Having recently returned from a monthlong trip to Europe, I wanted to rant just a bit about the way the tourists seem to have no respect for anyone but themselves. They will walk in front of your camera, hold their iPhone up in front of your lens just as you snap, walk into you as your setting up because they’re looking at a cell phone or as the case in this photo, just totally screw with your shot. Yes, I can clone it out, but why can’t people just have some consideration. This dude just walked up and set his camera in front of mine while I was shooting in Venice. His shot could have been done on the other side of me, there was plenty of room that late at night. Took all I had to not bump him over the side of the canal

The local people are fine, but it’s mostly the hordes that get off the Cruise Ships that are such as#0/e$. And of course dipsticks like this guy.

I got a Prius in 2005, which had a GPS built in. It did the job for a couple of years until the map got out of date. Several highways were reconfigured, and they didn't show up on the map. For the car GPS I had to buy a new map disk, about $250. I put it off but eventually got one after about 5 years. Shortly thereafter we took a trip and found that the 1-year-old map disk was already out of date. We took a highway but the GPS said we were driving through open fields.

In addition, the navigation algorithm had some glitches. Apparently it divided roads up into about 4 levels: highway, primary roads, secondary, and tertiary roads. When it calculated your route it would try to use the highest level roads. This would lead to strange suggested paths. For example, when going from point a to point b on a road, if I came to two higher level roads that crossed the road I was on, and intersected on one side or the other of my path, the GPS would direct me to turn onto the first higher level road, then turn onto the next road, then back to the road I was on originally.

I still use the car GPS to get to places I have marked. It helps me find my way when I'm starting from a point that I'm not that familiar with. But for longer trips, I use my iPhone. I have both Apple Maps and Google Maps on the iPhone. They both work but I generally prefer Google. The maps are always up to date, no map disk to deal with. They keep track of traffic, so occasionally they may suggest that I change the route to get around a tieup. The car GPS doesn't recognize business names whereas Google maps does. The car GPS needs a real street address to get somewhere unless you have marked it previously. Sometimes it's hard to find a street address for a business, even online. The iPhone will link to the car audio via bluetooth to give me verbal directions.

Of course the advantage of the iPhone is that it's online. I pay for data in my phone plan. The car doesn't have real internet. It has some system to mark tieups on the road and slow areas, but you can't look up a business and have it give you directions there.

PS: My phone plan includes unlimited data so I don't have to worry about using it for navigation.