Google Maps and iOS Background App Refresh

I am posting this to the web in case it helps anyone else trying to troubleshoot a similar problem.

Recently I noticed my iPhone’s battery was ending each day significantly lower than usual, causing me to have to charge it every night instead of every couple of days. At first I suspected the extra consumption was caused by communicating to my Pebble smart watch but quickly eliminated that possibility when turning the Pebble off for a day had no effect.

After some experimentation, the change that restored my battery usage to its previous norm was disabling background apps refresh for Google Maps. This was an application I had recently installed because it works very, very, nicely with the Pebble, sending turn-by-turn navigation directions to your wrist as you walk. This completely removes the need to take the phone out of its pocket every few minutes to double check that the road you just passed was not the one you were supposed to turn down! However I do not use it frequently enough to justify doubling my daily power consumption…

Final photographs from Japan

A final collection of photographs from our trip to Japan. We are positioned ourselves on the right side of the train to see Mount Fuji for our trip from Osaka to Tokyo but sadly it was too cloudy. I have included some photographs of the view from the train window because I think it gives a nice impression of what you see when travelling on the Shinkansen. I also managed to get one photo of Mount Fuji from the plane window as we took off for London. Would love to go back one day.

Retrospective of our day in Tomonoura

During our trip to Japan in 2012, we took a day trip to the historic port town of Tomonoura in the Hiroshima Prefecture. I do not remember why I did not blog about it at the time but it proved quite photogenic so I thought I should write something to provide context for the photographs.

The town is on the side of a hill, the upper part provides some lovely sea vistas, and we enjoyed the bonus of some beautiful sea eagles soaring on the warm thermals. At sea level the town has picturesque traditional wooden buildings and quaint narrow streets. Lunch was in a friendly water-side café that served up large portions of satisfying seafood pasta and in the afternoon we took the five minute ferry ride to the island of Sensui Jima. This is undeveloped (except for two hotels) and offered more superlative sea views in return for some light hiking.

Reaching Tomonoura was probably our biggest adventure on Japanese public transport since it required taking a local bus from Fukuyama station. Tomonoura is mentioned in the guide books but it is certainly not on the “standard” tour for Westerners and that made it all the more pleasurable a day. Yet again the people were incredibly friendly, from the bus driver who talked to us about scotch and the Olympics, to the café waiter who translated the Japanese language-only menu and made sure Rosie’s pasta was dairy free.