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GPS Navigation Systems are the bomb diggity. Period. No doubt about it. I love them.

When I leased my current vehicle, a 2006 VW Jetta Diesel TDI, I chose the nav system as an option. It added quite a bit to the price, but I figured it was well worth it. XM Satellite and in-dash GPS nav system with large Points of Interest (POI) database. Overall I am pleased, however:

• In dash systems generally can't be synchronized or accessed on-line
• In dash systems generally use DVD-ROM to store their data and need new DVD-ROMs, which are published rarely, to update their maps
• In dash systems stay with the car that they are in
• In dash systems give you no ability to correct errors in them without waiting for a new DVD-ROM

I expected that at least for the life of my lease I'd be getting free updates to my map data, apparently not. I tried in vein, on-line and in person, to get an updated DVD. Finally I got an email from VW telling me that my map data was probably old and for $200 they'd send me a new DVD ROM. $200?!?!? So I went looking.

Garmin, Magellan, TomTom all make portable GPS devices, each has a different line up with many options. All are priced between $125 and $900 or so. Yes, they have full GPS devices with new maps and new software for less than the "refresh" DVD ROM. This means that purchasing that DVD ROM is close to downright stupid, since I'm not keeping the car long term anywho. So which one to get?

Recently I visited my kin out in the promised land we call California, my sister has a cute little GPS device called the TomTom One XL that they call Lewis (after Lewis & Clark), I borrowed it for a trip and liked it. Checked out some details on line and found out that:

• Seemingly free map updates forever. Although not promised anywhere the map updates from TomTom as well as from the TomTom community (since you can do some corrections right on your device) are free!
• OK, they didn't promise it so perhaps they'll change their mind and I'll have to buy new maps. US & Canada only $99!
• You can download and/or create your own POI collections!
• You can set up an itinerary consisting of multiple stops and plan out a whole trip (VW system only will do 2 stops)
• You can search for stops along your route!
• 3D or 2D view (VW system only 2D)
• Some offer text-to-speech so you don't have to take your eyes off the road and read the next turn!
• Easy alternate routing! (VW system was difficult to use)
• Custom voices include Mr. T!
• Yes, Mr. T!

So what model do I choose, there are just so many. TomTom's product adviser told me that I wanted one of a few, and their product comparison lead me to choose the TomTom One XL·S which runs $300-$400 or so around town, I picked up one from Dell on special $279 only $79 more than the DVD update would cost me and it can read street names!

So, after a couple of weeks, is it all I hoped?

Here's what I found out:

• The VW DVD-ROM has a LARGE database of stores and places in it, most everything I'd want to find is already in there. TomTom? Not so much.
• TomTom, however, supports the ability to upload my own Points of Interest (POI) collections. With a utility called GPS Babel I can convert collections for any GPS product or even Google Earth to a TomTom POI collection. With a bit of help from TomTom I can even include extra details. And with the work of a community site like POI Factory I can use other people's hard work and share mine. A bit more work, but I have so much more control.
• Mr. T can't read out street names via text-to-speech. There are, however, a male and female American and male and female Brit to choose from (once you figure out how to download new content using TomTom Home)
• TomTom is smart. I have used the "find an alternate route" to find 4-5 different routes to the same destination. It shows me the map and gives me an approximate time so that with my knowledge of traffic and traffic lights I can choose a route that looks longer to the TomTom but is actually a bit quicker.
• TomTom is portable and does walking directions. When you park, save a favorite of your location, TomTom will help you find your car!
• Google Maps does TomTom (kind of). Go to maps.google.com and search for "business near location", there will be a list of A-X businesses. Choose "Send" and "GPS" and then pick type "TomTom" and select the result you want from the drop-down. Press the button and TomTom Home should launch and let you navigate to the business or add it as a favorite. Where does this fall short? Only does businesses for now, not your friends house or what have you. Also doesn't handle ampersands correctly. Still neat.
• Custom boot-up and shut-down screens. Mine are from Mario Kart, 'cause I'm a geek.
• TomTom's Traffic data is supported 2 ways. One with an antennae that receives a free broadcast with traffic data. Doesn't seem to have much support in the US outside of major urban areas, most recommend the other way. The other is TomTom's traffic feed, fed via Bluetooth from your phone, provided your phone isn't a T-Mobile Dash. Not sure what phones they do support, but mine isn't one of them.
• Oh, this puppy does up to 12 satellites! So many more than my old system, it's usually tracking at least 7 of them, and it find your location quick. And it's rarely off. And route calculations are much quicker than my old system.
• SD Card. It has a slot, but I've read that you use either the internal memory OR the SD card so to switch to an SD card I have to copy the entire system over to an SD card and that can take quite a while. I haven't done it yet, but plan to at some point.
• Suction cup mount. Since it's not in-board there has to be a mount. I stuck mine on the windshield and it hasn't fallen off once (contrary to some reviews I read on-line).
• Power. You can recharge via USB on your PC or give it power in the car with a car adapter that comes with it. And you'll need it, the battery will last no more than an hour or so.

Basically, when it comes down to it, since the price is so low I'm recommending that everyone get some kind of TomTom if they don't have a GPS Nav device already. Garmin or Magellan would be fine as well, they appear to be very similar in design and features, though I can only vouch for TomTom. Oh, and they have POI collections with gas prices and traffic cameras, if those float your boat...

Super Smash Bros. Brawl Nintendo Wii Nintendo Teen A+

What is there to say about SSBB? If you owned a Nintendo 64, then I know you already have this game. If you owned a GameCube and enjoyed the previous Super Smash Bros. Melee, then you have at least checked this out and since purchased a copy. If the Wii is your first Nintendo console then do yourself a favor and at least rent this one (you'll end up buying it anyway).

Who won't like this? I guess if you have no friends or abhor violence then this isn't for you. Of course if you don't like violence then you don't play video games, and if you have no friends you either purchased a PS3 to keep it that way, or you bought a Wii hoping to get friends.

!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!

Perhaps you have a copy of Super Smash Bros. Melee and figure it's the same game, just newer graphics? Essentially yes, except for:

• New playable characters:
• Diddy Kong
• Ike from Fire Emblem
• King Dedede from Kirby
• Lucario from Pokémon
• Lucas from Earth Bound
• Meta Knight from Kirby
• Olimar from Pikmin
• Pit from Kid Icarus
• Ash (though they call him "Pokémon Trainer") from Pokémon
• R.O.B. as himself (Old School NES reference)
• Snake from Metal Gear
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Toon Link from Wind Waker
• Wario
• Wolf from Star Fox
• Zero Suit Samus from Metroid
• New stages to fall in line with the above
• 4 play styles
• Wiimote
• Wiimote + Nunchuck
• Classic Controller
• GameCube Controller (including my beloved WaveBird)
• Final Smashes - with an item each character has a unique "super attack"
• New Adventure Mode: Subspace Emissary (so much better than Melee's Adventure Mode)
• WiFi play!
• Stickers (OK, this one is a bit lame)
• Demo versions of the games the characters come from (so you'll buy the originals on Virtual Console)
• Challenges greatly improved to help you find all unlockable challenges in the game (like achievements on the XBox 360, but only for one game and not viewable by others on your gamer tag which Nintendo doesn't even have...)
• Assist Trophies (like pokeballs but they have non-Pokémon characters inside them)

That is a ton of new stuff, and except for the Stickers all well received. So what are you still doing here? Head to GameFly and add this puppy to your queue, or straight to EB Games so you can get a copy in your hot little hands. Go!

Crash of the Titans Nintendo Wii Sierra Everyone 10+ B

Crash? That old PS1 game? Yes, that crash. I never had a PS1, so this is actually the first Crash game I've ever played. Apparently Naughty Dog isn't involved anymore, but the series continues anyway. Why'd I pick this game up, of all games? My nephew Oni was playing the heck out of this thing during our last trip to Indonesia, and since there was a Wii version I figured I'd give it a spin.

Well, there is really nothing new here. The "jack" system allows Crash to use his mask friend Aku Aku to control large monsters, you can then use them to better attack and thereby jack even more and sometimes larger beasties, otherwise it's a basic platformer. Does this mean that there is anything wrong with it? Nope, I'm a platformer guy, so this suits me. Still playing through the first time, not sure if there will be much desire to destroy this game, but so far it's been entertaining.

I'm primarily a web-based interface programmer, I haven't done non-web-based applications for my main gig for a while, though in the before web age I did dial-up applications (in ansi!). They, however, didn't need multi-threading for updating the GUI while doing the work in a separate thread. This is one thing that has always daunted me with Windows applications, perhaps VB and c++ programmers just like dealing with all the threading issues for fun. Finally I found this:

The BackgroundWorker Component allows a form to run an operation asynchronously. This is very useful when we deal with such kind of operations as database transactions, image downloads etc. In this case our user interface can hang (or not appear until loading will be finished). In this article I will show (step-by-step) how you can use the BackgroundWorker Component in .NET 2 applications to execute time-consuming operations. The examples are written using C#.

[ Using the BackgroundWorker Component in .NET 2 applications ]

Perhaps I was supposed to know that was there all along, of course since much of what I do in .net happens so quickly that multi-threading is useless, and the interface is all sent via HTML, etc., I've just never run across having to do this right, until today. Doing a DB import of 25K+ records from access into a local SQL server requires more time than the GUI updating would like, and this was the easy-peasey-lemon-squeezey way of doing that, let me tell you. Just drag this tool onto the playing field, and then double-click a few auto-stubbed event handlers, plus toggle the property "WorkerSupportsProgress", wire up what I want to get done with a call to notify the progress bar, wire in the progress bar updater, and voilà! it's almost like I know what I'm doing...

Anytime you have 7 hours to spare, that is.

Of course I didn't use the Anytime Upgrade but a free copy of Vista Ultimate that Microsoft gave attendees of the HEROES Happen {Here} conference (or however they typed it...).

And after those 7 hours? Had to reinstall audio drivers, reinstall Stardock Central, and download sob jobby to reset my Live OneCare because it couldn't identify me or turn on the firewall.

And for what? I'm not even sure what the difference between business and ultimate is. There is Bit Locker, though I doubt I'll use that, and there is Dream Scene, which amazingly doesn't seem to affect the performance of my laptop, but I'm sure it will get old quickly. There is increased media capabilities, but I don't have a TV Tuner card, so really what does that do for me?

InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

[ InfraRecorder ]

They forgot to mention their sense of humor:

Burn baby, burn!

Note: ISO in question? Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop, hopefully running on a few PCs throughout the house soon...

Ever wonder how they went from Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros.?

And that's (also) why they're not called the Super Luigi Bros

[ Dueling Analogs :: Without the Super, He's Just a Man ]

Makes sense to me. Though technically when the name change happened Luigi looked exactly like Mario but wore different colors...

And this is the view...

And why does everything in the commercial have crappy canned olives on it?

Considered the crossroads of the Far East, Malaysia assimilated cultures and cuisines from China, India, Thailand and the Middle East. Peanut Satay, Malaysia's signature dish, delicately blends exotic spices, coconut milk, tamarind and fruit and crunchy peanuts into a robust sauce for Hokkien noodles.

[ Amazon.com: Ka-Me Noodle Box, Peanut Satay ]

Not sure how authentic these are, but I do love Hokkien noodles and peanuts, so as far as I'm concerned it's authentically yummy!

In Rockville I had the fastest connection Comcast would sell me, and in Bethesda I now have the fastest connection Verizon (FiOS) will sell me. I am going to say that Fiber allows for more speed than Cable, though this is clearly not scientific in any way...

Results provided by ZD Net Australia.

This How-To provides step-by-step instructions for creating a Universal Wireless Repeater appliance: a device that you can place anywhere and it will wirelessly repeat the strongest signal, onto another wireless network (with or without security). This functionality is also known as Wireless Client Bridge, or Range Expander. Unlike WDS, once you have this appliance setup, it will work with any open network.

[ Universal Wireless Repeater - DD-WRT Wiki ]

Since the FiOS router they give you does the WiFi for you, I can flash my old Linksys and turn it into a repeater to help get the signal upstairs to my wife's PC. Just have to figure out where I packed it first...

Update: the Linksys that I had would only allow for the "micro" version that can't be a repeater. However, I was able to set it up as a Wireless Bridge which allows it to replace the WiFi dongle that Yaty had been using. Since you can boost the signal of the Linksys, it can much more easily reach the FiOS router and she reports that the speed is much improved. Once again, thank you Linux.