Tad's IT Blog
Posts tagged travel
GeoTag Junkie: Where my Last 500 Photos were Taken
Dec 30th
Unfortunately, the wonderful Flickr map only lets you display as many points on the map (at a time) as you can fit in thumbnail photos across your screen. So, for someone like me who meticulously geo-tags every photo taken (in the hopes I’ll one day be able to locate the ideal geo-data visualization app for my photos) the closest thing I can get to a good map is the Flickr Organizr. Here’s a photo of how it looks:
The Trip Map – Web 2.0 Style
May 31st
Now that my cross-country trip is drawing to a close (I should be pulling in to my destination in the DC area tomorrow) I’ve been trying to figure out a cool Web 2.0-style way of displaying where we went on this trip, with the route we took, geo-tagged photos, videos, and all of that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, I could not find any service that would let me mash up the geo-data I already have stored in Flickr (and I’ve painstakingly geo-tagged all my photos) and then add in some sort of way to draw the lines where we went on the trip.
Furthermore, Flickr maps – as cool as they are – will only display a page of your photos at a time. So, although I have representative photos that basically draw a line all of the way across the USA, you can’t see that if you look at the map. So, I’ve been trying to find something better.
Now, Google Maps lets me do something like the following, where I can at least easily load up a map with all manner of meta-data (points, lines that follow roads, HTML, etc) and slap it up on a publicly-available map:
View Cross-Country Road Trip in a larger map
This is a step in the right direction, though I still can’t integrate my Flickr geo-data with the map. So, that leaves me to painstakingly re-add all of my geo-data, or figure out another make-sense way of displaying the data. Still pretty nifty, but someone has GOT to have already worked out a solution to this. It’s not like I’m the first blogger/web 2.0 geek to go on a road trip!
Lesson on how you KNOW if you’re Actually at 10,600 feet
May 26th
When driving on the I-70 toward Colorado, if your Subaru is buff enough, you will finally come upon Vail Pass, at a breathtaking 10,603 feet.
Now, anyone who’s been mountain climbing in the Cascades knows that at about 10,000 feet, you see snow and ice and Glaciers and you lose your breath and have to start wearing gear and all sorts of things.
So of course, I see that sign, and had to verify, for myself, if they really meant it, and if this pass was indeed at 10,600 feet above sea level.
Parade of Videos of our Trip through Utah/Colorado
May 26th
While my wife & I are on our way across the country, I finally was able to stop at a place that’s got wifi, so I’m finally able to upload and work with some of the photos & video that I’ve been taking over the last 48 hrs. (Sorry, yet another opportunity for me to dig on one of the iphone’s only faults — no video).
We’ve been driving through Utah, Colorado and Kansas over the last 2 days, and have gotten to travel on what I feel are the most breathtakingly beautiful stretches of U.S. Interstate highway that there is.
Here’s a little sampling:
This was a rest stop in Utah on the I-70, not even marked as a “scenic turnout” or “vista” or anything. Just a bathroom stop.
And this is Glenwood Canyon in Colorado, part of what is the newest stretch of I-70, completed in 1996. Unfortunately, I left my wide-angle lens in the car!
And then here’s driving through the Eisenhower Tunnel on the I-70, at around 9,500 feet in altitude:
Letting the wife drive
May 24th
As we make our way across Utah and into Colorado, I’m letting Kat drive for a bit so I can take advantage of the fact that we’ve had Edge data service across most of eastern Utah. Lack of ANY service in Western Utah cost us our hotel reservation when we couldn’t call or message them that we were running late, and then a slimy fellow at the Budget in gave away our room. Anyhow, the scenery in the area overcame that slimebucket, thankfully.
Breathtaking Ride through Nevada/Arizona
May 23rd
I’m stopped at a Burger King in St. George, UT right now, and mercifully they have wi-fi. I’m spending most of my time, however, reviewing all of the photos we took on our slice through the Yellow Knolls near the Arizona/Nevada/Utah border. I kept my eyes on the road as Kathryn snapped pics. Really quite something.
Hopefully this video will do it a little bit of justice:
Soon as I have a bit more time, I’ll stick these on a proper Flickr slideshow.
First Trip to Vegas
May 23rd
After loading up my little Subaru with another thousand pounds of stuff in LA, Kat and I headed up today towards Vegas. We wanted to get further, but due to awful traffic, we only made it this far. And, as hotel wifi is an extra $14/night here at the Sahara, it’s yet another post from the iphone.
Took a nice walk around though, for a little late nite photo tour. Our hotel has a casino in it, and a monorail station out back. All of the pretty lights have me wishing again for a tripod for my Minolta!
Sunrise in San Francisco
May 22nd
Had a wonderful morning in San Francisco, pulling in to town at about 5am, just in time to get some rocking pics with my wide angle Minolta of the Bay Bridge at sunrise. Soon as I can, I will get them on flickr (I.e. When I’m back on my laptop on wifi, as I still haven’t found a real good flickr upload client I like for iphone.)
But, here’s a couple of iPhone can pics:
Out of the 3G dead-zone
May 21st
Well, the plus is that I’m out of the Eugene-to-Weed 3g deadzone, but then I ran low on batteries. So, didn’t get a chance to do an update until now, while I charge my iPhone and figure out how to make the wifi at this Starbucks work.
We decided to abandon the boring I-5 last night, and do the 58 between Eugene, OR and Klamath Falls. Well worth it! Here’s one photo of a snowy outhouse we stopped at along the way, as well as some nice shots of Diamond Peaks.
We’re off!
May 20th
We’re off! My wife and I are off on a cross country road trip, and while doing such, I’ll be trying out my mobile blogging tools in my phone. (this is being written from the car on an iPhone). So far, I’m liking the twitter approach rather than wordpress, but we’ll see. About to enter AT&T’s largest 3g dead zone in the PAC northwest, so well see when the next post will be!
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