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Not Quite Normal

Archive of January 2010

Tracking a cat with GPS January 4

I finally got around to attaching my I-gotu GPS tracker to Tuffin to see where he goes. I cleared the device, charged it and attached it to his harness, ending up with a setup like this.

He didn't like it to start with - it's the same colour as his fur and he kept licking it as he thought it was his own body. Still, the battery was charged, the cat ready so I put some black tape over the GPS receiver and let him go.

He got stuck heading out of the cat flap as he left due to the tracker adding an extra 20mm to his height but after trying again he made it through. After a nervous wait he returned an hour or so later, with the GPS tracker intact, power light still on.

Eagerly we plugged the tracker in and dumped the data - waypoints appeared - woohoo!

It was logging data every 6 seconds and there are 3 erroneous readings from looking at the map, but you can still see he visits the back of around 9 houses, sits on sheds and uses the alleyway in between the rows of houses.

Next time we will attach it to his collar so it remains facing the sky, and set the logging to every 2 seconds to see if we get better results so stay tuned for updates. Still an amazing insight into our cat's life :D

2010 January 1

2010 is here. While it's 10 years since the millennium, so much has happened in that time that when I think about it all it doesn't seem quite so scary.

For comparison, here is how I saw in the year 2000:


and here is how I saw in 2010:


I think I prefer 2010 - friends, pub, beer and sparklers. :)