GPS Navigation #3
On my first trip with my Garmin navigation system (Model 2610), I got lost within a quarter mile of home.
Well, I didn’t get lost because that doesn’t happen when you have an omniscient navigator. I did manage to make a wrong — unindicated — turn, I think because I was not used to how far away an intersection is when the navigator says that I should turn left in 400 feet. A few seconds after you make the wrong turn, the navigator calmly says that you are “off course” and recalculates the route. As a result, it took me through back streets all the way to my destination (Halley‘s apartment), a route substantially different than the one it plotted for me when I came back and didn’t make wrong turns.
That aside, it’s pretty damn impressive. The pre-turn instructions are timed well. The map zooms appropriately so you can see where you are and where you’re supposed to be going. It would help, though, as Halley pointed out, if it gave you a verbal “Right on!” when you’ve managed to make a turn correctly; some of us (me) are so pathetic that we need the encouragement.
It did route me home in a sub-optimal way. I’m sure the route looked like the fastest on paper, but you really don’t want to go through Harvard Square at 6pm on a Saturday night unless you have to. Also, while it’s legally possible to make a left onto Comm Ave the way it told me to, you’d have to violate the laws of physics to do so, particular the clause that says two bodies can’t occupy the same space at the same time.
I’m still finding it confusing to create routes. It’s a highly compressed UI. But I’m getting better at it.
The weirdest thing is, though, that while it certainly is getting me from A to B better, I now have even less of a sense of where I am. I don’t know how what cities I passed through or what roads I’m on. All I know is that I have to make a right turn in 400 feet.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
The short range radar effect is one of the unhealthy aspects of SatNav. I’ve travelled half way across southern England without being able to pinpoint on a map with any certainty, my exact location. You make do with knowing that you’re on the A442, 89.3 miles from your destination and 1.5 miles away from a right turn. Somewhere.
Having said that, it is a very good thing to have providing you also make an effort to read a map from time to time to learn your locality. Aside from guiding you through places you don’t know, it’s very handy programming it for places you do know just to have an accurate ETA, very handy for meetings to be able to say “I’m running about 3 and three quarter minutes late and I’m about 1.9 miles away from you.” That never fails to impress and avert attention from your poor timekeeping.
hi!