car – Lost in Colonisation

I’ve been using a Garmin nüvi 1300 GPS unit since April last year and I am fairly happy with it. There are couple of things I’d love to have though:

Ability to plan route on either Google Maps or Garmin software and send it to the GPS unit. (I can’t with my Garmin because it doesn’t support that. More expensive models do support storing routes.)
Live traffic updates so I can, at least, avoid traffic jam. (Garmin has an accessory that receive traffic update via radio. It also requires an annual subscription fee.)

I ran into a 45 minutes traffic jam 3 weeks ago on my way to work that had really no reason being there and it became the impetus of searching for better alternative. After a bit of research on the interweb I settled on trying out the Navigon’s MobileNavigator for iPhone. To mount the phone in a suitable location in the car, I opted for ProClip mount which I’ve heard good things about it.

Continue reading “Navigon MobileNavigator iPhone app review” →

This is probably as close as I can get to a McLaren MP4-12C. At least until they open up a showroom in Connecticut!

Ever since I bought the Golf GTI back in March I always planned to take photos of it with nice background. It finally took Leah being stranded in the UK by volcano ash and a burst of sunny weather today to get me to do it.

All of them are taken using my Canon 50D with 50mm f1.8, handheld. This is also the first time I used Aperture 3 in a more in-depth editing role. The brush-in adjustment feature is absolutely awesome!

The whole collection is on Flickr but here are a sample:

Ever since I moved to New York City back in 2001, I never have the need to own a car like I used to in the UK because of the great and inexpensive public transport here. But because of the new job that I’ve just taken which is located just outside New York City, near White Plain, my commute time would be around an hour and forty minutes each way via three separate trains.

The solution to spending over three hours commuting each day is to own a car for the first time in 10 years! Granted it would cost more to maintain the car (payment, parking, gas, toll, etc.) but instead of three hours my commute time by car is now halved! As they say, time is money, and in this case I feel it is worth it.

So from the last car: