N82 : Geotagging+Hike+Messed up

I’m back after a harsh week, with bruises all over my legs n arms, more than 20 leech bite marks on my legs. This is the final outcome of an unorganized hike which apparently turned in to a mess. Last Sunday we went on a hike with the sole purpose of checking the geotagging on N82.So to make the maximum use of the GPS we chose a remote area and start climbing through the thick jungle. When I felt like we might easily get lost, as the water stream we were following, started to disappear under the thick undergrowth I started the sports tracker application to map our trek. As we were climbing in highly inclined route the path appearing on the sports tracker showed a small displacement even though we have travel led alot. After about 4 hours of climbing we’ve reached to a totally different place where the canopy was very thick and virtually no sunlight hitting on us. The darkness kept us unnoticed about the changing weather and suddenly it started to rain like hell with lightning. Nowhere to shelter ourselves and as it was getting dark, we realized that we’ve made a big mistake, no torch, no rain coats, and the best of all my N82′s battery died off after continuously running the camera and GPS for almost 4 hours, right at the moment we needed it most. Anyway there was no use of any electronic device as we had to put all the cameras and phones inside the water-proof bags(the only precaution we took)as the pouring intensified. At last in the heavy raining the only safe place to stay was the rocky stream cos the forest floor was teaming with leeches waiting to be picked. But we were kind of late, by time we spot them they’ve already attacked us, it doesn’t give any pain until they are done. My trouser was soaked in blood and had to remove them one by one. But we could no longer stay in water as the water level was going high. So we started to rush to the bottom, luckily we made it without getting lost but drenched in water. But unfortunately while we were very close to the end I fell on top of a small plant smashing it on to the ground and immediately I felt like burning in my left arm and fingers, then gradually it started to swell. It was a toxic plant that gives a burning irritation. Soaked in water and blood, injured and worn off but still alive we returned back home by the might fall.It took almost 5 days to recover and still I have some strange feeling in my elbow.

And that’s what kept me away from jotting down my N82 experience. So coming back to the arena I’ll start with what it does and how its amazing capabilities are limited by regional and availability of techno facts. In country where there aren’t plenty of Wi-Fi hotspots available and gprs charges are well above the budget limits, you won’t find many solutions other than satisfying with the minimal resources and options you get. So to get some outcome from the built-in GPS you must wisely choose the correct option, so to map a path of trip there is nothing much other than the Nokia sports tracker and the location tagger to geotag your images. Having only these two applications installed I started my hike and throughout the whole journey what you will see is a blue line plotting on a white background, which is absolutely boring to your eyes. It doesn’t indicate your current position, neither the geographical direction. But it will help you to track back your path in case you get lost, so that is pretty interesting apart from all the odds. But without any preloaded geographical altitude data you must be very careful when you are analyzing the path since it doesn’t shows you things in an accurate scale, especially if you are solely depending on your phone.

And about the location tagger, It really does a good job though it’s bit lagging when there is a continuous photo shoot. Also another thing that I noticed is that running the location tagger and camera application both together makes the auto-focusing stop in for some instance and ultimately it’ll cause the camera to stop functioning, so you’ll have to start the camera application again. This issue might be probably due to the insufficient memory management of the location tagger as it was recently graduated from beta labs. So let’s hope that this will be fixed in the next release.

after all the hard work what disappointed me was that I didn’t get the photos on flickr’s geo RSS feeds to import them into google maps, I think this happens because I uploaded them through my PC instead of using share online, the GPS data wont upload along with the photos. So the only way I could find to show it on the map was using the Google earth but I don’t know how to embed it into my blog. So if anyone knows a solution for this please leave a comment.

So If your country is supported by the mapping services that work with Nokia,THe N82 will be a cute little guy who’ll be your companion to help you preserve your precious memories of adventures,with its geotagging and GPS facilities,But for a country like Sri Lanka it still has a long way to go.Some day these features will be spread throughout the world,and then you’ll find everything you need in your hand-held.

Link to the Google map

Please Note that the Map is been Intentionally blurred on google maps due to security reasons, as our hiking region was very close-by to a reservoir which fuels Sri Lanka’s main power station.