TNR 11/9/10 - Bridges!

Update: ampers did a really cool piece on the Bridges of Hennepin county! It's only 90 seconds, click on it!

Every bridge that crosses the Mississippi within the beltway! That's 18 if you didn't know already. Those are the "shore to short vehicle allowed, distinct" bridges. We have a pretty high standard. If you just counted the number of times you went over a land to land span it would have been 38. Not too shabby!

I was running two mapping applications and Tom was running a third. It was an interesting experiment to see the different options. These are all Android apps, BTW.

Instamapper (Application name: GPS Tracker)

Pros: Always on so it's easy to define start and end points, simple web interface,

Cons: Not highly configurable, not a lot of statistics available

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

EveryTrail (as reviewed by Tom)

Pros: Seems to be very robust in the current version, allows you to either see the map or see overall statistics as you're going, the display interface for afterward is pretty solid, it seems to prioritize the data collection such that whatever might be going on with the phone, it gets the data anyway

Cons: It can be slow to respond to input, can't see both the map and stats at the same time, display interface on their website uses flash, which I hate

9 Nov TNR

EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking near Minneapolis, Minnesota

Google MyTracks

Pros: Lots of display information, super easy upload to My Maps, quite accurate despite GPS quality

Cons: Hard to tell if you're recording, stats good but don't filter obvious GPS errors, have to remember to start and stop recording. :)

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I think it all comes down to what your needs and personal opinions are. None of these are rubbish, and for certain needs some of them are stellar. But I don't think there is a consensus or best practices for what a navigation recorder needs to be. Someday...

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Tonights route:

Cold, but a nice ride nonetheless. And we saw the pedal pub! As for the map, I'm really grooving on Google Tracks.

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The GPS didn't pick up the signal until we were near Nokomis. Did a reverse Grand Rounds ending at the Coffee shop. Sadly, they changed their hours. Happily, we found a BETTER one around the corner. And it has beer, even!

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A Saint Paul ride without a GPS, I don't have a map. But we wandered Saint Paul quite a bit. At Calvary cemetary Matt's scoot stopped working. After a bit of fiddling Tom bodged up a classic rig which solved the issue. All I know is it involved a wire, grounding, and something about the seat.

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A lovely if not a little chilly ride. Tom clocked it at a bit longer than the GPS indicated, but at least the speeds look good. :) It's getting later in the summer so the rides are ending in the dark. Makes for a completely different experience, and will affect how and where we ride.

We ended at Cafe Latte in Saint Paul and had some really good food.

TNR 9/7/10

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Lack of inspiration made for an improvised ride. Lora was hungry for Spaghetti, so we decided to make that our goal. Ended up driving around a lot looking for a proper Italian restuarant but ended up at Galactic Pizza. They did have 3-d a menu but did not have spaghetti.