Declan's Blog » Mapping

2009 Spring Break Road Trip – Las Vegas

declan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:43:38 +0000

Erin and I took off early on Saturday morning:

to get to our first stop, Las Vegas! This was Erin’s first time so I wanted to make sure she saw the most important part, Barry Manilow!

Ok, not really – our goal was the Blue Man Group but first we needed to get a good meal. I looked out the window of our hotel and saw the Peppermill, a great place my buddy TJ intruduced me to on my last LV visit. Erin was impressed with the very colorful sugar:

Ok, so was I:

Next, we walked (and walked and walked) the Strip:

Caught some amazing magic:

Then finally saw the men of blue:

When I took Nathan to this show a few years ago, I neglected to bring a camera, so we missed this shot…

Erin really wanted to see the Excalibur, so we hoofed it down the Strip again after the show and she scored a nice image:

Sadly, the dragon statue is gone now. A guard told us that it was breaking down and they couldn’t get parts. I blame the IT department, or this Emo kid:

2009 Spring Break Map

declan — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:12:01 +0000

Erin and I took a road trip from San Diego to Denver and back. I’ll post more as I get the pictures edited, but here’s the initial map:

View Larger Map

Playing with Instamapper

declan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:27:21 +0000

I turned on Instamapper as I was about to bike the Silver Strand:

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

I need to play with it more… I KNOW I went over 11 mph Not sure why there are so few data points. The phone was in my saddle bag, under the metal seat, and the big rider – so maybe that’s it

Google Maps and San Diego Wildfires

declan — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:36:30 +0000

Here’s a very cool video about KPBS and the fire map they created during the October 2007 wildfires:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great Nasa Site with Satellite Pictures of the San Diego Wildfires Smoke

declan — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:46:45 +0000

This NASA site has a great write up of the progression of the smoke as seen from space.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/socal_wildfires_oct07.html

Here are a couple of images of the smoke starting to swirl back to us as the Westbound Santa Ana winds die off and the normal on shore winds kick back in:

This one from the NASA site above:

This one from The Weather Channel:

Fire Progression Animation

declan — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:10:27 +0000

My buddy Gabe made a neat fire progression animation:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1738949137&size=o

Google Earth 3D Fire Maps

declan — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:27:05 +0000

Wow, this guy has some amazing stuff. One example:

Another Amazing Google Fire Map

declan — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:23:51 +0000

http://xrl.us/7myq

Map of Burned Houses in Rancho Bernardo

declan — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 01:21:44 +0000

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?uid=103857397835359262716&hl=en&gl=us&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=108433978883521424480.00043d307e160282349c1

Make sure to read the text to the left of the map. There are 3 pages of houses, each showing a different map.

San Diego Fire Map with Our House Marked

declan — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:21:14 +0000

From signonsandiego.com

Compare to 2003 fires:

Excellent Evacuation and Fire Data Map

declan — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:20:54 +0000

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?uid=103734099241550080511&hl=en&gl=us&ptab=2&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=107592071260393044446.00043d12d7e7e7af51aaa&z=11&om=1

Ride4Aids Route

declan — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:29:34 +0000

Green leg out to Cabrillo
Yellow to Torrey Pines
Purple back to Spanish Landing

New RAC Map

declan — Tue, 09 May 2006 03:12:35 +0000

I wanted to make a map of the ride that uses real GPS data and would work with just a web browser and not require Google Earth.

Check this out:

http://www.declan.net/wp-content/gpx_loader.html

This uses Google maps with an overlay of the route we took. The data comes from a rider’s GPS device, so it is very accurate.

All of the roads we took are marked and you can zoom and pan over the whole ride. Click on Satellite view or Hybrid to get a neat view of some of the terrain.

Ride Across California GPS Based Google Map

declan — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 03:46:28 +0000

I made some maps earlier based on the chase drivers maps. This map comes directly from the tracks files from a GPS one of the Dads had on the ride, so it is totally accurate.

Here are the data files so you can play with them yourselves:

KMZ File – works with Google Earth
GPX File – GPS eXchange Format
GDB File – the base Garmin DataBase that came from the device

Ride Across California Elevation Chart

Administrator — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 02:11:38 +0000

I received great GPS data from some of the guys who had devices on the ride. I was able to make elevation charts. Someone with more patience can figure out our total climb. Here’s the whole 267 mile ride as one chart (note that the scale changes on the Day charts, so they are not directly comparable):

Day 1 – River to Gold Rock Ranch:

Day 2 – Gold Rock Ranch, across the Dunes, to Pine School:

Day 3 – Pine School to the El Centro pool, to Westside School:

Day 4 – Westside School, through Plaster City, to Vallecito Camp Ground:

Day 5 – Vallecito, up Banner Grade, to Julian and Spencer Valley School:

Day 6 – Spencer Valley School, through Black Canyon, to San Pasqual School:

Day 7 – San Pasqual, to yummy breakfast, to the coast!

Ride Across California Map Geeking

Administrator — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:18:27 +0000

If you’re new to this site, I’m a map geek. Combining this sickness with next week’s RAC, below are some views of way too much time spent in Google Earth.

If you are interested in seeing the source files and playing with the maps yourself, download the free Google Earth here, then go to this directory and download the .kmz files for each day, or the whole ride.

Here’s an overview of the whole ride. Each color is a different day:

Here are the individual days:

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Day 4:

Day 5:

Day 6:

Day 7:

Ride Across California

Administrator — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:54:48 +0000

Erin’s 5th grade class trip over spring break next week is a Ride Across California. We start in Yuma on Monday, then ride and camp our way to Carlsbad by Sunday. Here’s a low tech map of the ride:

This is a little better:

Here’s our model:

I’ll try to blog on the trip, but I don’t know about Internet connectivity in the cacti.

Me, Erin, 75 ten year olds… I know how to spend a week off, baby!

Escondido North Bike Ride

Administrator — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 01:00:31 +0000

Here’s the ride we did this weekend:

Here’s a Google Earth .kmz file for the Escondido North ride this weekend.

Escondido North Ride

biking, San Diego

Katrina Google Earth Overlay

Administrator — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 15:52:20 +0000

I grabbed DigitalGlobe’s Aug 31st New Orleans sat image and laid it down on Google Earth:

Katrina Google Earth Overlay v1 kmz file