• Happy International Mermaid Day! 🧜🏼‍♀️

Jeff McMurtrie is back as of today

Yaay
Now a warning. His old website was taken over by s crook. Jeff is no longer involved but you will see his name if you Google
His old partner is shady and people have been scammed out of money. No map but a charge
Do NOT USE
http://www.algonquinmap.com/
 
I missed out on the Temagami set of Jeff's Maps.

My first impression of the new set is I don't like to the blue and black boxes, instead of times. Too much thinking involved.
 
Scored a full set of Jeff's Maps Temagami on MEC last night. A little more expensive then some of the 'Central' only maps that I found in several places but then again it's Cdn$. I checked the sofa and the Lazy Boy and was good to go.:)
 
Hiiii!

It's Jeff here :)

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yellowcanoe - Yea...... I've been getting several emails a week about Jeff's Map. It's terrible.... I wish there was more I could do, but unfortunately my advice to the people that email me is basically 'call your credit card company'.

--

sweeper - Haha, I totally understand your initial feelings about the time blocks. I used to share them (Unlostify is my friend Deki + me, but Deki started well before me).

I'll tell you though, I've definitely come around on them. To the point that I'd never consider using numeric times again.

Sounds crazy right?

Here's the thing, 90%+ of the time the printed times on my old works are either incorrect or unusable. The new time blocks solve all those problems, and then some.

Problem 1 - The printed times were designed for average paddlers doing a single carry on portages (and didn't include time for breaks). To account for slower or faster paddlers, I told people to multiply the printed times by a speed factor - like 1.33x for moderately experienced paddlers, or 0.8x for super faster paddlers. That's a really cumbersome solution to the problem.

With the blocks all that math disappears. Instead, we just change the number of blocks you can travel each hour - 3, 4 or 5. And, to make things even faster for the average paddler, they're broken up into groups of 4 blocks for ease of readability (1 hour/group).

Problem 2 - The printed numbers, being easily readable numbers and letters can be interpreted even if someone don't understand the assumptions I just mentioned. That's not good.

I explained everything in a block of text named Travel Times, but if you were not an average paddler who singles portages yet you used them (unmodified) anyway... you could get yourself into trouble. The blocks fail safe - if you don't read the explanatory text, they don't mean anything to you.

Problem 3 - The printed numbers were cumbersome to add together. Example: 1h5m + 40m + 35m + 1h15m + 2h20m+ 15m + 55m (never mind if you have to add (1h5m*0.8) + (40m*0.8) + (35m*0.8) + (1h15m*0.8) + (2h20m*0.8) + (15m*0.8) +(55m*0.8))!

Using the blocks is like counting tick marks - 1, 2, 3, one hour, 5, 6, 7, two hours, etc.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that our brains have evolved to be MUCH better at adding icons than numbers This is really something you can't appreciate until you start using them though.

Problem 4 - Printed numbers are only useful if you care about the time for a complete route segment. If you want to know 'how long from here to the next portage' you're completely out of luck.

Since the blocks are blue for water black for portages, you can see (for example), 'there's one blue block between the two black blocks, so that'll be 15 minutes'. At the same time, if you don't need this degree of granularity (namely at planning time,) you can just ignore the difference in colour to no ill effect.

Bonus Advantage to the Block Times - The coolest thing about them is how easy it is to compare individual route segments. If one option is 6 blocks long, and the other is 4 blocks long, the fact that the 6 block segment is visibly bigger means that you can see that difference without even thinking about it.

-Jeffrey
 
Thanks Jeffery I see what you're trying to do and why. I'm a distance guy, not time. I want to know how far I've been/got to go, not how long it will take me to get there. I build spreadsheets of my planned trips, it's how I spend my winters.

I'm planning a trip to Kawartha Highlands and will give it a try.

Thanks for you post
 
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