, drawing information from many pages into a single file.
This help file is meant for reference when GPSS is used by the GPS enthusiast. Further down this page, you'll read why the author became a GPS enthusiast.
A help file for automobile touring
This help file is meant to zero in on the most commonly-used features for automobile trips undertaken with computer and GPS unit, by what GPSS developer Robin Lovelock* calls "GPS enthusiasts."
His is an apt description. In addition to its top-most meaning of "happy, engaged hobbyist," "enthusiast" carries an undercurrent of obsessive, religious zeal combined with pure amateurism, as well as a hint of eccentricity. Let's put it this way: my son-in-law, who is a genius at manipulating field programmable gate arrays (by definition an enthusiast of a little-known sport) thinks I'm nuts.
GPSS helps nuts like me. And you.
GPSS is powerful, low-cost geographic position system (GPS) software for laptop (notebook) computers.
Low cost? That's an understatement. For most, the cost could not be lower, as the Robin generously continues to issue free registration to GPS enthusiasts.
Many thousands of users have downloaded GPSS since its inception in 1996.
GPSS is a lot of things, but it is not a fully finished product. Read on...
What is GPS?
What is GPSS?
*You'll find references to Robin Lovelock throughout this file. Unlike faceless corporate software, GPSS is written by an identifiable person, so why not work with him on a first-name basis?
Why this file?
Tracing this project back to its roots, you can thank the many department of transportation people in New England for this file. Among the things they do is NOT put up route signs.
In many a New England hamlet, as you enter an incorporated area you'll see a town sign and just after, a curious "State Route Ends" or "National Highway Ends" sign. The route or highway usually does not really end there. What does end are the signs that mark the route until you drive out of town again, a sort of Code of Silence.
Thankfully, some villages and cities refuse to participate in this conspiracy of silence. Yet many of this more understanding group place route markers half a mile after an intersection and down the street where you would have turned - if you knew the route was turning.
You can usually see these if you happen to look down the street as you drive past the intersection, so you can reverse direction, get back to that intersection, and make the turn. Successful first-time navigation requires a driver and two lookouts, one always looking down streets to the left and one always scanning roads to the right for distant highway markers.
True, in those towns where signs appear, some are placed right at the turns. However, most are plastered in among dozens of signs of roughly the same shape that cover regulations, laws, street names, parking information - pretty much all in the same type face, color and size.
Finally, some of the best towns have "JCT" or junction signs, placed before one route intersects another. Unlike the American midwest, where JCT signs are a uniform 500 or 1000 feet before the junction (and read "JCT Rte 2, 500 feet" or "JCT Rte 2, 1000 feet", New England JCT signs can be anywhere up to two miles before the junction, straining your patience - or right at it, sharpening your reflexes.
One final bit of fun is that highways designated North/South or East/West may not travel in that direction. The North/South or East/West means only, "If you can follow this route long enough, you will be somewhat more northerly (or southerly, or westerly or easterly) than when you began."
There is a famous stretch of Interstate 95 to the northwest of Boston that is I-95 N, State Route 128 N, and State Route 3... South! At this point, everyone is traveling pretty much due west. On this section you will drive roughly 17 miles... and be only 3 1/2 miles further north!
Naturally, cars going the other way (east) sees signs telling them they are on I-95 S, 128 S and 3 North.
GPSS installed after long, hard day
The author of this help file spent a miserable fall day in an area of New Hampshire new to him, looking for colorful leaves. The misery came not from weather (it was a beautiful, sunny day) but from our decision to use back roads.
The New Hampshire towns we traversed were those of the Code of Silence outlined above. The general concept is something like, "If you don't know where you are, why are you here?"
Of course, if the highway is already unmarked, unmarked turns and unmarked junctions are just icing on the cake.
He and his wife tested their relationship by not knowing where they were for 2 1/2 hours of the 5-hour day-trip.
That night, I downloaded and installed GPSS.
Then I decided it would be nice to have Robin's explanations in one place, indexed.
Here is that place.
Dave Gehman
Framingham, Massachusetts
By Dave Gehman
© Copyright 2004, Robin Lovelock