I discovered this week that there are a plethora of tools for geocaching, gps devices, and just some really neat mapping applications out there. I started by creating a map of our geocaches from last Saturday, after some trial and error I determined that the best option was creating a .gpx file from our caches instead of a .loc, this made a much richer conversion to .kml for Google Earth. I got a .gpx by creating a bookmark of the caches we visited the one day and then creating a "pocket query" to get the .gpx emailed to me. You can easily download the .loc from the site, but I think you can only get the the .gpx as individual files from the cache page or via pocket queries.
There are a couple of neat conversion tools if you would like to export your .gpx data into something you can use in Google Earth. I'll mention GoogleEarthTweaker, though, because it was my favorite and easiest to use. Once you install GET, all you do is run it and drag your .gpx to the open application screen. GET will automatically create a .kml of your geocaches on your desktop. It's just that simple.
My .kml came out fine but I did want to edit it a little bit so I opened up Google Earth. The new .kml kept a generic filename as the title of the maps, so I renamed the directory in Google Earth, and it also embedded my waypoints into many different directories, so I moved those up. I also wanted to add a reference point to where we lived so we could see just how far we traveled from our home that day. Once I made my edits, I saved my .kml and then uploaded the file to my server at heidigoseek.com.
While planning out our geocaching camping trip for later this summer, my husband discovered that you can actually open .kml files in Google Maps. The only thing you have to do is to make sure that the file is is available via an http address (this is why I put it up on my server). To get the .kml to load in Google Maps, all you have to do is type the full URL in the GMaps search box. Here is the map I created for all the world to see!
Now, I did seem to have some issues with it. For one I'm getting an error on the page with a style. I don't know enough about editing the .kml to really know what the error is, but everything else still seems to load ok. The second issue I had was that my "house" icon didn't load right when I first put it in GMaps. Apparently it's working now, I didn't do anything different so I don't know why that may be. Everything else seems to be ok.
Eventually I would like to add flickr photos to the mix, using geotags. GoogleMaps also has some interesting new features to play around with.
Well, Project 365 seems to be dead for this year. Knowing me, I'm honestly not surprised. Lately I've been thinking about reviving this thing as some sort of geocaching blog. There's some pretty neat tools for mapping GPS waypoints, Google Earth, Google Maps, and of course geotagging Flickr images. I started messing around with importing .gpx and .loc files from geocaching.com and our Garmin software into Google Earth with some pretty nifty results. It seems that if we were to turn tracking on during our geocaching adventures that we can get some pretty interesting map images from those too. I'll continue to play around and post some of my results here.
Hey, I haven't been posting any pictures but I have been taking them. That's just me...I'll get to it someday. Most of the recent ones haven't been too inspired anyway, there's not much going on.
Plus my tastes have changed a little...you might be able to notice that my tastes actually run all over the place. Sure, I have a few artists that are still my favorite, but I tend to enjoy listening to more new music more than listening to the old stuff. I do listen to old stuff on Rhapsody when they come up on my channels...but it's one song at a time and it's usually music I never bought but do remember.
I'll probably continue to think more on this topic, especially as I work on my research project pertaining to Digital Rights Management. The evolution of digital content (and especially music) is an interesting topic.
Also, I do have pictures from the last 3 days, I just spent the last hour or so working on them but I probably won't get them uploaded tonight...stay tuned though.
These ice storm pictures were pretty difficult to get actually. Macro close up is great on my camera but the fine tuning of the focus was difficult to achieve...a lot of them came out blurry. In addition I had to make sure flash was off which also added to some of the blurriness.
Growing up in my little town I remember being outside when we got a lot of snow, ironically it seemed to bring people out of their houses. We lived across the street from the grocery store...you wouldn't see a single car but you would see a lot of people walking to get groceries. I always thought there was something kind of quaint about that. The only thing you would hear though are people shoveling or walking around, everything else was wonderfully silent.
The Linux book Alex and I bought a little while ago. It's a good book but I never finished it. I guess I never determined if I was a non-geek or not though.
I took a whole slew of train pictures, this wasn't even the one I thought I would pick until I saw it large. This one did a kind of cool thing...for some reason the background of this image is blurry while the train is clear. I actually found that pretty neat. I think I chose sepia because the outside colors were a bit bland today. The sky was uninteresting and since we have no snow on the ground the grass is brown and gross.
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I try to do that, but even that involves some planning and time. I think what we've been doing lately... read more
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