Making "Recalculating"

Way back in 2004, when I was working on my iPod card, I spent a huge amount of time trying to get proficient enough with Adobe Photoshop so that I could airbrush an iPod screen into saying what I wanted it to say. I finally figured out that I could use the iPod itself to do the dirty work. (I created a song called "Happy New Year" that was 20 minutes and 05 seconds long and then I took a picture of my iPod playing that song.) I decided that I would follow that approach this year.

I wanted to show a car driving through the months of the year and then making a turn as the new year approached. My idea was that there would be an endless street labeled with the months of the year. That meant that I wanted to find a place in the world where the streets looked appropriate. I needed a grid of mostly local streets with not too many distractions around. My first idea was somewhere in Manhattan; the streets and avenues would form the grid and Broadway would be there for contrast. That photo on the previous screen was one of the screenshots I took.

Which brings us to the other hidden feature of the Garmin. Simulation mode. This is where you tell the GPS your destination and then it begins virtually driving the route, giving you the prompts and the like, as if you were going at a modest speed. How can this possibly be useful? Before I found the even-more-secret "how to fake your current location" feature, the only way I could see to get my GPS to think it was currently in Manhattan was for it to simulate driving itself there from Brookline. And it literally wanted to take 4 hours of simulation to show me the route. I repeat. When would this ever be useful?

I poked around Manhattan but couldn't find a location I liked.

Then we happened to visit the Artists Studio in Fort Point and I noticed that that area of Boston is laid out just like I imagined. So one evening I told the GPS it was down there and had it drive around a bit.