Wintec WSG-1000 and Geotagging under Linux

I've bought myself a new toy: a Wintec WSG-1000 a GPS datalogger with LCD display. It's compatible on the software side to the Wintec WPS-201 - with a minor detail - so that Linux software supporting the WPS-201 worked for me. I wanted to buy a datalogger for geotagging my photos and favored the WSG-1000 due to it's LCD display with many informative options and the long battery life. An alternative was the Holux M-241 which shows far less information on the small LCD.

Software that I have been using or evaluating so far:
* viking: allows to manage GPS data: You can plot and manipulate tracks and waypoints. The mapping part needs some more love but the rest is rather interesting.
* gtk-g-rays2: Allows to configure the Wintec receiver.
* gpsbabel: An application to download the tracks from the datalogger, convert them to various formats and manipulate them. This needed a small patch to support the WSG-1000. I've added the patch also to the openSUSE 11.0 distribution.
* GPicSync: Allows geotagging of photos. I first had to debug this since it did not want to geotag my directory with photos. It turned out it handled only Nikon RAW files ending with uppercase NEF but my files ended with a lowercase nef. The trivial patch has been sent upstream and the upstream author directly accepted it.
* geotag: Another application to geotag photos. It also allows to display photos and tracks via google earth.

For now I'll stick with gpsbabel to download tracks from the datalogger and with geotag for the tagging.

For basic visualization of tracks, geotag does fulfill the needs I have right now - and for more advanced work, both viking and gpsbabel allow track manipulation - viking in a graphical interactive way, gpsbabel via command line.

I do not know my logger good enough to figure out how useful gtk-g-rays2 will be - but it's good to know that it exists.

As openSUSE user I was interested to note that GPicSync is available from the openSUSE BuildService and gpsbabel is part of the openSUSE distribution. I needed to compile gtk-g-rays2 and viking myself - and geotag comes as a jar archive that I could easily launch.

If you know some better applications, please tell me.

Spring in Fürth's Stadtpark

Thursday was public holiday in Germany and I took Friday off as well. This gave Jana and myself some time for walks around Fürth and we especially loved the signs of spring in Fürth's Stadtpark.




There were a lot of beautifull tulips everywhere.




This morning Jonna and myself enjoyed watching a family of geese having breakfast.

First week of our new life...

Our daughter Jonna is now 8 days old - and since Wednesday both of my girls are at home and I'm slowly getting used to nights with changing diapers instead of sleeping. On Wednesday it was snowing when I awoke and I had to dig out the car since it was covered with more than 5cm of snow - an interesting parallel to her birthday when it was also snowing but the snow did not stay. Now it's getting warmer, so perhaps we can soon show Jonna the Stadtpark in sunshine!






She fascinates me every day - the way she sleeps, cries or makes a grimace. She also seems to enjoy cuddling with her parents. She's eating well and gaining weight daily.
For those of you with kids, that's hardly something extraordinary - but for me everything is exciting ;-). I'm glad to have some more days of vacation to see her grow - and to find a rhythm in domestic live.




She's sleeping now in the same cradle that I slept in already, just the curtain has been sewed especially for Jonna by Jana.

I've been encouraged by all the kind words and congretulations we have received. Thanks a lot!

Jonna Ylvi Jaeger

Yesterday - on the 21st of March - was our personal beginning of spring: Our daughter Jonna Ylvi was born. The name Jonna (for pronunciation listen to http://www.sci.fi/~kajun/finns/Samples/jonna.wav) is a Finish female version of the names John, Jan or Jana, Ylvi means little female wolf and is Norwegian - and when we choose it we did not know that she would be born at full moon.


The first night she tried to check how sharp her finger nails where. During the day the scratches started to heal.



Jana thinks that she has the eyelashes from her dad. She looks really peaceful when sleeping - and can also cry rather loud.



She's 55cm long (21.7 inches) and weights 3750g (8.28 pounds). Compared to her daddy's hand, she's still tiny!


Jana and myself are happy and grateful to have our daughter!

Geese Chase

The Stadtpark in Fürth is home for two dozen or so geese - both Canadian and Graylag Geese. Today my wife and myself enjoyed watching some geese. Around a dozen were grazing on the meadows and suddenly started to fly to the river in groups of three.



They flew straight to us,



but luckily over us and turned to the right,





and landed directly - three meters behind us in the river.

It was quite impressive to see the birds flying that close. I'm glad that my camera was up to speed for capturing this.

Large sizes of these photos are available here.