As you heard in Part 1 of this post, I got an unexpected response in my verbal altercation with my GPS. Here’s a transcript of the conversation:

TT (TomTom): After 400 metres, turn right.

Ab: Hey, TomTom…

TT: Say a command.

Ab: Shut… (waits for beep) shut up.

TT: Please repeat.

Ab: Shut up!

TT: I’m sorry, I still didn’t get that. Turn right, Haisla Boulevard. I’m sorry, I still didn’t get that. You can say, for example, “I need directions to an address, drive to the nearest restaurant, or mute sound.” To see all available commands, go to the product manuals in the Help menu.

Ab: Shut up!

TT: (Ding!) Turning sound off.

Ab: (Chuckles) I win!

After the second time I told it to shut up, it started to go into the process of telling me how to find the right command but I was approaching the next turn at that time so it had to tell me about that first, then it went back into its spiel. I was having none of that and repeated my command one more time. At which point, it said, “Turning sound off.”

So it, uh, actually shut up.

Okay, I’m thinking one of two things happened here. 1) it interpreted my last “shut up” as a “mute sound” command, or it reached its limit for the number of unknown commands it will try to interpret and just shut off the sound of its own accord. If the former is true, I’ve stumbled onto a voice command that, not only did I not know exists, but is awesome and hilarious.

Either way, I never heard another peep out of it so, as you heard at the end, I won.

Ab: 1. TomTom: 0.

I recently started exploring more capabilities of the GPS device that I bought for my car about a month ago. Today I found out how to make phone calls using my cell phone through a Bluetooth connection and to test it out I phoned home. I set it up to call manually on my GPS screen and it worked pretty well so I then called a friend who I was going to visit, this time using a voice command. I wasn’t sure exactly what the commands were for making phone calls, all I knew was that you start of by saying, “Hey, TomTom…”

So I did that and eventually found the proper voice command. Once a connection was established, it went to voicemail so I didn’t get a chance to talk to my friend in person.

I was hoping I could get things set up so I could call people hands free right away but one thing that happens on my cell is that when I call, it asks whether I want to make the call using my phone or Skype. I forgot to set it to use the phone by default so I had to manually choose the call method on my phone. I’m pretty sure I fixed that with the second call I made but I didn’t want make any more calls to test it out at that time.

I went to visit my friend and before I made my way home I set a course to take me home even though I knew the way already, I just like seeing myself on the screen and keeping track of the time and my speed.

I didn’t go directly home, though, I decided to make a quick detour to pick something up before going home. Whenever you veer off course, TomTom keeps yapping at you, telling you to take every available turn to get back on course, which can be irritating. I made my stop and as I was getting ready to finally head home, I decided to try a little experiment.

I pulled up the voice recorder on my phone and started driving, now that I was back on course I wasn’t hearing as much from TomTom. It was when I was nearly back on the highway home that I started my little voice command experiment, the results can be heard in the link below.

Ab Vs TomTom

Small town life is boring.

As a Kitimat citizen, it gets to be a little monotonous around here, especially when you don’t get a chance to get out of town very often.

As the Easter weekend approached, I entertained notions of making a solo road trip. It was an ideal time as I got four days off of work so I had more time than I would on a normal weekend and I figured I probably won’t get another chance like this anytime soon so I should take advantage.

I wanted to go somewhere within reasonable driving distance and I had my destination narrowed down to 2 locations: Prince Rupert or Prince George.

Decision, decisions.

It had been about 5 years since I went anywhere further than Terrace and that place was Prince Rupert. It’s a lot closer but it’s also a town that’s not much bigger than the one I live in and I had driven there a couple of times before and was already familiar with the town. On the other hand, it had been about a decade since the last time I’d been to Prince George. It’s a bigger town, so it had that going for it, however it’s a much longer drive and I’d never driven around there before and didn’t know my way.

I made my decision the night before I was going to leave: I was going east to PG. Having never driven there before, I decided I should get a GPS to help me get around and I picked up a TomTom.

That was really it in terms of preparation, the rest of the time I was going to be making it up as I went along. This it pretty significant as it’s totally out of character for me, normally I would have everything planned out beforehand. I felt that things would work out and, let’s face it, I can use a little adventure in my life.

I went to sleep on Thursday night, planning to wake up about 6 am to get ready. I showered, ate, and started packing.

I was ready to begin my journey not having any idea what to expect, the rest of the story will be continued later.