Anorak: poorman's GPS for your mobile phone

Questions

• How did it start?
• Why is it called anorak?
• Is there an easier way to enter cell names than using the phone keypad?
• All I see is the pretty clock, surely there is something else?

Answers

How did it start?

On my train journey home in the winter I was spending half the journey trying to work out where the train was and whether my stop was coming up.

I realised I could get the phone to beep at me when it encountered a cell tower near my stop.

Why is it called anorak?

In Britain, anorak is a somewhat prejorative term for someone whose interests are perceived to be nerdy, in particular, train-spotters.

The anorak was the traditional coat of your average trainspotter.

Since anorak was originally written to let me know when my train is near my station and since you probably have to be a bit of a nerd to run anorak the name seemed natural.

See Wikipedia for more info on anoraks.

Is there an easier way to enter cell names than using the phone keypad?

If you have a laptop with bluetooth then you can always run the bluetooth console from your phone. Using this, you can run the cells.py script. Each time this encounters a new cell tower it prompts you to enter the location.

All I see is the pretty clock, surely there is something else?

The app starts up showing Guido's clock. The app uses a notebook widget, switch to other tabs to select a train, view the log of cells encountered or to set alarms.