ISYS OUTDOORS Newsletter 2005/03 - Tasmania
In this Newsletter
This is the Newsletter for user of ISYS OUTDOORS Software: Hillwalker, MapWise and Alpiniste.
In this Newsletter are some great ways to part with your money!
Now that all ISYS OUTDOORS Products are re-branded, we are making some special offers to our users. We have noticed that some hillwalkers are using MapWise only and have not yet sampled the delights of Hillwalker. Similarly some Hillwalker users have not yet included MapWise. These offers make it easy to add new programs to your existing set. All ISYS OUTDOORS software will integrate on your PC to form a single system; the MapWise maps will appear with hills drawn on (if you wish) and you can use these Image Maps to select hills just as you can use the Vector Maps. We were going to restrict this offer to March, but time seems to have caught up with us! The offers are therefore open until the end of April 2005.
THREE for the PRICE of TWO
Buy any three products and you will get the cheapest one free. Just order your two products on the website at the standard price and send an email to sales@isysoutdoors.com, quoting your transaction number and let us know which free product you would like. All three will be sent together. Don't delay in sending the email, though. We can only despatch the free program at the same time as the first two.
ONE for ONE (existing users only)
Introduce a new user and claim an equivalant priced program up to the value of £40. The new user just buys from the Web in the normal way. All you need to do is to send an email giving your friend's name and postcode and tell us which program you would like. We will even pay the postage.
Van Dieman's Land. Anthony van Diemon was the fellow after whom this island was originally named. He was the shipping line director who commissioned the voyage of discovery. Abel Tasman was the captain who actually went there in 1642 and the Isle is now named after him. The island is sometimes refered to as the Apple Isle, after its shape.
Tasmania is a fascinating place. Apart from devils and tigers it has interesting hills called the Abels. Bill Wilkinson who named them after Abel Tasman, chose the minimum height of 1100m with a drop of 150m giving 154 summits. Well, actually he lists 155 as Mount Orion and Mount Sirius are the same height with insufficent drop between, so he lists both. Categorizing hills seems to be problematic wherever it it is attempted.
A browse through the other names is interesting. We find Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis; perhaps some Scots settled there and took the names with them. Other parts of the British Isles are represented by Mount Saddleback, Mount Tyndall and Mount Shakespeare, Mount Victoria Cross and Mount Patrick. Somehow I feel that the original names have been lost!
The highest hill in Tasmania is Mount Ossa at 1614m.
One of our users, Mike, now living in Tasmania, plans to walk from Land's End to Duncansby Head. I am sure he wouldn't want to stop at John o Groats other than for a cup of coffee or something slightly stronger.
His initial thoughts are:
- SW Coastal path to Plymouth
- Two Moors Way to Chagford and then across to Bath
- Cotswolds Way to Cheltenham and then across to the Severn Way
- Severn Way to Telford/Iron Bridge
- Across to Cannock Chase and up the Limestone Way to Edale
- Pennine Way to Byrness, then Jedburgh, Peebles, Edinburgh
I wondered if he might be better to head west at the border and pick up the West Highland Way at Milngavie to Fort William and then the Great Glen Way to Inverness or just as far as Drumnadrochit. If you have any suggestions for Mike or any experience of this walk or parts of it, then please air your thoughts on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hillwalker. He would be delighted to hear from you.
A couple of months ago, I mentioned some free software for removing spyware. This month's software, free to individual users as ever, is antivirus software, AVG from Grisoft. Why pay £20 for Norton when AVG will do the job without charge? Download at http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php
The software updates itself from the web to include new virus definitions and new detection methods. It will also scan your PC to look for viruses and certify emails as virus free. Given the number of viruses around, antivrus software is essential for all web users. It is nice not to have to pay for it.
All ISYS OUTDOORS products have a Gazetteer. The Gazetteer contains all the ISYS points used in all our programs. If you have either MapWise 50 Great Britain or MapWise 250 Great Britain then the Gazetteer additionally contains all the Ordnance Survey place names mentioned on the Landranger maps. There are about 50,000 ISYS names and five times that OS names giving 300,000 in total. This is a huge database and not easy to find names unless you know exact spellings.
You can search the Gazetteer from Point Finder in the Tools Menu. There are two boxes to get started: Starts with and Contains.
Starts with just goes to the entry closest to what you type. Case is ignored. If you want to find Milngavie, just type milng and you will see the entry. Click on the item to highlight and then Select Point to make the point the Current Point and close the window. With Starts with you need to type from the beginning of the name but the search is much faster.
Contains removes all entries that do not contain your typed string. For example gavie will reduce the list from 300,000 to just 11, two of which are what you are after. As you type each letter, the entire database is searched and unwanted entries are removed. This method is a more powerful search but it is slower.
The County is shown for OS points to help identify your point, as the same name can occur in different parts of the country. (Milngavie certainly doesn't!)
If you still cannot find what you are after, try the Filter Panel. This will remove certain types of feature. For example if you are looking for a farm, then you can remove all entries that are not farms. This makes the list very much shorter and, if you are unsure of the exact form of the name or the exact spelling, then you have a better chance of finding it this way. Again, the Filter Panel removes all items that you want to reject and so will work fairly slowly on the database.
Once you have your point, you can just click Select Point and the Gazetteer window closes leaving you with your Current Point. The name is written in the Caption Bar to remind you. Every map has a Centre on Current Point Button (or an item on a popup menu). Click this to centre the map on your Current Point. The Current Point is remembered across program executions.
If you want to see where a point is before you close the Point Finder window, then you can click Apply. This selects the point as the Current Point but keeps the window open. You can check the location on a map and decide if you want to keep that point or try another.
In the Hillwalker (Lite, Info and Max varieties) and Alpiniste Series, there is an equivalent Hillfinder. The Hillfinder is also in the Tools menu. If you want to find a hill, the use Hillfinder rather than Point Finder as you are starting with a maximum database of just 4,112 hills. Again there is a filter to remove unwanted hills (at least for the time being). The Hill Filter can be accessed either from the Hillfinder or from the Lists and Filters menu. Becuase the database is smaller, there is no need for a Starts with and the search string is Contains. The Hillfinder wil find the hill by summit name, hill name or even translation. Case, spaces and accents are ignored.
Type in whitem and the chosen list includes White Meldon (The Corbetts), Càrn an t-Sagairt Mhòir (in the White Mounth, The Munros), White Mossy Hill (Peaks, Moors and Dales), White Maiden (Lakeland Fells), White Mountain (Hills of Ireland) and Mont Blanc (The High Alps).
That's it for this month. Next month I hope to bring you news of a couple of new products. If you do send us an e-mail, please check that your user number is in the subject line. This ensures that the email gets through our filtering system. Your user number is given in the subject line of this email.
There has been a slight delay in sending out some items. This is now clear and all back orders are clear. If you are waiting for anything that does not arrive by Friday, please let me know. This is the end of our financial year and it tends to make life that bit more hectic.
If you are getting duplicate newsletters, let us know the user numbers and we can send you get just one copy in future.
Walk long and safely
Iain R White ISYS OUTDOORS www.isysoutdoors.com support@isysoutdoors.com
Here's a little thought for the day from Robert of Kilbarchan: A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation....
It is not often that we can repeat the answer to a Chemistry Examination Question in humour?. Maybe we never should! My thanks to Gordon of Harrow for this.
Chemistry Exam The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities: 1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose. 2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."
This student received the only "A"
