Software Development and Other Stuff
If you’ve been trying to transfer a GPX file to your GPS unit from a Linux machine, using GPSBabel, and have seen this message:
$> gpsbabel -r -i gpx -f FOO.gpx -o garmin -F usb: usb_set_configuration failed, probably because kernel driver 'garmin_gps' is blocking our access to the USB device.
…then don’t despair. Help is here. Continue reading “usb_set_configuration failed”
If you are using the Marengo GPS Route Planner on Internet Explorer you may have noticed that, since January 8th (or thereabouts), you won’t have been able to click or drag any waypoints you lay down on a route.
This is a result of some incorrect data being updated by Google themselves in a recent update to the Maps service.
Fortunately there’s a fix. They’ve amended their error (today), but it requires that you do the following to make it effective:
Open up the route planner, and, while holding down Ctrl, press the browser’s page reload (Refresh) button. This will cause the cache on your browser to be updated and allow the Google fix to be used.
If you are even a semi-geek you surely have heard of the Asus EEE PC – the tiny £200 Linux laptop that is selling like hot cakes.
Naturally I ordered one as soon as it was announced in the UK… and I have to say it’s brilliant. Coupled with a Huawei E220 mobile modem (the one that Three.co.uk are pushing in their “mobile broadband” campaign) it’s a go-anywhere marvel. I regularly use it for development while on the tube, commuting to and from work.
One of the fruits of this extra development time is Mercury, a very basic (at this stage) Quicksilver-type launcher for Linux, but with very few dependencies. Katapult, for example, is more full-featured, but on the EEE requires a huge amount of extra upgrades to allow it to run. Mercury runs without anything else (as far as I can tell :)
Anyway, get it here: http://www.marengo-ltd.com/mercury/
Well, lots of people have asked for it, so I’m looking to add elevation data (i.e. altitude) to the route planner*. I’ve got it storing the figure for each waypoint in my test version of the application. I’m now wondering what to do with it! At present I’m thinking maybe just have the ability to display a ride profile with total number of meters climbed etc.
If anyone’s got any ideas on what they’d like to see implemented regarding this, now’s the time to speak up.
*Edit: to clarify, I mean the route planner will determine the elevation of each of your waypoints when you are planning the route, not simply read the data from a route that the GPS unit has recorded.
In case you’ve missed the announcements in the comments elsewhere, there’s a new forum dedicated to the Marengo GPS Route Planner. You can find it at
http://www.marengo-ltd.com/mapforum
It’s the best place to post your rides, ask questions and find “how to” articles. Or at least it will be when we get more than three people signing up to it :-)
A short post just to say that the price of an annual subscription to the Marengo GPS Route Planner site has been slashed from £12.99 down to just £4.99.
Having analysed the database, I see that there are quite a few people who have two or more saved routes with identical names. I want to clear up what may be some misunderstanding in this post… Continue reading “Saving Your Route”
I’m going to be writing a series of posts on various aspects of the new Route Planner. Today’s a simple one… how to share a route with your friends. Continue reading “Publishing Your Route”
I’m pleased to announce the release of the new version of the Marengo GPS Route Planner.
It’s full of great new features, including:
This version is kind of commercial: there’s a minimal PayPal donation required per annum for the ability to save routes on the Marengo servers. The first 30 days are free and without commitment. This gives you a chance to make sure that you think the new version is worth donating to!
You can get your login here: http://www.marengo-ltd.com/map2/subscribe.php
If you want to continue using the free version, it’s not a problem – it’s not going away.
I’m announcing this release here first as a kind of limited beta – I’d appreciate feedback on any comments or problems you may have with this release.
The new version of the most popular Linux distribution – Ubuntu – is brilliant. However there is one small problem I’ve come up against which is an annoyance. I rely a lot on external USB hard disks – for instance three video projects of mine recently required 200Gb of storage – more than you can fit inside a laptop.
When it comes to unmounting (i.e. safely disconnecting) a drive, the latest version of Ubuntu (called “Feisty”) seems to have an issue. It simply tells me it “cannot eject volume”. If I go behind the scenes and issue a “sudo umount /dev/sdb1” it’s fine, but (a) it’s annoying and (b) regular users wouldn’t have a clue about this.
There appears to be an unofficial fix for this. If you have the same problem, try entering this in a terminal (all on one line):
sudo mv /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-storage-policy.fdi ~
Seems to work for me. I assume this will get fixed fairly quickly in an update.