Now, if you’re going to get one of these, there are some things I found out the hard way:

1. When you plug it in, turn the volume way down. When they say it includes a more powerful than usual headphone amplifier, they ain’t kidding. I know laptop musicians and DJs use this gizmo as their headphone out for monitoring, and it’s really up to that job. Believe me, with reasonably sensitive headphones like my Etymotic ER4-Ps, you absolutely do not want a Windows alert sound in your earholes at full blast. It hurts.

2. Don’t install their driver. I know that sounds like an odd thing to suggest, but here’s the thing. Yes, if you install the supplied “aa_micro.exe”, you can play with the daft simulated surround sound gubbins, and faff about with the EQ, but if like me you’re only interested in good quality music playback, none of that matters a fig. More to the point, there’s a real problem with the noise floor when you have the driver installed. The quiet bits in any song, whether it’s mp3, flac or even uncompressed, will sound like cack. Now, Turtle Beach try to explain the lack of sound quality away, but I’m not buying it. Even when you have your sound levels adjusted properly (see point 3 below) it still has the really annoying small-amplitude artifacts. Luckily, Windows XP has a perfectly usable driver on hand - the device when you first plug it in is recognised as a “C-Media USB Audio” device. This driver works perfectly for straight stereo playback.

3. Get your volume levels in the right range. If you’ve been used to using the bog-standard audio output on your computer with most of the levels on maximum, you really need to change them. Like I said before, the Audio Advantage is very likely much, much louder so you’ll have to turn things down - but believe it or not, there’s a knack to that. If you just turn down the master volume, you’ll get the artifacts mentioned above in the quiet parts of the music. They’re much less obvious when the driver’s not installed, but they’re still there. Instead, I do something like this - open the Sounds and Audio Devices Control Panel, and hit Advanced in the Device volume panel:

Now you’ll see the mixer controls, where you can set individual levels for the different inputs to the sound card. Your mp3 player like iTunes, WinAmp or whatever plays back through the “Wave” channel. Normally these controls are just for balancing the different inputs when they’re too different to each other, but what you’ll use them for here is to reduce the overall level coming into the final mix, so that the master volume slider can be higher. Without setting the Wave input to about 60%, the Master slider literally had to be at only a few percent before the music was at a comfortable volume for me - and that leads to the nasty artifacts. So your settings should look something like this:

Finally, the volume level in your music player app should probably be around the 50% mark:

And now I’ve done all this, what do I think of the quality? It’s nothing short of superb. It took a lot of mucking about with settings to get it right, which is why I’m posting this, but once you’ve done all that experimenting, you are rewarded with much more detail and openness than I’ve ever heard out of a built-in sound card or even fairly expensive PCI add-on cards. The little USB gizmo and my Etymotics bring out all sorts of things I’ve not noticed before. Some of that’s great - details in the nuances of voices and instruments, layers in the mix and so on, and some of it’s bad: for the first time I can honestly say that I can hear a marked difference between 128kbps CBR mp3 (stuff I ripped years ago), r3mix VBR mp3 (what I switched to - joint stereo, averages about 180kbps and is much better) and FLAC (what I’m steadily re-ripping everything to right now - keeping Seagate in business via the consequent explosion in disk space I need)

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I go now to my last shower with mere analogue radio…

Well, of course it’s been Christmas, and it’s been fun. My gifts, I hope, were well received, and I got some great ones. Several hundred minutes of West Wing and Spooks and Early Doors on DVD, quality smelly and footy-related goodness!

But it’s been a few days since the break, so why no blog since then? Two words. New toy.

I still haven’t got my replacement battery for the D70. Like I said before, it’s a good job that I bought after-market batteries as my spares. Otherwise I would have been without my camera for six weeks and counting.

Nikon recently recalled the EN-EL3 batteries that were shipped with many Nikon D70s, including mine. Apparently they can get overheated during recharging.

These things happen. Nikon were let down by their contractor making the batteries, and now they’re fixing the problem. Fine so far as it goes. Some time last week I did what they asked to start the procedure to get a replacement: I registered my battery on the Nikon support website. Over a week later, and the Kraken wakes:

All I can say is, it’s a good job that I chose to buy after-market batteries off eBay rather than extra official EN-EL3s as my spares. Without them, my D70 would be entirely useless for a month or more. Not good enough, not good enough at all. What do Nikon think they are achieving by waiting for a duff battery before deigning to replace it? If I don’t own a D70, what use to me is a battery that only fits that camera? What possible kind of scam could I be running? They are succeeding in alienating customers who’ve spent hundreds of pounds on their products for the sake of twenty quid’s worth of replacement parts.

I thought it was fairly likely I would never utter the phrase “that is a beautiful advert”. I suppose it’s almost like Douglas Adams’ famous quip about there being no language which posesses the phrase “as beautiful as an airport”. Anyway, here I sit having seen what I reckon is a lovely piece of film which happens to be trying to sell me a flash Sony LCD telly. Not that I’m too bothered about that: I’m resolved to wait until SED displays arrive and I can have a shiny flat panel screen hanging on my wall that doesn’t have the shortish life and fearsome heat output of plasma, and neither the lag, poorish viewing angle and murky blacks of LCDs.

Still, the Sony Bravia Advert is indeed lovely. I haven’t seen it on TV yet (and God knows I watch enough telly) but it really blew me away. Of course it helps that the music is provided by none other than Jos��� Gonz���lez. I have K to thank for giving me his CD, and her music recommendations are pretty rock solid usually. His album “Veneer” has that rare quality - a real grower that’s already pretty damn good on first listen. “Deadweight on Velveteen” gets close to Stina Nordenstam at her best, and believe me, coming from my mouth that’s a compliment.

I can imagine that the ad execs are going for the same kind of buzz that surrounded the Honda “Cog” commercial, and they may well succeed. I just think it’s pretty. They don’t miss a trick in that they put the whole website up, including behind-the-scenes stuff, from day one. The director, Dane Nicolai Fuglsig, has done himself proud. Now I realise he’s already done great-looking ads like the Audi “Bull” spot, it all starts to make sense…

This is a rare bit of good karma for Sony at the moment, bearing in mind their DRM snafu and so on. I still won’t be buying their telly, though.

Um, well, Diesel Head I suppose. Man, how I love my new car. It’s purple and it’s a Diesel and it has so many toys I’m still figuring them out a full four days after picking it up. And I’m the kind of person that sits down and reads the manual cover to cover. (Think: in those online cod personality tests, I’d come out on the shoegazing side of ubergeek. I’m not, of course; merely thorough. In some things.)

Of course the car’s not new new. This is my first used car: some other sucker has paid the depreciation, and more notably the 17.5% VAT. It tells me what fuel economy I’m getting on the trip (nearly always above 40mpg) and it doesn’t let me get the key out of the ignition when I’ve left it in drive. Oh yes, it’s an automatic too. It goes bing when I get too near anything whilst parking. It goes bing bing. I love my new car.

Desdog doesn’t seem to mind his little dog-tent that keeps him from getting slobber on/scratching/chewing the more important parts of the boot. I suppose he’s figured out that being zipped up in the tent is a prerequisite to going somewhere nice, having a dump and then running around like an idiot. What more to life is there?

Oooooh. Aaaaaah. 24 inches of phwoar!

I’ve been lusting after a Dell panel after seeing them in action at the office, particularly they’re great when driven via DVI. I tell you what, this one doesn’t disappoint. Especially after calibrating it properly, the colour is just cracking.

Never again will you have to choose between having sushi or having a USB memory drive–thanks to the USB sushi drive.