Welcome to my Psion page

There are only my SolarMap and Geoclock programs here so while you're downloading it or once it's downloaded it then why not pass a few minutes looking at my photos from around the world?

SOLARMAP for the

Various animated screen dumps from SolarMap

New (16th Nov 1997)
It appears that several people have had problems installing SolarMap. In all cases this seems to have been due to using an old version of zip or using a stoneage operating system that limits files to 8 or so charaters. If you are not using MS Windows 95 or NT and Winzip 6.0 of better then please read and re-read the install section below.

It's out. At long last Psion have produced the Excellent Psion 5 and I've rewritten GeoClock for it. It took a while but I think you'll agree that it ws worth the effort. SolarMap has nearly 1 meg of detailed maps of the worls and a database of well over a thousand world capitals and cities. You can use the pen interface to browse through the maps, zooming in and out to obtain the view you need. Click on a toolbar button and SolarMap will show you a list of nearby cities with their distance and headings from your cursor. You can search the database to find cities or cities in a named country. Good for answering questions like "Where the hell is Chungking?". You can add, update and delete cities to the database thus future upgrades could provide airport or other similar databases. As with GeoClock you can not only get detailed information about the sun and moon's positions at any place and time around the planet but also watch twilight, night, dawn and day move east to west as is creaps across the maps.
SolarMap is freeware, you can download it here .
Please read the install.txt file or see below before installing SolarMap.

SolarMap was renamed from GeoClock, my Series 3a and 3c version to avoid the name clash with another Geoclock writen by Joe Ahlgren for PC and other machines.

Installing SolarMap on your

Installing SolarMap is generally very simple. The quickest way is to unzip SolarMap.zip using the "create directories" option in WinZip which should give you the following (with minor differences after updates): -

Directory of SolarMap\

13/11/97  09:45                 maps
10/11/97  03:40          61,437 CityList
03/11/97  02:25          78,918 Earths
10/11/97  04:07             427 Install.txt
10/11/97  03:38          12,549 SolarMap-ReadMe
10/11/97  04:44           1,761 SolarMap.aif
10/11/97  04:45          26,076 SolarMap.app
        9 File(s)       181,168 bytes

Directory of SolarMap\maps

24/10/97  16:40          74,647 Australia-2100x1500
24/10/97  16:41          97,311 Central-Europe-1800x900
24/10/97  16:41          87,716 EastCoast-800x800
24/10/97  16:41         147,400 Europe-1800x1200
24/10/97  16:41          15,931 HK-600x600
24/10/97  16:42           7,680 Lux-600x600
24/10/97  16:42         108,348 North_America-1600x800
24/10/97  16:42          89,352 World-1800x900
24/10/97  16:42         333,005 World-3600x1800
24/10/97  16:43           6,924 World-360x180
24/10/97  16:43          33,426 World-900x450
       13 File(s)     1,001,740 bytes

Total Files Listed:
      17 File(s)      1,182,908 bytes

Now, simply drag this into any of you System/Apps directories on your PsiWin. You should, after copying, end up with /System/Apps/SolarMap and /System/Apps/SolarMap/Maps.
If you are missing PsiWin, Win95, Win NT, or Winzip 6.0 you are going to have a few minor complications with your installation. The zip file contains the above so you will have to work out the best way to get the above files over to your machine. You might find it easier to rename the files on the Psion if you have limited filename sizes. All the people who had problems got stuck with World-360x180 and World-3600x1800 since after you chop off the excess of 8 characters you end up with the same filename. To help you out please download the following files and rename them on your Psion. These are the same files as in the zip mentioned above. In most browsers you will need to use the "save as" for these files, normally the right mouse button.

World-L (Large, rename to World-3600x1800, this is an optional map but very good)
World-S (Small, rename to World-360x180, you must have this file)

16th November 1997

GeoClock the Psion 3a & 3c

27 March 1997 - If you're really game to try, please have a go at this beta version. It works quite well and shows the moon the only bugs I know of are one or two inaccuracies in the rise/set times and the moon is not visable when it is in the dark area of the Earth. One or two menus have changed and a few have been added to. Your feed back is most welcome and will go towards the final version. You must have a previous version currently installed since this is just the OPA file, you still need the other files (below).

What is it and what does it do? You may have seen something like this advertised in magazines as a large machanical picture like thing you hang on the wall. You may have also noticed the price, around $1500 or more. There are several programs for the PC but I thought I'd do one for the Psion. It basically shows you what part of the Earth is in daylight and what part is at night. I've added several options that allow you to try other dates but if left in "Live" mode it will continue to update the display. You can also move the display around with the cursor keys. It was largely written on a weekend visit to Madrid, it was inspired by several litres of excellent Sangria (a Spanish wine punch). Since then quite a few people have tested it for me and given me several ideas (see "what's to come?" below). It's very small (total about 30K with the map) so please try it out. This is a full version, it is shareware which means you can use it for free. Once you've seen it though and think "poor guy, all that work and no reward!" then you can voluntary send a contribution, there are no nag screens to bother you if you choose to be stingy. :-)
If you have any comments then please feel free to mail me with details of what you'd like or what you don't like.
What's new? I mainly produced this version to get something out before the previous version (1.5) died. I stupidly made version 1.5 expire at the end of the year (1996). I was hoping to use Netscape's method of getting everybody using the same version. In the end it just makes me release things that are half finished or not tested to beat the dead-line. So what's new since 1.5? I've changed the all the clocks on the screen, they now run a little more efficiently and those of you with a 3c will be able to see the new 3c clock. There are a few small bugs corrected but most of the real work still remains ahead, please see "What's to come?" below. I hope to finish version 1.6 before the end of January. The "globe" mode still remains in the same state as it was in version 1.5, it works but it's not very interactive. I was a little stuck for bitmap space which I now have thanks to the new method of doing the clocks, may thanks to Steve Godfrey for the info. Not too much to do now... You can now use Compuserve's SWREG (#13827) to optionally contibute to my enthusiasm and help in paying for my programming elixirs, beer, sangria, wine, vodka... hick!
What's to come? Automatic coffee machine configurable to wake you in any city in the world at sunrise, sorry I was dreaming! I think the next tasks will be finishing off the globes, I've had to do some major thinking as far as methods go due to the Psion's slightly slow mathamatic abilities. I have now managed to get the bitmap space I wanted so I can hopefully do something interactive like the "flat" view.
I have recently obtained some very detailed maps of the world, the one you see is 1 pixel to one degree, it was generated from a 2x2 pixel/degree map. I now have a 12x12 pixel/degree map which should allow me to make a "USA" or "Europe" option showing the two areas in far more detail. A little further off will be the moon, position and phase, I need to change the method of solar calculations to do this, I will do it soon but it's a little like a re-write.
Installation: To install it, please unzip the geoclock.zip file to find geoclock.opa and worldmap.pic. Copy worldmap.pic into \APP\GEOCLOCK, if this directory does not exist please create it using the "Psion +", the "create directory" option. You will now just need to install the GeoClock from the main system screen.

Thanks for visiting, you can email me by clicking below,
I'd appreciate any constructive comments about my page and how you found it.

John@Davies.lu