Tag: Hobbies

#1

My review of Open Your Heart With Geocaching by Jeannette Cézanne has been published in Blogcritics Magazine. It’s the first book I have read for 2008, and I’m once again gunning for 50 this year. Since I have about four or five review books on deck, it looks like the year will start with a bang. I’m already half-way through #2, so expect more on that soon. Anyway, here’s a snippet of my review:

Cézanne has poured herself and her world into this book. The language is conversational and flows easily from point to point. She approaches geocaching less from the geeky/techie perspective, and more from the outdoor enthusiast perspective. For her, caching is less about the destination as it is about the journey. I think this is a perspective that is often lost amid the crowing and strutting by those who play for the numbers.

nasig part one

Last year’s planes, trains, and automobiles route to the NASIG conference was a fun experience, but the schedule was such that I arrived right before the beginning and left immediately after the closing session. This meant that I missed the social networking aspect of the conference at the beginning and that I didn’t have time … Continue reading “nasig part one”

Last year’s planes, trains, and automobiles route to the NASIG conference was a fun experience, but the schedule was such that I arrived right before the beginning and left immediately after the closing session. This meant that I missed the social networking aspect of the conference at the beginning and that I didn’t have time to do a bit of sight-seeing and decompress at the end. This year I decided to arrive a bit early and stay a bit longer, and I’m glad I did.

I landed in Minneapolis on Tuesday evening, and my college friends Becky & Michelle picked me up. We stayed up late catching up on the years gone by, and then I caught some sleep on their rather comfortable couch. The next morning, Michelle and I went out and found a few geocaches hidden in the neighborhood. One more notch on my GPSr for a new geocaching convert. We went to a Panera for lunch, and I was able to make use of the free Wi-Fi to log our finds.

Afterwards, Michelle introduced me to one of her hobbies — Half Price Books. I found a nifty Wonder Woman doll and colorful book on the history of Wonder Woman, as well as several sci-fi novels that I have had on my wish list. I would have shopped for more, but I couldn’t remember the titles and authors of everything I’m looking for. It’s probably good that I didn’t, since my suitcase was busting at the seams by the time I left Minneapolis.

Later in the evening, we met up with other college friends now living in Minneapolis at Psycho Suzie’s Motor Lounge for a dinner filled with good food (beer battered cheese curds

browser history meme

Oh, why not…

Oh, why not…

A = Amazon
B = BookCrossing
C = Comics
D = Data Swets Connect
E = eclectic librarian dot net
F = Fasola – Sacred Harp and Shape Note singing
G = Gmail – anyone want an account?
H = Half
I = Indigo Girls
J = University of Chicago Press Journals Division
K = Lexington Herald-Leader
L = MPOW (to borrow an acronym from Karen)
M = Meetup
N = NASIG
O = Online Northwest 2005
P = Powells
Q = Quickcare
R = Rate Your Music Knowledge Base
S = SF-Books
T = The Breast Cancer Site
U = User Friendly
V = VALISblog
W = Where’s George?
X = GeoCaching WA
Y = Academic Cartoon of the Day
Z = USPS Zip Code Lookup

Wow! Something for every letter!

gps tours

Campus tour and geocaching combined — sign me up!

Prospective students at Arizona State University have the opportunity to go on hand-held GPS-assisted tours of the campus, rather than with a human tour guide. Now all they need to do is to dump in the waypoints for nearby geocaches and let the kids have some fun after the tour. [thanks steven]

using my PDA

I have found a use for my Toshiba e355 beyond games of Solitare and a portable digital calendar.

Despite having my Toshiba e355 for over five months, I haven’t found many uses for it beyond the portable digital calendar that syncs with my desktop calendar. I have occasionally used AvantGo to download driving directions, and I’ve played many rounds of Solitaire, but neither of these things was enhanced by the electronic experience.

Recently, I began playing with my new Magellan SporTrack GPSr (thanks Anna!). It didn’t take long for me to become a geocaching addict. Now I’m spending the precious minutes after work on sunny days hunting around the area for hidden treasures. When I first started geocaching, I printed out the cache information on the backs of scrap paper. Then I read about different ways to go paperless. I was excited! Finally, I had found a use for my Toshiba that actually enhanced my experience. I downloaded GPXSonar to my Toshiba, grabbed some gpx files of local geocaches, and off I went.

Last Saturday, I started my day of cache hunting by picking one from the list I had downloaded and going from there. Everything I needed to find the cache was right there in my Toshiba — no wasting paper printing out a stack of cache details. I found three out of the four I went looking for and returned home satisfied with my hunt. I was able to use the program to make field notes right when I found the cache, which came in handy later when I went online to log my finds.

I still haven’t found many library-related uses for my PDA, but I suspect that they will emerge with time. Probably, I will get more use out of my Toshiba when I get a Bluetooth card and/or additional memory storage.

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