Why are Some Cannons Fired at Noon?
The noon or midday gun is a traditional time signal: a cannon fired precisely at midday so ships in port could set their chronometers correctly.…
Tag: gps
Gen Z Can’t Navigate Without Apps, Study Finds
A Carmoola study of 2,000 UK drivers revealed not only widespread gaps in car maintenance knowledge but also a growing weakness in navigation skills, particularly…
Into the Reeds
A Guest Blog by Ajay Tegala After half a mile of cycling along a slippery track, I cross a rickety little bridge over a ditch,…
The Mongolian Ger Compass
Mongolian traditional homes are structures like yurts and are known as ‘gers’. The doors of gers face south. This is a useful compass or GPS…
Natural Navigation with the Tuareg in the Libyan Sahara
The following article by Tristan Gooley was published in Navigation News in March 2010. My research to date has failed to uncover another soul who…
The Future of Celestial Navigation
A morning glance at a moody and cloudy twilight led me to laying down some of my thoughts about the key challenges facing celestial navigation…
Naturally Navigating Dartmoor
The Foggiest Idea by Tom Vanderbilt. Published in Outside Magazine December 2010. I’VE LATELY COME to the realization that my whole sense of direction has been slipping…
Naturally Navigating Dartmoor Part II
Naturally Navigating Dartmoor Part II Close to the Wind By Tristan Gooley (An edited version of the following article by Tristan Gooley was originally published…
Nobel Prize to ‘Human GPS’ Scientists
This week three scientists were recognised for their work on understanding the human brain’s ‘internal GPS system’, when they were awarded a Nobel Prize for…
Dead Reckoning and Path Integration (or How to Walk Like an Ant)
One of the questions I like to ask at the start of some courses is this: If you walk ten paces north, then ten paces…
GPS Brainwaves
Scientists at Stanford University in Palo Alto have unveiled a car navigation system capable of following basic instructions without the need for speech or touch…
Windvane Self-Steering
Although microchips have a childlike tendency to steal our attention away from almost anything else, I am not against technology itself. Once we have steeled…
Radio 4 and Natural Navigator Book Reviews
Welcome Radio 4 listeners! You have found your way to the home of natural navigation on the Internet. (A podcast of my walk with Evan…
Winter Solstice Drama
This is not the glorious image of the winter solstice sunrise that I had been planning for you. Events conspired against that. The original plan…
Navigation Conference
I’m just back from giving a short talk at the Royal Institute of Navigation‘s Land Conference at the National Physical Laboratory. I learnt plenty from…
Tonight’s Mad Full Moon
If you are feeling peculiar then it is probably best not to venture outside tonight. The gravitational pull of the full moon’s alignment with the…
Transits Rock
While sorting my photos from our summer holiday I came across this one on the way to Les Ecrehous islands. It shows a critical moment…
Unnatural Navigation
I took this photo in St Peter Port, Guernsey, about ten days ago. This big fat gin palace probably doesn’t get lost very often, all…
SatNav Peaks?
During a mild tidying effort this morning I came close to throwing out the Jan/Feb issue of Navigation News, but then spotted something that I…
GPS (Global Piglet System)
[] The worlds of technology, navigation and nature convened in a mildly surreal way over the past month. Satellite navigation development, like all things space-related,…
Bovine Headlines
Navigation may fill my working hours, but even I couldn’t pretend that it is a high profile topic. Last week however a story about cows…