December 22, 2002
Inaugaration of the Esplanade Pipe Organ
Friday night I hastily bailed from the office and went across the street to the Esplanade to hear the inaugaration of the new Klais pipe organ by Thomas Trotter.
The hall looks powerful, and we had good, second-storey seats at the same level as the main organ console.
Trotter's program seemed designed to show the width and breadth and depth of the organ. Even if you already think a pipe organ can produce a stunning range of sounds, until you've experienced an exercise program like this, you truly don't appreciate it.
The one downside of this sort of program was that several of the pieces I disliked.
Let's go through the program...
JS Bach Toccata & Fugue in D minor BMV 565
I have to admit I was harried and in a sour mood when I reached the theatre at the last-minute. (In fact, I had missed the technical seminar given earlier) Perhaps that's why I felt miffed when Trotter opened up with the ultimate stereotypical pipe organ piece. You might not recognize the title, but this is the piece played on every movie pipe-organ in the world, every haunted mansion, every soundcard demo. Granted, the program does say that this piece in particular is ideally suited to display the qualities of the organ. It's just that I wanted a totally new music experience -- nothing familiar.
Stanley Voluntary Op. 5 No. 1
This was interesting in that it included many sets of sounds and organ functionality.
J Weir Ettrick Banks
This contemporary piece was supposed to be an interpretation of a waterfall in Scotland. Didn't like it. It sounded like spastic hammering. Ling and I were rolling our eyes and stifling derisive snorts. It also exceeded the limitations of my 'interpretation' -- it kept sounding like a waterfall that ran uphill...
Ireland Capriccio
Neither objectionable nor memorable enough to have much comment.
L Boellmann Suite Gothique
Ditto.
G. Thalben-Ball Variations on a theme of Paganini for Pedals
This was a great excuse for Trotter to display his arcane virtuosity. Pipe organs have a large array of footpedals. A few control loudness, but most of the rest are laid out like a keyboard and function in exactly that capacity -- except the organist uses his feet to play them. (It was great to sit at the organist's level, because you could see was extremes of movement it took him to play -- he was a four-limbed octopus.)
This piece was played (nearly) exclusively with his feet. To a layman only listening, it would be indistinguishable from something played only with hands. Stunning accuracy and speed and control. This is something you must see before you can fully appreciate a pipe organ's potential. The whole piece looked like some heavenly manifestation of yoga -- lots of flowing movement and stunning sound all emanating from a single person.
Saint-Saens (arr E.H.Lemare) Danse Macabre
This was my favorite piece of the night. The background interpretation is that the devil plays a violin in a cemetery and skeletons come out to dance. It sounded great and it was much easier to envision the devil coaxing skeletons with a violin in the music than it was to picture the Ettrick waterfall...
Bizet (arr E.H.Lemare) Carmen Suite
Another corny opera that everyone has heard. I hate cheap, pandering populism, and this felt like it. I'd rather experience new things.
Encore
A real farrago of music including a 1920's movie accompaniment 'Mississippi Mud' which sounded too much like Ragtime and finished with a serious, unnamed organ piece which I found much better.
I couldn't make up my mind whether I was happy with the concert or not. As time goes on and I reflect that the purpose of the concert was to show the range of the organ I like it more. You could describe this as a 'survey' concert of the pipe organ. In that it succeeded.
One thought I had throughout was how amazing the experience of being a master organist must be. It is difficult to convey the scale of the organ (it has 4700 separate pipes, for instance, and commands the better part of a football pitch sized room) and the strength and range of its sound. I don't think any device or instrument in the world gives more leverage to a performer than the organ. It's got to be like flying an F-16 or driving an F1 series car--just absolutely overwhelming power that commands everyone's full attention, and requiring similar amounts of virtuosity.
I skipped all the rest of the weekend's inaugaral events -- they all smacked of sacharrine families and more populism. In the back of the program they referred to the next upcoming concert. I'm guardedly interested -- more of the same sort of pandering condescension that I find infests the Esplanade, but I may still give it a shot.
The program is titled "Pedals&Pipes: Carlo Curley's Organ Extravaganza." Featured as Enjoy American organ virtuoso Carlo Curley's performance which includes Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C and Mozart's Fantasy in F Minor K 608 as well as transcriptions of popular classics (eww)"
It's only in March, so I figure that I better go, because uses of the Esplanade's organ seem few and far between.
One last note. I got one other valuable experience from the concert -- the program has a list of a good organ repetoire, including specific CDs with good recordings of the work. I look forward to listening through it.
December 21, 2002
Second Monitor
I currently have a large 21" Dell Trinitron crt monitor. It's a huge, heavy beast with a big screen.
Ideally, I'd use this monitor for color-accurate Photoshop work and have a second monitor to the side to show things like email and my Bloomberg terminal.
It seems/seemed to me that this could easily be a smaller, inexpensive flat-screen monitor.
All day today my eyes have been sore and tired. I've been working long hours and haven't caught up with enough rest I guess. Staring at the Eizo LCDs all day long, and then using my own computer all night long is tiring I guess. I started to wonder if maybe an LCD screen would be easier on my eyes, or perhaps there were setting adjustments I could make to my CRT monitor to make it easier on my eyes. Any ideas?
If using an LCD would make a material difference, maybe I should getting something more substantial?
Mono-raj suggested (I think) Samsung monitors as being quite nice and a good value overall. The guy at Superpet tried to sell me on a Sharp 1620.
By-the-way: Does anyone have any decent guides to choosing an lcd, or making a crt less punishing to the eyes? I found this guide to LCD specs and this set-up primer.
This guide to reducing eye strain has an interesting excerpt that I think may explain why my eyes were so tired last night and today:
- Visual stress will be induced if - while you are watching your screen - your peripheral vision is exposed to light intensity brighter than the brightest regions of your display. A color scientist or video engineer uses the term surround to refer to the area that is perceived by your peripheral vision. In addition to disturbing your peripheral vision, a bright surround will necessarily increase your ambient illumination. Try to establish a visual surround that is quite a bit darker than the brightest white of your screen.
Coincidentally, we added a bright flourescent desk lamp off to the side of my computer recently. It is very bright. Maybe I underestimated its effect.
Bits and Pieces
These other components round out the design
Hard Drive
Superpet has no Western Digital hard drives in stock. Not sure how long that problem will last. However, Alredo said that the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 hard drives are good too.
Performance sounds ok. 8MB buffer and 7200RPM should be adequately fast. The spec sheet says it's good for digital video.
I couldn't find a review of it on storagereview.com so I am not sure about its reliability or how it compares against the well-regarded Western Digital 'special edition caviar'drives. I could only find a comparison of the DM9+ versus a Seagate Barracuda. It points out that they only offer one-year warranties on their drives, while Western Digital boasts three-year warranties. ewww.
Feeling like maybe I should look harder for Western Digital supplier...
===
followup...
I started a thread on StorageReview asking about the reliability differences between the Maxtor DM +9 and the WD. The respones have been that now there are no significant differences, that Maxtor has got past their thorny patch.
Video
I'm really only doing web work, photo/video art, and text on my PC, so I don't need a state-of-the-art game-graphics system. However, I do want dual-head monitor capability.
Alfredo recommended the GeForce4 MX440 Dual from Visiontek. Visiontek has perhaps the worst corporate website I've ever encountered. It's nothing but a flash window with a long, tedious ad, followed by a static link to some drivers. Nothing else. ewww.
Reviews suggest that it is a competent card for a reasonable price, although doesn't compare well to 'enthusiast' gamer cards. That's fine. Not sure why I'd ever need an 'enthusiast gamer' card anyway.
This article compares the different options in this market niche. Here's an excerpt that nicely summarizes the article:
- It’s truly amazing that acceptable gaming performance can now be purchased for under $100. All of the manufacturers have done a commendable job at keeping prices low, while simultaneously delivering value. Even still, a couple of the cards really stand out above the rest. If you’re into bundled software, MSI’s G4MX440-T does an exceptional job of combining quality hardware with a diverse software collection and all of the accessories needed for television output. By including an extra VGA output on their card, VisionTek has given the Xstasy GeForce4 MX 440 significant appeal. Finally, Chaintech has obviously taken strides to physically set the A-G441 apart from competing products and at a remarkable price. All three of these cards excel – it just depends if your focus is on software, functionality or physical allure. And you thought you’d never see hardware evaluated based on its sex appeal…
Since dual headed monitor is my key need, it makes the Visiontek sound like the correct option.
Motherboard and CPU
Roger recommended the nVidia nForce2 chipset for AMD XPs because it only has one driver and should be quite stable. For P4 motherboards, he recommended ASUS as a good name. The Monoraj bought a Gigabyte motherboard for his P4 and was also quite happy with it.
Superpet had a slightly smaller selection of ASUS motherboards, the ASUS P4PE-L and the ASUS P4PE LS1394. The LS1394 has a bunch of onboard features I don't need. (Gigabit LAN, Serial ATA, Soundcard). Since I want to get a P4 (no need to scrimp and get an AMD), that leaves me to choose from Gigabyte.
The Granite Bay motherboard is unavailable currently. It's the latest-greatest, but I can live without it. Plus, it's 160 marginal dollars more than the Ultra.
The GA-8SR533 is old technology. Forget it.
The GA-8GE667 Pro is ok, but the onboard Audio and Video are wasted -- I already have a Creative Labs Extigy sound system, and the Audio doesn't support a dual-head monitor scheme. Mismatch of features.
That leaves me to decide between the Gigabyte GA-8PE667 and GA-8PE667 Ultra. The Ultra's extra features are onboard LAN and a Raid system. I don't need the LAN especially, so consider it no marginal value. But the Raid is interesting. Spending marginal 70$ for Raid functionality sounds good to me. I am worried about data integrity, and since harddrives are so cheap, this might be a cheap, robust way to get it.
Tom's Hardware Review says the ultra has a firewire port, although I cannot find any specifications to confirm that. I think it's mistaken.
Toms Review of the ASUS P4PE says the the P4PE does have raid...
Tom votes the ASUS P4PE as the best board of the 2002.
I still think to go with the Ultra because it has more IDE plugs and it sounded like the RAID functionality of the Ultra was better. Futhermore the P4PEs sold at Superpet said nothing about having raid functionality. Maybe that's a different variation of that board.
Some other reviews of the board were all complimentary.
- Stable motherboard
- Legion Hardware had a very thorough review of this board, and liked it.
Introduction: DIY Computer Project
My current computer, although it is working ok, seems to strain a bit. It can't play CDs, DVDs that well. The two USB connectors drive me nuts, because I have many more devices than that. I've let the file system moulder for a while. It's not that frisky.
In all truth, I could continue using this PC fine, but I would like some modern amenities and some horsepower so that I can easily run my projects (photoshop, some light movie editing, gps mapping stuff) simultaneously with my work related stuff (Bloomberg terminal) as well as keeping my data safe and backed-up.
I talked to RogerDoubleYou, Monoraj, and 31die for their recommendations. Everyone admits that Dell is a reasonable solution. Hower RogerW and Monoraj said that some home-built systems could perform better for cheaper. Their recommended systems both featured basically the same components.
Monoraj said he'd had good experience with the unfortunately-named 'Superpet' computers in Singapore. He'd assembled an Alienware-quality pc for far less from parts he'd purchased from Superpet.
So I went over at lunchtime Friday and talked to Alredo for about thirty minutes and worked out the first draft specifications for a pc.
The first look seems ok. Now I need to study the components some more and do some price research.
December 16, 2002
Vanity
I browsed my December logs today, and checked out which search engine queries led to this site...
-
Top 20 of 137 Total Search Strings
# Hits Search String
1 10 5.43% billiards physics
2 9 4.89% mitsubishi storm
3 6 3.26% pulau ubin
4 5 2.72% hokkien songs
5 4 2.17% mitsubishi storm singapore
6 3 1.63% soft 4x4
7 2 1.09% bicycles for kids
8 2 1.09% chengdu photos
9 2 1.09% draganflyer
10 2 1.09% garmin mga94
11 2 1.09% haloscan
12 2 1.09% les bouchons restaurant singapore
13 2 1.09% map of pulau ubin
14 2 1.09% mapsource
15 2 1.09% mapsource maps hack
16 2 1.09% outback 2003
17 2 1.09% photowatch
18 2 1.09% physics of billiards
19 2 1.09% sentosa cove
20 2 1.09% sime road map singapore
Here are November's Results
-
Top 20 of 121 Total Search Strings
# Hits Search String
1 11 5.26% pulau ubin
2 10 4.78% mitsubishi storm
3 5 2.39% karavshin
4 5 2.39% szechuan hotpot new haven
5 4 1.91% popping ballon video
6 4 1.91% pulau ubin singapore
7 3 1.44% download eos3 manual
8 3 1.44% dram futures
9 3 1.44% singapore trails\
10 2 0.96% 2002 montero off road picture in china
11 2 0.96% 4x4 trails in malaysia
12 2 0.96% add features and html tags to blogs
13 2 0.96% black blogs
14 2 0.96% black coffee blog
15 2 0.96% black coffee skin blog
16 2 0.96% carlos assasin jackal
17 2 0.96% china best housekeeping full marks
18 2 0.96% china satelite photo
19 2 0.96% classic hotel muar
20 2 0.96% coffee shop trip generation rate
Al Gore Not a 2004 Presidential Candidate
Today Al Gore announced he will not be running for president in 2004.
December 15, 2002
PHOTO-OF-THE-DAY: Diplomacy
The incompetence and aimlessness of the combined Turko-Austrian powers eventually drove Tsar Rajat into a single minded devotion to their destruction. Here, casting away all concerns about the grown pan Franco-Anglo threat, Tsar Rajat administers another punitive strike against the Vizier.
Diplomacy
I am playing a game of Diplomacy on Sunday evening. I've never played it before, although I am modestly familiar with it. Here are some resources I need to study.
December 14, 2002
New Photo Project
Recently I got an Exilim EX-M2 digital camera. It's the size of a credit card, the thickness of a matchbox, and only weighs as much as a watch. It takes decent enough photos, and has a nice interface to quickly and easily dump the pictures to my PC. MoveableType picks up from there, having a nice wizard to take photos and turn them into entries.
We were at the market eating chicken rice today and I was snapping furtive photos. It struck me how easy the whole process was. That led me to the idea for a month-long project to take one photo every day 'in the wild' as I am going about my normal business. Since it is so easy and unobtrusive, it's the closest thing to a fly-on-the-wall I can get.
Today's photo is the chicken rice lady taking Ling's order. Pleasingly, with the flash off (to avoid attention), the camera was still able to get a reasonable, although a bit blurry, shot. Of course I was holding the camera spy-style, not looking through the viewfinder.
December 12, 2002
Detroit Techno Delivered!
Took possesion of Detroit Techno today, SDV5528Z. (Apparently not a bad number considering it was random.) Collected it at three, drove it back to the apartment, and took a taxi to my office. Ling's driving instructor came over an hour later and they did a couple hours of touring in it. She came by and picked me up at the office around 9:45 and we came home. Her first solo trip!
I've only driven it about 20 miles. It's basically Ling's car--she is just obliged to take me to and from work at my command. I'll write up a review of it after I've driven it more. First impressions of the 1.6 Ford Focus Hatchback?
- Nice detailing for an economy car
- Ling cranked the adjustable front seat height up to such a degree that although I'm driving a hatchback, I have the visibility of an SUV
- It's heavenly quiet
- The first 1500miles has to be driven < 65 mph... That's a lot of burn-in laps... Hopefully can get them over with before Matt gets here for our roadtrip through Malaysia.
- Generally good first impression
Now, let me make sure that this is properly stored for Google's googling benefit:
-
I bought this Ford Focus hatchback at Regent Motor (1, Ubi Road 4 Regent Centre, Singapore 408607 Tel : (65) 6746-8880 Fax: (65) 6846-4633). I paid $80,000SGD (approximately $46,000USD) for it. The sales support was mediocre, but acceptable. So far everything is ok. until I realized THESE ASSHOLES GAVE ME ONE HALF (1/2) A TANK OF GASOLINE (petrol). FORD REGENT MOTORS, WHO I SPENT $80,000 WITH, IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ECONOMIC RECESSION, WAS SO FUCKING CHEAP THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN GIVE ME A FULL TANK OF GAS. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. REGENT MOTORS IS CHEAP. WHAT A CHEAP CHEAP INSULT. WHAT A SLAP IN THE FACE. SHAME ON REGENT MOTORS. IF IT WASN'T SUCH A PAIN IN THE ASS TO DRIVE ALL THE WAY TO UBI ROAD, I'D DRIVE BACK OVER TO THAT DUMP AND SCOLD SCOLD SCOLD THEM. MY FRIEND BOUGHT A $450,000 BMW. INSTEAD OF THE 'gee thanks' AND THE _HALF TANK OF PETROL_ THAT I GOT, THEY GAVE HIM A FREE VACATION TO PHUKET! PLEASE, MATHEMATICIANS OUT THERE, IS FREE-TRIP-TO-PHUKET * 80000/450000 = 6$ OF GASOLINE? i DON'T THINK SO, BUT LET ME KNOW IF YOUR CALCULATIONS SHOW OTHERWISE.
Ok, Regent Motors, this can be your lasting legacy with me -- stored for perpetuity in the Google Cache and the WayBack machine sooner than later
SHAME ON REGENT MOTORS I'm going to harbor this a long, long time.
December 09, 2002
Heavy Russians
One of the few succulent morsels that fell from 'Spy Dust' was a tiny, and of course, unexpanded, reference to 'Diggers of the Underground Planet." It sounded worth googling. And of course, it was.
Turns out Moscow has many, many subterranean layers, passages, and quarters that have been built, expanded, and hidden by everyone from the Tsars to Stalin to Andropov. This crew has been exploring and documenting these places since the 1970s.
In my very brief search, I found two interesting overviews.
Like most 'enthusiasts' articles, these smell of hyperbole, but overall, the idea is still pretty interesting. It would be nice if D.U.P. kept a website with some proper photos and discussion.
December 08, 2002
Pepper Futures
Planning for our weeklong trip to Kochi India during the first week of February, I saw a reference to some sort of Pepper trading market in Kochi.
A quick search of Google didn't turn out very well, as most of the results were news articles on the struggling futures exchange, or press releases regarding ways the exchange's stewards were going to modify the contracts to make them more liquid. It sounded like no one wanted to buy forward pepper, only sell. One-sided markets are a common problem with new exchanges.
Fortunately I found a reference to a name change for the exchange, and when I tried their new monniker, I got a better result, the IPSTA website.
They have up-to-date prices. That signals that at least the exchange is not dead. It was hard to tell if there is any real volume trading or not. Bizarrely, the exchange wants to charge for market reports. I can't see how this encourages participation by speculators.
I sent a note off to them, asking if they might give me the professional courtesy of a tour of their exchange. Hopefully they'll grant me a behind-the-scenes look. Could be an interesting photo-and-essay piece.
December 07, 2002
Burnt
Today marks the second time I've been burnt by the Central Intelligence Agency. I just finished reading retired CIA 'Pathfinder' Antonio J. Mendez's second book, Spy Dust, a skimpy sequel to his first skimpy nonfiction, The Master of Disguise, with a secondary, revolting 'love story' bolted on.
The ostenisible premise of these books is that Mendez, a decorated CIA agent, recounts his work in the technical side of the CIA. Starting out as a document forger, he moves into unspecified disguise 'technologies', and ultimately works closely with active field agents incorporating all these Q tools in various hair-raising operations.
In reality, the books strike me as a cheap PR exercise for the benefit of the CIA, lulling us into momentary amnesia about their recent massive failure with hoary victories of the Cold War.
Assuming that the guy is modest, and the tales aren't aggrandized, the books still fail in three principle ways:
- 1) They reveal nearly nothing interesting that I couldn't find in the Washington Post or CICentre.
2) The ghost-written boilerplate is so banal that it draws attention to itself
3) The 'love story' in Spy Dust is revolting
They reveal nearly nothing
It's true, they don't. In fact, they seem to go beyond respecting security rules, they seem downright tight-assed about giving you any color.
In Spy Dust, a significant part of the plot revolves around the Soviet's KAPELLE device. It's described so obliquely that you can only assume it is some sort of 1980's ENIGMA machine. But that's got to be wrong, because when you get to the end of the book, the device is somehow used for one last intelligence coup that is entirely orthogonal to encrpytion/decryption.
Why do they have to be so secretive about the details? This was in the 1980s, the Soviets know we have the technology (we stole one from an embassy in (if I read between the lines correctly) Nepal), and it must be antiquated now, anyway.
Similarly, the better part of Master of Disguise involves (of course)disguise. But the information is so sparse that it's not even clear what the disguise is or how it works. Is it a rubber mask? makeup? a laser-cloaking device?
They might as well be talking about a transistor or a code formula or rocket fuel when the only description of the disguises are sentences like, "Swazie had been the first officer to deploy the highly secret disguise technique I had created after Mary Peters had been ambushed in Moscow. We had named that technique DAGGER."
That's all you're ever told. What is 'the technique' ? When disguise is a principal subject of the book, how is such scant detail going to work???
The answer is, 'it doesn't work.' It's not just the paucity of information that makes these books losers..
...all the lousy boilerplate in the world wouldn't fill in the massive vacuum of these books.
These stories should be compressed into a single shorter book, or even better, a long Atlantic-style article. But alas, they're not. Consequently you regularly find yourself running laps of grey, boring, rote prose. Their ghost-writer is so, so unimaginative. About the only color provided is regular, breezy mentions of discussions held while 'finishing his second scotch' or 'over pitchers of beer.' I'm not sleeping, Antonio, just resting my eyes... Wake me up when you get there.
The Love Story
I don't want to make this review a slanderous attack, but the combination of the picture of the husband/wife author team and the passages inside the novel is totally nauseating.
-
I looked back. I wonder who invented this man? Who cobbled him together? He's the most interesting man I have ever met. He needs to be kissed, he is so lonely.
I leaned over, put my hand on his shoulder, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
There was a moment of recognition by us both.
"Thats not a kiss," he said, putting his glass down on the side of the tub. He pulled me towards him, through the steam and bubbles. "This is a kiss."
I am not going to quote the passages where the two consumate their love in the empty upper-deck of a 747 Megatop...
Conclusion
There are a few nuggets here and there, but far, far too few to pay any amount of money for these books. Either wait till they hit the 'remainders' stacks, or better, when you visit us, give them the twenty-five minutes they deserve and speed read for the highlights.
December 04, 2002
Photo Retouching w/ Photoshop
Edgar pointed my to this good tutorial-based site on retouching digital photographs. I'm still looking forward to getting my cd instruction library this month, and then I can work through the 'challenge' problems on this site.
December 03, 2002
Another Project!
I've sort of bumbled into another side project to pick away at. It started out as me finding a great vantage over a large construction project to build a library in Singapore.
Then I wanted to photograph it with a powerful lens.
Then I wanted to make a meaningful presentation of the photos.
Then the more I photographed and observed the site, the more curious I became about exactly what the technology down there was doing.
Then I started searching the internet.
Then I realized it would be more interesting to see how much I can learn by relying only on open sources.
Then I realized an even more interesting way to present the photography and research.
And so now I have an interesting research&photography hobby project to play with...
December 02, 2002
Karavshin kidnapping
Wow... stumbled onto a detailed revisionist history of the incident where several American climbers were kidnapped in the same valley in Kyrgyzstan that Brian and I had climbed in only two years prior.
The author spent five weeks in Kyrgyzstan investigating the affair and there is a lot more detail than I've heard before. I'm unfamiliar with all the place names he mentions, but I know exactly what bridge he was talking about where three Kyrgyz special forces soldiers were killed by Islamic rebels.
Now there is a big, uninteresting stink between this author, Jason Bouchard, and another, Greg Child, who has already written a book on the subject. Child is accused of having an unseemly financial relation with the hostages. Bouchard is accused of being bitter and ambitious. Blah blah blah.
I'm only intersted to see the book(s) for their maps and place details so that I can more accurately recall where we were, and where everything went on.
Dead drop compromised!?
Word back that the first leg of the Asymptotic Linked List has been compromised.
Hard to believe that the triple-redundant communication channel would have been entirely lost.
Perhaps the angry individual decided to blow the whole operation.
Hopefully a freelancer will check out the scene, sort it out, and report in...
Moving Mapsource Data Locally
We've got a lot of complaints about MapSource, and for most problems, Garmin is unlikely to ever resolve them.
Leave it to 31die to provide an excellent solution to one of the most vexing -- the inability to use the MapSource data locally on the harddrive. Now you won't have to suffer Mapsources slow, tedious CD-Rom data accesses. Nothing is quick or efficient inside of MapSource, so these optimizations are worth their weight in gold.
Here are 31die's instructions.
> Run regedit and navigate to
>
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Garmin\MapSource\Products
>
> Under that I have 4 entries, labeled 6 through 9. These correspond to
> Alaska, Hawaii, West and East US. Each one of them contains 3 keys.
> Bmap and Tdb will already be on your machine, Loc will point at a
> subdir of your CD-ROM. Just copy that subdir wherever and change the
> Loc key to point at it.
>
> For example, I copied E:\West to D:\data\mapsource\West and changed
> the key in the exact same fashion.
>
> It doesn't even look for the CD -- it must be authenticated by
> whatever serial number we typed in initially.
>
p.s. remember that if you want to pass around this article to others, forward the 'permanent link' below, not the generic black-coffee blog url.