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This has been a busy week, yesterday in particular. As a result, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ojouchan wasn't as prepared for Ramadan as she would have liked. She realized that she still hadn't figured out precisely which way Mecca was from our home. I realized I could help, because I have a GPS!
When I started up my GPS, I was worried. It took forever to get a proper reading. It had to cycle through a few different patterns before it finally figured out which satellites were overhead. So I spent a good deal of time pacing in front of my house waiting for things to happen. When it was done, I plugged in the coordinates of the Kaaba, as listed by Wikipedia. Then I set that waypoint as my destination and started using the same GPS features that I use while geocaching.
But the GPS wasn't making sense again. There are two different methods on my GPS for finding out where a location is. There's a compass that computes itself in relation to the destination and there's a map. When I looked on the compass, Mecca was about north-northeast. When I looked at the map, it was about east-southeast. I tried walking around a bit, thinking that there was still satellite problems. In the end, I came in bemused. Since the compass had the more confusing presentation, I decided to go by the map's heading, and pointed to our ESE corner for Ojou.
Today, we visited Sound Vision to get Ojou a prayer schedule for Ramadan. After we'd plugged in our locational information, I noticed that the sidebar, in addition to giving us local sunrise and sunset times, had a listing for qibla: 24° N.
Now I was thoroughly confused, so I decided to do more research on qibla than just Ojou telling me to figure out where Mecca was. It turns out that my GPS was unwittingly demonstrating a dispute among Muslims in North America. See, traditionally, qibla is determined using as-the-crow-flies, great-circle methods. This is how my GPSr compass was calculating my direction for the fastest route to Mecca. But the GPSr map used a flat projection and drew a rhumb line between the two points.
Though the dispute arose unaided on my GPSr, Ojou had never heard of it. When I asked which method she wanted to use, she didn't understand the question. Unsurprisingly, my GPS geekery made this issue more interesting to me than to her. Her mother had used a specially designed compass for the task, so I figured that she probably wanted to great-circle direction. I pointed to where it was.
ThuNYTX: 13:22. An amazing theme, really. Had trouble with 3D, and 18A and 21A didn't help. I think 21A should be ( alternate clue ).
ojouchan wasn't as prepared for Ramadan as she would have liked. She realized that she still hadn't figured out precisely which way Mecca was from our home. I realized I could help, because I have a GPS!When I started up my GPS, I was worried. It took forever to get a proper reading. It had to cycle through a few different patterns before it finally figured out which satellites were overhead. So I spent a good deal of time pacing in front of my house waiting for things to happen. When it was done, I plugged in the coordinates of the Kaaba, as listed by Wikipedia. Then I set that waypoint as my destination and started using the same GPS features that I use while geocaching.
But the GPS wasn't making sense again. There are two different methods on my GPS for finding out where a location is. There's a compass that computes itself in relation to the destination and there's a map. When I looked on the compass, Mecca was about north-northeast. When I looked at the map, it was about east-southeast. I tried walking around a bit, thinking that there was still satellite problems. In the end, I came in bemused. Since the compass had the more confusing presentation, I decided to go by the map's heading, and pointed to our ESE corner for Ojou.
Today, we visited Sound Vision to get Ojou a prayer schedule for Ramadan. After we'd plugged in our locational information, I noticed that the sidebar, in addition to giving us local sunrise and sunset times, had a listing for qibla: 24° N.
Now I was thoroughly confused, so I decided to do more research on qibla than just Ojou telling me to figure out where Mecca was. It turns out that my GPS was unwittingly demonstrating a dispute among Muslims in North America. See, traditionally, qibla is determined using as-the-crow-flies, great-circle methods. This is how my GPSr compass was calculating my direction for the fastest route to Mecca. But the GPSr map used a flat projection and drew a rhumb line between the two points.
Though the dispute arose unaided on my GPSr, Ojou had never heard of it. When I asked which method she wanted to use, she didn't understand the question. Unsurprisingly, my GPS geekery made this issue more interesting to me than to her. Her mother had used a specially designed compass for the task, so I figured that she probably wanted to great-circle direction. I pointed to where it was.
ThuNYTX: 13:22. An amazing theme, really. Had trouble with 3D, and 18A and 21A didn't help. I think 21A should be ( alternate clue ).