Peace on Earth

Well, maybe not on earth. However, in a suburban backyard, she's found a bit of temporary sanctuary and peace from traffic and hunters.

Goodbye November

Like it says ...

Hell-ooooo December

Well, we live in a temperate zone, with 4 full seasons. This sums up what we have, off and on, to look forwards to for the next few months. With a little visual assistance from Cincinnati's The Power of 5 televised weather information.

U. S. Capital

A photo I took back in 1976 or thereabouts. Mamiya C330f Pro

Ray ...

A squiggly abstract I managed to create without thought and without effort. It simply appeared as one of my October thumbnails. So, I named it Ray 'cause it looks like it's autographed. Ray scribbles from the beyond.

Reflecting on our Vacation

A mountain stream in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Image is inverted to make it .... uh, whatever.

Wooo Wooo clackity clack

All Aboard. Took a trip on the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad headquartered in Bryson City, North Carolina.

Blackberry 8310 GPS working without cell phone service

I just found out an interesting and, for me, very useful revelation. Recently, I had switched to an Android phone and my previous Blackberry phone provider was terminated.

Recently, I was thinking about getting a GPS tracker (data logger) for my Android. The free Google app, when I began to install it, required me to allow nearly every piece of data on the phone accessible to Google so I decided against that. When I read through all the things that were checked, it seemed that Google's Mytracks was straight out of the pages of the spy agencies. So, once again I began thinking about my Blackberry 8310's GPS capabilities. Voila!

I discovered that my Blackberry's GPS unit works without phone service. I had to go to Options -> Advanced Options -> GPS Services and make sure it was turned ON. I turned it off for a few seconds and turned it back on, stepped outside as it was searching for satellites. In less than a minute later, the display showed 6 satellites and had refreshed the previous reading. Voila and Eureka!!! ... or is it Eureka and Voila?

Next, I activated my tracking program, bbTracker, my friend when I'm roaming the forest, and took a very short walk. The tracker immediately started plotting my progress. The image below shows the my excursion's route. The chart was saved and then re-opened just to make sure the whole process worked. I edited some digits out of the GPS data so you won't know, without some research effort, where the concrete step is on my front porch.

I think I'll keep my Blackberry 8310 for a while longer.