I’m testing a build and install issue that was preventing me from using the NextGEN plugin for Wordpress. Hopefully there should be a load of  photos here from my post-Chicago ride.

and with a little luck, the XML Google Maps plugin will pick up on the gallery and the geotags in the photos

…job done.

Posted: February 8th, 2009 under AJAX, Content Management, Cycling, Geospatial.
Comments: 4

A welcome distraction from the normal stuff today, as I picked up from the press releases that the Mike Barnsley Centre for Climate Research is now officially open for business.  Not only that, but Swansea have used their partnership with IBM to stick a new Blue Ice cluster in the research centre for number crunching and visualization work.  It’s also apparent that Prof. Tavi Murray has taken up the role of Director of Research for the Centre – which is also really good news.

I wish the Swansea folk every success in making the very best out of the centre that they can.  It’s a fitting tribute to Mike’s individual passion for the environment and science, and I’m pretty sure he’d have loved having a cluster to play with.

Swansea’s press release is here

Posted: November 7th, 2008 under Geospatial, Mike.
Comments: none

I spent part of yesterday’s ride taking snaps with the Blackberry Bold to see if I could get the geotag feature to work.  Here’s the results.

Blackberry Bold photos

As you an see, the additional Lat/Lon EXIF data is working fine and dandy. I’ll have a look at the full Gmaps integration with GPX track data in a bit. DIY chores to do right now

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Posted: July 27th, 2008 under Geospatial, Google, mobile.
Comments: 9

Went out for a pootle on the bike today to get over the fact that I’ve been on flights and sat in meeting rooms for the past week or so. It’s all @jimphelps fault, as he’s been going out pretty much the whole time that I’ve been cooped-up inside

The weather was glorious today – warm, with a bit of a breeze (as ever, it seemed to be anabatic and therefore detrimental to my inbound speed). The heat was also a bit warm for a climb, so I took a detour out to Rocky Mountain Cycles in Llantrisant to grab a new Camelback. If you’re in the area and need a friendly bike shop, then there’s nowhere better – they even filled up the Camelback for me and topped it off with some powder to keep me going. Pretty good job really, as I was out of bananas and hadn’t eaten much before setting out.

Aside from avoiding decorating and other rather dull chores that need to be done around the home, the idea today was to test out the geotagging of the new Blackberry Bold (9000). I wasn’t convinced that it was doing anything when I was out in the States, but it seems I was wrong. It was almost certainly due to the overshadowing of all the tall buildings downtown that was preventing a good lock. Here in sunny Wales, where we’re lucky to see the sky, it’s no problem. I’ll re-edit this later with some of the images tagged for the trip.

Max speed today was down a little on what I might have expected for the route. I’d have thought that I’d have been able to hit 45mph without too much trouble, but it seems that wind resistance was going to spoil that for me on the way back down from peak ride height. The other problem area was 30 miles out on the return leg – I’d forgotten there were a couple of short but annoying climbs on the way back in – and paid the price for it. Oh well, that’s part of the fun.

Track for 26th July 2008

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Posted: July 27th, 2008 under Cycling, Geospatial, Hardware, mobile.
Comments: 5

A tweet from Jim Phelps put me on to the Gmap Pedometer, which I’ve been having a quick play with this evening.

The service provides a means of being able to pre-record a route that can be exported to a gpx route in the same way I’ve shown previously. Rather than use Google’s directions service to be able to describe a route, you can simply ‘draw’ it on the Gmap Pedometer service and then export that out for use on your Garmin as before.  Now that’s more like it – as provided the high-res imagery is available in satellite view, you should be able to record off-road routes without too much trouble.

A word of caution though.  The registration/positional accuracy of the Google data coupled with the accuracy of your GPS unit at any given time may well lead to some pretty large error in positioning.  Pretty large meaning, don’t plot any knife-edge routes and expect to be able to follow them blindfolded wihtout mishap.  You have been warned!

Posted: July 13th, 2008 under Cycling, Geospatial, Google.
Comments: 1