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Here’s a great wikipedia entry for screens and laptops which support multitouch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Multi-Touch_Computers_and_Monitors

Since my laptop screen cracked months ago I’ve been waiting for Windows 7 to come out so I could get a new laptop, this will very likely be the laptop I take cruising as my personal machine. I’ll probably have a dedicated machine at the nav station. Here’s what I’m looking for feature-wise and some quick searching I did. If you have any suggestion lets me know…

Must Have

• Multi-Touch Screen
• Multi-Touch Touchpad
• Minimum 4GB RAM
• Minimum 300GB Storage
• 64 Bit
• Wifi

Optional

• Built-in GPS
• Tablet format
• SDD system drive
• 3G

Light Research

• Dell
• Studio 17 – Not yet shipping, Unclear about Multi-touch monitor or touch pad, but claims it as optional
• Asus – Wow what a horrible web site…
• Lenovo
• IdeaPad U550 - 374955U \$800 - multitouch
• ThinkPad T400s – Way exoensive, small drive multitouch
• Toshiba
• Protege Tablets – Touch, no 64bit
• Satellite Pro U500-EZ1311  32bit - \$1000
• Acer
• Aspire 5738
  • AS5738PG-6306 – Touch, 4gb TAM, 15.6”, 64bit - \$770 on B&H
• HP
• TX2 – TX2Z – 12.1” Tablet PC - Has all features when customized for \$964
• Fujitsu
• T5010 - 13.3" screen Tablet PC - Not sure about 64bit. \$2300 (eek)

This is Patrick posting from Dawn’s computer. I’m setting up Windows Live Writer on her laptop so she can write posts as well.

There are MANY free blogging services out there (Wordpress, Blogger to name two) that actually ARE blogs, in that they publish the feed of what you put in your blog. SailBlogs does NOT do this unless you pay extra. That is pretty week form a feature perspective and somewhat disingenuous since that is the entire point of a blog. If your blog doesn’t have an RSS feeds, its a web page that you update periodically.

Here’s an example of a post from SailBlogs and one from another site as seen in Google Reader. Here’s the actual post “Anchors Up” that is represented by (continue…) in the SailBlogs feed.

The reason they do this is so you have to click thru and look at the Google ads on their pages, and to keep bandwidth costs down.

At some point I’ll write up about SailBlogs Airmail integration which actually is kind of neat, but I’m not sure its compelling enough to charge for.

Anyway, I get asked about how to run a site similar to mine all the time and SailBlogs comes up so I wanted to put that out there. Come on SailBlogs cough up the feed already!! ;-)

Great talk from Ignite Seattle by Ken Beegle has some great overview of Polynesian navigation techniques. The talk is really has a deeper meaning, but he does a good job in his allotted 5 minutes covering the stick charts.

Ignite talks are timed 5 minute min-lectures, the slides are pre-programmed to flip automatically and the presenters have to have it down-pat. My friend Brady from O’reilly publishing hosts these in Seattle and they occur around the world.

OK, we’re not in a submarine about to be imploded by a depth charge, we just need to have new zincs put on our prop shaft. Phil checked and verified we had no zincs remaining and then cleaned the shaft while snorkeling over the 4th of July weekend. He has also offered to put the zincs on, but he’s out of town and I was getting a bit freaked by the whole thing so I called Marina Dive Services of Puget Sound (AKA Morgan) based solely on his sign on the bulletin board at the Marina.

He should up promptly, suited up, dove in, scrubbed the shaft and put on the zincs. He also scrubbed the waterline to remove the chin beard Deep Playa had been growing on her bow. I would definitely recommend him, let me know if you want his number or email.

Here’s a video of Morgan cleaning the shaft and prop that I made with my Flip camcorder and waterproof case. I was just laying on the dock with my hand in the water. It was a sunny day, low tide and there was a minimum of crap floating in the water.

Still shots will come later when I process them.

Just watched a pretty decent physics of sailing video which would be great for kids or novice sailorsvisitors to watch. It was produced by KQED and you can watch the video on their site.

I’m beginning my search for how I want to approach my radar and navigation system. I mention them together because RADAR is proprietary and it only works with THAT vendors chart plotters and computer navigation software. The only exceptions to that would be companied like Si-TexKoden who make RADAR for other companies like Rosepoint Navigation Systems. There are a couple other cross breeders like that in the mix but for now I’m just going to look at these as single vendor solution. I’ve been having a lot of trouble keeping the software packages and vendors and who has “HD” or “Broadband” claims. I call them claims because there is no standard usage of those terms across vendors.

The main decision I need to make is to go all PC based or to have a PC Chartplotter mix. I was 100% for Chartplotters, but the more I think about it, they are WAY expensive compared even to a hardened tablet or laptop. \$6000 for a 17” screen is pretty high for a dedicated device, you can also push video to displays on the high end as well, but for the most part that’s it. So now I’m leaning more towards not having chartplotter and going with a hardened laptop or tablet (on a swing arm ?) in addition to regular laptops we’d keep inside the the boat.

For the most part, I think all the other potential instruments will play nicely on the NEMA 2000 network, the only exception to that is I’m considering upgrade from a purely depth sonar to fish finder or something equivalently more high-res and meaningful than just a simple depth ping.

There is a lot to think about there but for now here’s a screenshot of my comparison thus far and I’ll keep the complete Marine Navigation Comparison online. I’ll update this over time and probably add some twists to it as I start to look at NEMA 2K displays, cabling and other components as well.

I have some older electronics on the boat which draw a lot power, have horrible or no displays and I'm geek I have to have the new newness. Here's a brief overview I wrote while I was eating lunch to get some of my thoughts written down so my mind would stop racing. As a general rule, I've come to view the overall system in two main sections.

The general purpose NMEA 2000 bus for gathering a displaying information via multi-purpose and multi-vendor displays and data sending units. E.g.: weather, dc usage, wind, location, etc.. These components all should interop with the exception that they need their vendor specific display for configuration. These items feed into the Navigational Components as well as other systems like the DSC on the VHF and to the PC for other applications as well like SSB position and weather reports.  For the General Purpose instrumentation I plan to use Maretron components and one DSM 250 (color) display in the nav station for configuration of those devices. We will also have one or two multi-function displays in the cockpit. I'm not yet sure what brand or model. I would include engine sensors in this category but I have no plans to wire up my 1981 Weterbeke 58 (probably can't) and I'm not currently planning on doing a repower. The sending units will include:

• GPS100 GPS (1)
• WSO-100 Wind and Weather (1)
• SSC200 Compass (1)
• DCM1000 DC Monitor for each battery bank and Solar Panels (3)
• USB1000 USB Gateway to connect to PC (1)
• DSM 250 color display (1)
• TLM100 Tank Level Monitors for both fresh water tanks and the diesel tank (3)
• NMEA 0183 Adapter for connecting VHF to Network (1) (maybe the GPS can do this automagically)

Beyond the general purpose systems, the Navigational components (RADAR, Chart plotter, PC Nav Software and Autopilot) must all be of the same brand and compatible in order to get ChartRadar overly on the plotter and the PC as well as single point control of the auto-pilot (i.e, the ability to change course from the PC Or the Chart plotter. To that end, I plan to go exclusively with Raymarine. I'm basing a lot of this on the survey results from the SSCA ( >50% of member surveyed use Raymarine) and hands-on experience at trade shows. I will be using the Navionics Gold cards for charts. I see no need to have the 'looks cool' 3D bathospheric views since they are based on such minimal data especially where we plan to Cruise (S. Pacific). I'm less resolved about what models on these items but the basic components will be:

• Chartplotter - I'm guessing the C120 widescreen, but I need to dig into the differences. The E does not yet appear to be any better for my needs than the E.
• RADAR - 24" HD radome model. Big decision here I think is 2kw24nm or 4kw48nm.
• Autopilot - Need to think this through more. Not sure how this and the Capehorn windvane will interact yet. We might be able to use a tiller autopilot and the windvane quadrant... save some \$ and could afford to carry a full spare maybe... ??
• Depth Sounder Fish Finder - This is just for geeky fun. I like the idea of being able to see contour information, not really for fishing. This integrates with the chartplotter and PC Software.
• PC Software - Raytech RNS. Rosepoint Nav really has the best software, but I want a dedicated charplotter AND a PC and they have no solution for that.

Open Issues

Cabling

I think I'm settled on Maretron Mid size cable for the backbone and their smaller cable for all the drops to the sending units and non-Raymarine components. I’m guessing that I will run the main bus from starting at the spreaders on the main mast and ending at the spreaders on the mizzen mast. I think that will be far enough to let me run the lighter weight cables to the mastheads where needed. The run from the main will go throughundernear the nav station and then along the foreword end of the cockpit which before heading up the mizzen, again this will let me add displays and reach the batteries.

I'm not sure if I'll need a separate smaller bus for the Raymarine Seatalk HS network. I think I do since at a minimum the RADAR and chartplotter and PC don't talk over the NMEA 2000 bus.

AIS

We will add AIS closer to our departure time. I'm 99.9% sure I'll go with Raymarine again with the thought that it is all about the ability to overlay the information.

The next step is going to be to draw this up and start taking to sales reps here in Seattle looking for the best prices and service.

If you have any thoughts on my my overall plans feel free to chime in. I’m particularly interested if there are any known Raymarine Maretron interop issues.

If you have not noticed check out the SSCA Forums which I recently helped them upgrade to phpBB3. The new version has a much nicer look and a few must have features including email subscriptions to forums. I’m awaiting a more enhanced version of the email subscriptions and RSS Feeds to come out and then we’ll really be Web 2.0!