The first step was to download and create the offline maps. This part uses something called the “Global Map Download Tool”.  Here is the GMDL project page, including the latest download source, and detailed instructions for usage.  You will get two files when done: “com.apple.Maps.plist” and a much larger “MapTiles.sqlitedb”.  Put those two files in a folder, and give that folder a short name that will help you remember the map region.  Repeat this as necessary, creating additional folders for as many different map regions as you desire.  Using SSH, transfer the folders you have created under the “/private/var/mobile/media/maps” folder on your iPhone.

The second step is to install an app on the iPhone to switch between the offline maps.  There’s an app called “Offline Maps”, version 2.1.0-4, available in Cydia and indicated as being compatible with OS 2.x and 3.x.  This is wrong! It will crash every time you use it!  However, there is a later version that is compatible, but it is not available in Cydia.  Go to the iPhone Offline Map project page and you will see a link on the top to an Atlas Version 3.1.2-2 .deb file download.  Download that file, SSH it to your phone, and from a mobile terminal run the command “dpkg -i MyProgram.deb” to unpackage it.  It will then install on your phone, giving you an “Atlas” icon, and it will also show up in the list of installed packages in Cydia.  (You can remove the .deb file after the install is complete.)  In my case, the install didn’t complete the first time, uninstalling from Cydia and unpacking the file a second time did the trick.  If you’ve made it this far, then you’ll be able to figure out how to use Atlas to switch between the map regions!

I hope I’ve done a good job of summarizing bits and pieces of the procedure scattered around the internet, whew!

Edit: I found this even better page after I wrote my post: http://www.ambot-ah.com/2010/04/06/viewing-google-maps-while-offline-on-your-iphone-or-ipod-touch/

So how to get the ethernet cable to the player? My DSL modem is in the garage, and I have a network cable going upstairs to my wireless router.  Running a new wire from the upstairs router to the player would have meant too many holes in the walls.

So the first idea was to move the wireless router to the the garage, putting a $15 switch in place of the router, giving an easier route for an ethernet cable (as described in my previous blog post) from the router to the player.

The problem with this setup was that the wireless signal strength dropped quite considerably. The connection was very weak – I could only establish a wifi connection on my iPhone while in the garage, with the connection dropping out when walking around the rest of the house.  The three reasons for the weak connection were the downstairs location of the router (wireless routers have a better range upstairs), the placement at the edge of the house (instead of the middle), and the garage support beam that got in the way of the antenna.

The next step was to try to upgrade the antenna. The Netgear WGR614v9 router did not have a removable antenna, so I ripped it out and soldered a new one directly to the circuit board. That didn’t help, so I decided the best solution would be to leave the router downstairs and add a wireless access point upstairs.  But it turns out a second router is cheaper than a wireless access point.  I bought another WGR614 (though it’s now on v10) and put it upstairs, with the following configuration.

If you’re familiar with setting up a single router, it’s not that much harder to set up two in series. Exact instructions can be found on the web. But the basic concept is this: disable DHCP on the second router, and connect the cable from a LAN port on the first router to a LAN (not the WAN) port on the second router. This way, the second router is no longer acting as a router – it is now essentially a switch with wireless capability.

One capability on the WGR614v10 that is not on the v9 is the capability to set up a guest wireless network. So I have the main wireless network with access to the internet, printers, and the other computers, with the separate guest network  setup for internet access only.

Now onto the cabin. While I haven’t had any problems connecting wirelessly from laptops or notebooks, but I’ve been having wifi signal strength issues when connecting with the iPhone.  Much of the issue is due to the router being optimally placed to pickup the wifi signal from the webcams on the garage, not for signal coverage in the cabin.  So I bought a Netgear WPN824N – which appears to be the N-compatible successor to the WGR614 – and plan to set it up in a similar manner as the one at home. Actually, I will then have three wireless networks: a “G” network from the first router to connect to the webcams, as well as main and guest “N” networks from the second router.  We’ll see how it works out the next time I make it up there!

However, we do rent movies from time to time, especially for our young child, and we were growing frustrated with the increased fees and hassle from Blockbuster. When it came time to replace the aging TV in the den at the cabin, that set the wheels in motion. Blu-ray player prices had come down quite considerably, and almost all of the players were compatible with a wired and/or a wireless internet connection.  Since an internet connection is one thing we don’t skimp on, moving towards that means of media distribution made the most sense for us. So we bought an Insignia (Best Buy brand) player for the cabin for $130 and a LG BD550 player for home for $140 – not so much with the idea of being able to play Blu-ray discs, but to download movies from Netflix.

The Netflix setup was rather easy – from a computer I set up an unlimited account for $9/month and registered both receivers. A decent selection of movies is available by browsing from the receiver, but many more can be found from a computer and added to the “instant queue”. The downside is that they tend not to have new releases, but for childrens’ movies that’s quite alright, and many of the two year old movies are new to us.  We’ve been rather happy with Netflix so far.

The Blu-ray/network players themselves have also worked out quite well.  We bought wired models to keep the price down (and for a faster, more reliable connection), as similarly equipped wireless units cost about $100 more.  It was possible, though a bit of a challenge, to get a wired connection to the players, as shown in the photos below.

Cabin

First the TV mounting bracket, recessed electrical outlet, and an opening for the cables! The opening for the cables is just a low voltage outlet box, with a Decora rectangular shaped wall plate.

TV is now mounted on the wall. The cables have been fished down the wall and out an opening at the bottom.  The ethernet (network) cable will be run in the crawl space below, then up into the wall and out the opening with the other cables.

Lots of cables, might as well plug them all in now, so I don’t have to take down the TV later!

Finished! The Blu-ray player is under the printer/scanner on the left.

Home

The tricky part was the wired ethernet connection at home. The ethernet connection is at the rightmost outlet between the coax cables, but the wire had to pass through three studs – one next to each wallplate – to get there.

Luckily there is a closet on the back side of the wall with the receptacle, so that’s how I made it through that stud.  (Repairing the drywall is a project for the Mrs.!)

I removed the air intake grill for the heater/AC so I could crawl under the stairs and fish the wire through to the garage.

After coming out from under the stairs, the cable is in the blue channel in the background going up to the garage ceiling. I still need to staple the ethernet cable (in a loop in the foreground) to the garage ceiling, but that will be easy.

I moved the router from its original location upstairs, down to its new location in the garage by the DSL modem. Putting a $15 switch in the original location of the router made life easy by not requiring messing around with existing wiring. Once I get the ethernet cable over here, I’ll plug it straight into the router.

Well, it’s nice having the router next to the modem for organizational purposes, but now Im getting a weaker wifi signal inside the house – plenty strong enough for the computers, but not strong enough for the iPhone.  Moving the router or connecting up an external antenna will do, but that’s a project for another day!

I laughed when I read this after the race: “The field has made a right hand turn onto the hump between Wrightwood and the descent. It’s a very steep ramp lined by what appears to be the entire population of the town.”

What did the kiddo like best about the race? The packet of jelly beans tossed out the window by the Jelly Belly team support car!

Breakaway (6 minutes ahead):

Peleton:

Rear group (2 minutes behind):

Some videos:

ToC 2010, Stage 6, Wrightwood – Breakaway from Brian DeSousa on Vimeo.

ToC 2010, Stage 6, Wrightwood – Peleton from Brian DeSousa on Vimeo.

ToC 2010, Stage 6, Wrightwood – Rear from Brian DeSousa on Vimeo.

Notice the water bottle that was thrown off to the side of the road in the last video?  A friend picked it up after the ride. The secret ingredient? Flat soda! (If anyone knows who threw the water bottle, let me know!)

Update:  OK,  well I tried it and it worked, as it posted a status update containing the link to this post. But it didn’t work exactly the way I had hoped – it didn’t show a thumbnail and an excerpt from the blog post.

I’m using the Simple Facebook Connect plugin to allow people to post blog comments using their Facebook credentials. There is another option in that plugin that allows publishing a link to the Facebook wall.  You can manually “publish to your Facebook profile” button in the “edit post” window,  or you can go to the plugin settings and have it publish automatically.  So now it is working the way I like!

Ideally, I would like to port my landline number to Google Voice, giving ultimate flexibility with handling incoming calls. But number portability to Google Voice is currently not an option.

My second choice would be to port the landline number to a VOIP phone service.  I would, of course, still need an internet provide for the VOIP service to work.  Currently, my DSL internet is not through AT&T, but it is through another company called DSL Extreme.  But although third party DSL service such as DSL Extreme can be used “standalone” (without landline service) in a Verizon service area (as is the case for another property of mine), is not available standalone in an AT&T service area.

So that means I would have to pay more to go with AT&T standalone DSL or cable internet.  Either option would run me about $40 a month for the most basic service, since it wouldn’t be bundled with cable TV or any other services.  (I get the network TV channels over the air just fine, thank you.)  I’m currently paying about $25 per month for a 3.0 Mbps connection with DSL Extreme (an upgrade from the basic $20 per month for the 1.5 Mbps).  Therefore, any savings from switching to VOIP would mostly be offset by the increased cost for the internet connection.

Furthermore, all of the above is moot right now, since my current DSL Extreme contract doesn’t expire until late 2010.  So my plan is to wait and to re-evaluate the situation then.

Now back to the latest update. I called the number listed on my phone bill for any questions about MCI charges, and the call went straight to AT&T. After a couple of transfers, they were able to get me to the right department that handles the third party billing. Other than the U-Verse sales pitch at the end (which I’m guessing is mandatory), the agent was helpful and was able to go back to the last couple of months to refund me about $100.

That leaves an additional $200 that I suppose I could go through MCI to resolve. I have a feeling that I would end up spending more than $200 of effort to recover it, though. I may just consider it a lesson learned to keep a closer eye on the phone bill next time around.

On another note, there was a $9.95 charge on the latest bill for a third party billing from a company called Text Savings, LLC. Not having any idea why this charge was here, I called the toll free number shown on the listing. Here’s the experience of someone else who called to question a similar charge, from this webpage.

“I asked her the name of the business attached to my home phone number that they billed via ATT … it was a .com business name I registered about 10 years ago. We never incorporated and never operated as a business, but we had a .com name reserved for our Web site. This company is buying old lists or databases of .coms and billing the phone numbers attached at random.”

My scenario was similar: also about ten years ago a group of four of us had registered a .com name for a website we were going to put together as part of a new organization, but the website and the organization never got off the ground. The address on record was for another partner (who incidentally passed away over a year ago), but my phone number was on the listing. When I called and explained the situation they said they would reverse the charge.

The poster quoted above suggested calling AT&T to have a “third party block” put on the landline and the cell phone. Sounds like an excellent idea to me, if it will really prevent unauthorized third party charges on my bills. The downside is that I wouldn’t be able to do stuff like text my vote for my favorite American Idol, but I can live with that!

As a final side note, a friend of mine commented that he was surprised MCI was still around after all these years. In my internet searches I stumbled on one potential reason – they have lucrative contracts with many correctional departments to provide collect calling services from prisoners!

For a period after making the switch, we would get a “this call can not be completed” when trying to make a local toll call.  We thought nothing of it, because we thought it was a natural part of the changeover, and in the interim we just used our cell phones for the occasional local toll call.  Soon enough the local toll calls started going through again, so we figured the hangup was a temporary glitch in the system.

Now I have to admit to not looking very closely at the phone bills over the last year, as they are not very high. But our most recent bills for the last couple of months seemed a bit steeper, prompting closer examination.  I noticed we had made more local toll calls this time around – and at the rate of $1.19 per minute! I can call internationally for cheaper than that! Also surprising was that I was still being billed by MCI!

I called AT&T to get more information, and they confirmed that I had switched to an AT&T plan that covered local toll calling, but the switchover from MCI to AT&T for local toll calls didn’t happen.  They put in a work order to fix it from today forward. That’s all I was really going to get from them on this call, and I figured it best to look at the old bills before deciding what to do on the old charges.

After I got home from work, I checked all of my phone bills back to the beginning of 2009. Up to June 2009, MCI charged 10 cents a minute for daytime and 5 cents a minute for nighttime local toll calls.  Then from July 2009 onward, the rate jumped up to $1.19 per minute!  So in that time period, I’ve been charged over $300 for calls that should have cost only $30!

I also noticed the following text at the bottom of the MCI section of the March 2009 bill  (and a couple of subsequent bills also):

Our records indicate that you have requested to cancel your MCI account. If you want to continue to use MCI, please promptly all the 800 number on your invoice. Otherwise, please call your local phone company to switch your service to a new long distance carrier in order to avoid being charged possible higher casual calling rates and surcharges on future calls.

Hmmm, now I can see how this is going to play out when I pursue this with MCI and AT&T.  AT&T is going to say that they have no control over MCI’s billing and that I need to deal with them.  MCI is going to say, “well, we warned you” and blame AT&T for dropping the ball and say it’s not MCI’s problem.  And neither will provide any clarity to the sequence of events surrounding the local toll service being disabled for a while and later re-enabled, which is the crux of the mixup.

If anyone has been through this kind of situation before, I would love to hear your experiences before I proceed further!

(26 April 2010 – Here is an update on the situation)

I spent quite some time in the parking lot trying to twist and turn the bulbs to get them in, but I finally succeeded.  After I got home, I had my wife take a look at the back of the car while I played with the headlights and pressed on the brakes.  To my frustration, one of the two left side bulbs still didn’t work.  In addition, the two bulbs on the right side were dim, so I figured those were about to go soon and also needed replacing. Still, the situation was at least better than it was before, and with it being too late to do anything else about it that day, I would finish the job later.

Finally during lunch today I took the Passat to the auto parts store to complete the project.  I popped out the two dim bulbs on the right side.  These were Sylvania bulbs, and much to my surprise, they were marked 7225 instead of 7528LL!  Upon closer inspection, those two bulbs are identical, except for a slight difference in the orientation of the prongs.  Argh, no wonder I was having problems getting those other bulbs in!  So I left the auto parts store with four new 7225 bulbs, which went in smoothly, only taking just a couple of minutes to replace them all.

Just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy, I checked the Sylvania website just to make sure I didn’t make a mistake in reading the parts book at the store. Sure enough, the website showed that 7528LL bulbs were needed, not the 7225 bulbs that actually fit! So maybe I’m not going crazy after all!

Weather-wise, I couldn’t have done this tour at a better time than mid-March, with high temperatures in the high 70s/low 80s  in the deserts and almost no chance of rain. Although that is the norm for that time of year, due to the El Nino weather pattern there were still some winter storms/disturbances in the area through late February and early March, which is unusually late in the season  Luckily for me, I had some flexibility as to exact dates for the trip, so I could keep an eye on the weather and plan accordingly.  Note that this Route 66 ride passes through this area in April, when it is noticeably warmer, but their timing is more likely driven by the need for good weather for the parts of Route 66 in the midwest.

Driving to Barstow, CA, taking the train to Flagstaff, AZ, and riding back to the car in Barstow worked out well. The downside of starting in Flagstaff (elevation about 7000 feet) at that time of year is that it made for a cold start, and if I had started just a couple of days earlier, I might have had to deal with snow/ice issues.  Starting the tour in Williams or further west would have avoided that issue, but Flagstaff had to the be the starting point for me because it was the only Amtrak baggage stop on that part of the route that could handle my bike.

Since Barstow is not a baggage handling stop, my plan was to ship the bike to Flagstaff as Amtrak freight, and the only station in my area that can handle freight is Los Angeles. So my plan was to go to Los Angeles early in the day, ship the bike to Flagstaff, then drive to Barstow and board the train there.  However, I arrived in Los Angeles to good news  – I would not have to pay $45 to ship the bike as freight to Flagstaff, I would only have to pay $5 as luggage, since I had a ticket for that train (even though I was boarding at another station).  But if I had known that in advance, I would have investigated doing this in Fullerton, which is not a freight stop but a baggage stop.  (Confusing?  Thought so!)

Shipping the bike on the train is much easier than preparing it for shipping via UPS/FedEx or air travel. The Amtrak bike boxes are HUGE (40″x70″x9″), so all most people have to do is remove the handlebars and pedals and roll it into the box.  In my case, I also had to lower the seat, which was no big deal.

With Flagstaff at about 7000 feet and Barstow at about 2000 feet, going from east to west worked out well to make more of the ride downhill than uphill.  The downside was that the wind seemed to be coming out of the west most of the time, although this was only a significant problem on the last day from Ludlow to Barstow.

Due to the long distances between services, I did this as a credit card tour, saying in motels every night. That made for a long 113 mile day from Needles to Ludlow, for which it was prudent for me to bring lights and get in a solid hour of uphill riding before sunrise so I could finish the day’s ride in daylight.

Many parts of the route are off the beaten path and so the pavement was not always in the best condition.  I did the ride on 700×23 tires which worked out OK for most of the ride, but I hit a bone jarring rough section between Kingman and Oatman which broke one of my lights, and just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, there was the section between Ludlow and Fort Cady Road in Newberry Springs.  I would recommend wide 700×32 touring tires for a more comfortable ride.

I took my iPhone along on this tour to take advantage of one interesting technological development – the Track My Tour app, which allows writing short notes and/or taking photos for waypoints that can be sent to Twitter (which I also redirected to Facebook).  Cell service is spotty when Route 66 deviates from the I-40 alignment, so the nice thing about this app is that it lets you save the waypoints to a drafts folder for submitting later when you are back in cell tower range.  The downside was that the iPhone GPS was not very reliable in much of the California desert – so often times I had to wait for the GPS to “warm up” and properly detect my location.  My initial concern was that this app might detract from the touring experience, but in this case I think it enhanced it, as I could take out my phone, snap a photo, write a short note, and then upload the waypoint all in a short amount of time.

All in all, it was nice to finally have a chance to get around to doing this bicycle tour, of which I had been planning various incarnations since I discussed this on the bicycle touring email list in 2001!