Electric cooler repaired

The Peltier cooler module in the electric cooler failed unrepairably on the last outing, and the cooler module on the older cooler failed but was repairable about 12 years ago. But that repair wasn't that good (I bypassed one row of junctions, leaving it operable but not as efficient).

Back when the original one failed, new modules were something like $38 plus shipping, so I hacked the module as best I could to get it at least doing something again. But now I got two for $10, shipped, from China. These ones seem better than OEM too, they are sealed with high temperature silicon instead of just being open, so I suspect they'll last a lot longer, since my bet for the cause of failure of the other one is condensed water running down inside the junction area.

I got them in the mail last night, and took the opportunity to also lubricate the fan motor, clean the dirt out of the fan that was unbalancing it, replace the rotted rubber isolation gaskets on the motor mount (made new ones from an old bicycle inner tube) and re-glue the seal strip that has been falling out for the last year. It's working quite well now and is much quieter than it has been for a while.

I should fix the old one too while I'm at it, and before I lose the other replacement module or step on it and break it.

GPS stuff

I ordered GPS items last night. I wound up getting two things:

Car navigation GPS - I got a Garmin 1390LMT for $180. I wanted the 4.3" widescreen, which gets up to $120 or so (for the 255W). And at that point, the upgrade to the 1350LMT is an absolute no-brainer - it was something like $160, and comes with lifetime map and traffic - just lifetime map updates is $80 when bought separately, so getting it with the GPS for $40 is the way to go. Then I bumped to the 1390 to get the bluetooth, it was another $15, and while I don't know if I'll ever use it, if I ever want it I'll never beat $15 cost. Then I added another $4 to get it from Amazon instead of some Amazon partner called "portable guy" which doesn't inspire that much trust, and it's something I may want return rights on.

Geotagging tracker - I nearly went with the AMOD unit, but it takes AAA cells and only has a 12 hour battery life, and the sensitivity is not the best out there. I don't want to carry a whole 'nuther type of battery just for this, I already carry enough crap. I wound up with the QStarz BT-Q1000XT. It uses a LiIon battery (charges from mini-USB so I already have all the charging stuff). The new version uses an updated chipset with 66 channel reception, runs 42 hours on a charge, and is said to have enough sensitivity that it can retain a GPS lock inside or in the overhead compartment of an airplane.

On the downside, it does require using their software to download tracks. But on the upside, their software is apparently really good and will optionally export Google Earth KMZ files which allow a virtual fly-through of your track with the photos you took embedded and viewable, which seems like a pretty cool thing especially for small areas, like "hike through xxx national park" or something.

The other downside is that the damned thing went up $10 while I was waiting until payday to buy it.

The neverending project

I've begun digging into one of the many boxes of photos/negatives that my mom has given me. They've been sitting untouched for years now because there was no end-game; that is, after I scanned them, then what? I have a bunch of photos that I don't know who they're of, and even those I know, I have no good way to mark who they're of.

Now that I've got Picasa and face tagging, I've got a reason to scan them again.

Here's what we need now: Picasa already has the face tagging values in a text format, defining rectangles on the photo and linking them to an entry in the contact list. What we need is a standard EXIF tag for embedding tagging rectangles and names, and for that matter let's add an EXIF comment tag, for embedding captions and tagging information directly into the photo.

Here's the current pile I'm up against. There's pretty much everything in there. 120 in several aspect ratios, 126, 110, 35mm, B&W color, tintypes, my grandmother's membership card in Oddfellows, my other grandmother's ID card.