Anita's Life Time Achievements

What has Anita brought in our lives?

• Living in Waikiki, Oahu, Hawai'i for 18 months
• Buying our own spacious apartment with large balcony and workshop in the beautiful city of Münster
• Tiki, Murray, Castor, and Pollux
• Many travels to Canada, in summer and winter, in freezing cold and heat, from Vancouver over Calgary and Winnipeg to Montreal
  
• Mobile phones for the two of us (with all the ensuing Java/ GPS programming fun)
  

Just a beginning, to be continued...

More functions in less gadgets

On vacation (and not only then) I am usually running around with a day pack full of gadgets (and the batteries required):

• digital still camera for taking photos (Nikon D50 SLR)
  
• binoculars for close-up observation (small Celestron)
  
• map for navigation (USGS or the like)
  
• GPS for recording track and navigation (Garmin eTrex, Foretrex 101)
  
• voice recorder for recording sounds and taking notes (Olympus VN5500 PC)
  
• walkie talkie for staying in contact with Anita (at least for 1-3km; Motorola)
  
• USB stick for storing photos (Corsair 16GB)
  
• MP3 player for listening to music (Apple iPod 6GB)
  
• video player for watching movies (in example, on the plane; Creative Zen)

This spring I bought my first mobile phone (Sony Ericsson W580i), giving up my status as the last person on German soil without one. Initially I completely ignored that the thing can be programmed in Java. Then I got sucked in and programmed the swiss army knife-equivalent of a GPS application (after having bought a Bluetooth GPS receiver).

A mobile phone with a large flash memory card takes care of:

• not really: taking photos (nothing replaces a good SLR!). A different phone might present and OK alternative.
  
• not: close-up observation (a zoom with a stabilizer would be nice, but still not stereo)
  
• OK: navigation -> Paper maps may be used only occasionally (and not get constantly pulled out of the rucksack)
  
• perfect: recording tracks and navigation -> The eTrex gets retired
  
• nice/perfect: recording sounds and taking notes -> The Olympus gets retired at least for taking short notes (exception: the recording quality of the Olympus is substantially better)
  
• perfect: staying in contact with Anita (and that at long distance). Caveat: while within network coverage, and it costs more.
  
• to some extent: storing photos (though 4GB is the largest supported memory card)
  
• perfect: listening to music -> The iPod gets retired
  
• perfect: watching movies -> The Zen gets retired (though the screen is a bit bigger)
• additionally: the phone can take (mediocre) videos, which the SLR can't
  

So the eTrex/ Foretrex , the iPod, and the Zen can stay home for sure.