This is sort of a followup to January's "Informal GPS Logger Test: iPhone 4s GPS is Shockingly Good" post about GPS and GLONASS loggers. We took a drive today in the mountains, and I took the opportunity for another informal test of location-logging technologies

Garmin eTrex 20 GPS + GLONASS dedicated logger.

Dual® XGPS150 GPS-only bluetooth logger, recorded on an iPad with the Guru Maps app.

Apple iPhone 4s (GPS + GLONASS) recorded via the GeoTagr app, which for some reason the company sent me for free out of the blue the other day (probably hoping for a [...]

Here are a few shots from the Koumyou-in Temple in Kyoto (光明寺, 京都) taken on the same outing as the photos accompanying my Lightroom 4.1 post the other day.

One of the verandas consisted of a single plank of pine more than a yard wide (94cm by my foot-measuring estimation). I'd never seen anything like it; I assume that all the trees big enough to allow this big a plank were harvested long ago.

I talked to a lady that I took to be the owner of the place, who said that the temple building itself was not all that [...]

Wow, NASA, which happens to have a bigger lens than me (with the camera outside the terrestrial atmosphere, no less), put up this amazing bit of video art built from images taken today during the 6-hour event:

Quite a bit nicer than my try earlier today. Must be that darn atmosphere in the way. 🙂

The music is very nice as well. The video is in the public domain (those who don't pay American taxes can thank those of us that do), which I suppose implies the music as well... I wonder what it is?

Lots of high-res pictures in [...]
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Not too exciting, but there's the view from Kyoto.

Using my naked eye with eclipse sun-glasses, I can just make out that there's something there, if I know where to look and look carefully. It's a bit easier as the planet moves further in from the edge, but I wonder how on earth people ever noticed these things in ancient times.

Continued here...

I snapped this shot on yesterday's hike. It was very hazy, so the "layered mountain" effect that I like so much was strong. Perhaps too strong... I would have liked more contrast.

Taken from almost the same spot, looking a different direction, is a moody shot I like of the "Azalea Hillside" (つつじヶ丘), which can apparently be spectacular, but I missed it by a week:

Stéphane said that the previous week, the hillside was covered in every color except green, but now many of the other colors had been taken over by green. It was still pretty, so I'll have [...]