Dad's GPS and Skype Video lessons ; Firefly ; Norton installations
(posted from home)
(This post covers 27-28 February, 2010
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Sunday, 28 February-
We didn't go in to Bethany today. I installed Norton Security 2010 on our Windows PCs. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily and quickly both installations went. I remember struggling through previous installations which failed to work at all (“You already have seurity software installed. Please remove it and start over.” after I had already removed the old one.) or conflicted with other software. For my installations today, all I had to do was put in the disk and type in the product key and it automatically did all the software updating, activiation, and registration. When I did the second copy, the installation process was even easier since the online activation app had already tied the copy to my account. Very cool!
The only thing that puzzles me at this point is I think I have something going on on the laptop. I'm now up to 700,000 files and a full-system scan takes forever.
We watched three more '30 Rock' episodes that evening.
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Saturday, 27 February-
I went in to Bethany today while Labashi worked at home on her PC. My purpose was to take Dad out for a drive with the new GPS to introduce him to it and point out some of its shortcomings. Labashi of course has many things going simultaneously and needs some time to get organized and knock a few items off of her to-do list for Mom and Dad.
As Dad and I prepared to leave, Mom said she also wanted to go along, just to get out of the apartment. She hadn't been anywhere since The Move and is getting cabin fever.
I did the driving today as Dad watched the GPS. Right off the bat we had the problem of the GPS 'thinking' we were on the adjoining street. This basically comes from the level of map detail available in the GPS's map. Bethany is a perfect place to demonstrate this. Close in to the West apartments are the parking lots interconnected by road. But this road runs parallel and very close to mapped streets-- often within ten yards of them. Oddly, you can sometimes see the parking lot road and sometimes not. The car icon representing your car sometimes is shown on the parking lot road but at other times it's in a blank area and you can see the mapped street nearby. The problem comes in when you have a go-to set and the GPS starts giving verbal directions as if you are on the mapped street. At Bethany, you can be NEAR the mapped street but still have to drive a hundred yards or more on a curving road to get to another curving parking-lot road to take you back to the intersection with the mapped street. And while you're doing this, the GPS is giving you directions as if you are already ON the mapped street.
Once you realize this, it's easy enough to just ignore the instructions until you get to the mapped street. That's easy to do at Bethany but it also lets you know that your GPS will sometimes be fooled at places like this-- at frontage roads, for example. (And frontage roads are already confusing!)
I first had Dad just put the GPS on MAP and watch what happened as we drove from Bethany to the Giant a few miles away. He was already familiar with this route so he could concentrate on the display. At the Giant, we then set a GO-TO to go home and drove back to Bethany. And here the GPS tried to take us to Dad's parking place by following the mapped street only to tell us we had arrived at the destination when we were actually on a parallel road and couldn't turn in to the parking lot for another 75 yards or so. But that was a good demo of a limitation of the technology.
Dad had been out exploring on his own earlier in the day and had gone to Best Buy and then gotten lost and had to stop several times to ask directions. I had put Best Buy in as a Favorite yesterday so I had him select it on the GPS and drove there while Dad watched the GPS display and got a feel for warnings of upcoming turns, the count-down of tenths-of-a-mile before a turn, etc.
Once at the Best Buy on Carlisle Pike, we told the GPS to stop navigating and I took them next door to the Wegman's supermarket. We did a short walking tour of the marketplace and Dad insisted on picking up some chocolate mousse desserts for us (yay!) but the point was to give them their first introduction to Wegman's as an alternative to Giant. They had been used to Meijer's and Trader Joe back in Michigan and I'm hoping they will be able to find the things they like here.
After Wegman's I drove west on Carlisle Pike to point out the Wal-mart and the Honda dealership, then Dad set a Go-to for home. I believe Dad is comfortable enough to venture out with the GPS now and have confidence that if he gets lost he can use the GoHome function and it will work.
The other major thing we did today was get familiar with making Skype Video calls. With Labashi at home working on her PC, this was the perfect opportunity to make and take video calls. And the calls were also useful ; Labashi had info and questions for us so this worked out great.
The camera I bought for Skype is a Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 and it's very good for the purpose. It automatically adjusts focus and light and has a wide field of view and a deep depth-of-field. The only thing I didn't appreciate about it was its unsolicited prompts to install additional Logitech software because 'some features may not operate correctly'. The camera was working very well for all of our test calls so I didn't want to chance making it worse, particularly on the vague information provided. What features? Ones I'm interested in? But in summary, I'm very happy with this camera and the Skype Video setup. Easy to set up, easy to use, free video calls. Now, Skype, get busy on small-scale video conference calling!
That evening we watched 'Firefly', an interesting little TV series I had not heard of during its production run in the early part of the decade. It's pretty good! If they can keep up the quality of the writing after their first few episodes, I think we'll be in for the whole ride.
***************** END OF POST ************
(posted from home)
(This post covers 27-28 February, 2010
----------------------------------------------
Sunday, 28 February-
We didn't go in to Bethany today. I installed Norton Security 2010 on our Windows PCs. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily and quickly both installations went. I remember struggling through previous installations which failed to work at all (“You already have seurity software installed. Please remove it and start over.” after I had already removed the old one.) or conflicted with other software. For my installations today, all I had to do was put in the disk and type in the product key and it automatically did all the software updating, activiation, and registration. When I did the second copy, the installation process was even easier since the online activation app had already tied the copy to my account. Very cool!
The only thing that puzzles me at this point is I think I have something going on on the laptop. I'm now up to 700,000 files and a full-system scan takes forever.
We watched three more '30 Rock' episodes that evening.
----------------------------------------------
Saturday, 27 February-
I went in to Bethany today while Labashi worked at home on her PC. My purpose was to take Dad out for a drive with the new GPS to introduce him to it and point out some of its shortcomings. Labashi of course has many things going simultaneously and needs some time to get organized and knock a few items off of her to-do list for Mom and Dad.
As Dad and I prepared to leave, Mom said she also wanted to go along, just to get out of the apartment. She hadn't been anywhere since The Move and is getting cabin fever.
I did the driving today as Dad watched the GPS. Right off the bat we had the problem of the GPS 'thinking' we were on the adjoining street. This basically comes from the level of map detail available in the GPS's map. Bethany is a perfect place to demonstrate this. Close in to the West apartments are the parking lots interconnected by road. But this road runs parallel and very close to mapped streets-- often within ten yards of them. Oddly, you can sometimes see the parking lot road and sometimes not. The car icon representing your car sometimes is shown on the parking lot road but at other times it's in a blank area and you can see the mapped street nearby. The problem comes in when you have a go-to set and the GPS starts giving verbal directions as if you are on the mapped street. At Bethany, you can be NEAR the mapped street but still have to drive a hundred yards or more on a curving road to get to another curving parking-lot road to take you back to the intersection with the mapped street. And while you're doing this, the GPS is giving you directions as if you are already ON the mapped street.
Once you realize this, it's easy enough to just ignore the instructions until you get to the mapped street. That's easy to do at Bethany but it also lets you know that your GPS will sometimes be fooled at places like this-- at frontage roads, for example. (And frontage roads are already confusing!)
I first had Dad just put the GPS on MAP and watch what happened as we drove from Bethany to the Giant a few miles away. He was already familiar with this route so he could concentrate on the display. At the Giant, we then set a GO-TO to go home and drove back to Bethany. And here the GPS tried to take us to Dad's parking place by following the mapped street only to tell us we had arrived at the destination when we were actually on a parallel road and couldn't turn in to the parking lot for another 75 yards or so. But that was a good demo of a limitation of the technology.
Dad had been out exploring on his own earlier in the day and had gone to Best Buy and then gotten lost and had to stop several times to ask directions. I had put Best Buy in as a Favorite yesterday so I had him select it on the GPS and drove there while Dad watched the GPS display and got a feel for warnings of upcoming turns, the count-down of tenths-of-a-mile before a turn, etc.
Once at the Best Buy on Carlisle Pike, we told the GPS to stop navigating and I took them next door to the Wegman's supermarket. We did a short walking tour of the marketplace and Dad insisted on picking up some chocolate mousse desserts for us (yay!) but the point was to give them their first introduction to Wegman's as an alternative to Giant. They had been used to Meijer's and Trader Joe back in Michigan and I'm hoping they will be able to find the things they like here.
After Wegman's I drove west on Carlisle Pike to point out the Wal-mart and the Honda dealership, then Dad set a Go-to for home. I believe Dad is comfortable enough to venture out with the GPS now and have confidence that if he gets lost he can use the GoHome function and it will work.
The other major thing we did today was get familiar with making Skype Video calls. With Labashi at home working on her PC, this was the perfect opportunity to make and take video calls. And the calls were also useful ; Labashi had info and questions for us so this worked out great.
The camera I bought for Skype is a Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 and it's very good for the purpose. It automatically adjusts focus and light and has a wide field of view and a deep depth-of-field. The only thing I didn't appreciate about it was its unsolicited prompts to install additional Logitech software because 'some features may not operate correctly'. The camera was working very well for all of our test calls so I didn't want to chance making it worse, particularly on the vague information provided. What features? Ones I'm interested in? But in summary, I'm very happy with this camera and the Skype Video setup. Easy to set up, easy to use, free video calls. Now, Skype, get busy on small-scale video conference calling!
That evening we watched 'Firefly', an interesting little TV series I had not heard of during its production run in the early part of the decade. It's pretty good! If they can keep up the quality of the writing after their first few episodes, I think we'll be in for the whole ride.
***************** END OF POST ************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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