Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Karen Nakamura has a wide variety of interests outside of photography and photoethnography. I first learned of her when I was looking for a GPS navigation system for my boat that would run on a Mac laptop. Macintosh computers on boats are apparently as rare as snakeskin covered Leicas. Sailors tend to be tradition bound and are wary of any newfangled invention not referenced in the 1800s Bowditch guide to navigation. A former colleague at Cornell told me of a small company, GPSy, that had developed just such a program. I downloaded the program and, lo and behold, it turned out to be written by one Karen Nakamura. This is a quote from the info on the GPSy website: *"Karen Nakamura* is the original author of the GPSy? and GPSy Pro? software. She is a veteran Macintosh and Rhapsody programmer with over 18 years experience in C/C++ programming and was one of the first NeXTStep programmers when it was released in 1989. First released in 1997, GPSy and GPSy Pro were developed out of fieldwork tools in her anthropology dissertation project analyzing deaf communities in the United States and Japan. In her other life, she is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University." Although it is perfectly functional, I no longer use the program because NOAA has released all US navigational charts for free and other programs are easier to use. Apparently Karen has lost interest in it too. She doesn't mention it or her computer background on her web site although she still uses the Karen at GPSy.com e-mail address. Larry Z