Redtrails.com Blog

To the 2 people who read this blog...

Haven't posted anything new for awhile and I know the site has been down for over a week...Sorry - I'm working on revamping just about everything and can't be bothered to replace the now-disfunctional trails map with something more informative. In a few days I'll be releasing the new version of the site.

Additions include: The capability to upload and view GPX files, drawing trails with streaming points, changing trail names and descriptions in a wiki-way, and belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. c-ya soon-b

GM fires thousands of workers

Taking my blog way off route here - I just saw this tidbit in the news...

GM to cut truck shifts, leading to layoffs

High gas prices, slump in housing hold back automaker’s sales

Here is a thought - it is mine - What if GM re-assigned these 3500 hungry people to developing a prototype American car (or truck even) that is twice as fuel efficient as the guzzling hogs that are gathering dust in car lots across the country? nuff said.

Internet Explorer 8

Browsers these days...

In 10 years there will be a Google Browser, a Microsoft Browser, an Adobe Browser and this is how they will render the tag.

Cross-browser functionality is like balancing a donkey on an exercise ball on a bowling ball. By the way, Internet Explorer 8 won't support opacity, because opacity is for losers...alright...enough venting.

What's happening on April 10, 2008

So what's happening here at Redtrails.com?

A few things:

- I've finally installed a way to track activity on the site and can see that it's getting a lot of use - mostly Californians...That's ok I guess ;). Even some people from Germany and Italy - welcome!

- I'm looking at putting a tag cloud in because, no matter how trendy, I still think they're cool.

- Special thanks go out to user 'john' for his report that the gpx files were not validating. Maybe I'm not reading the GPX schema right but it looks to me like the child tag is acceptable under the parent tag...I'll look into it but I made the change anyway.

- Still working on serving those ultra-rad embedded hillshade tiles but I've run into a few stumbling blocks - georeferencing 1.8gb tiffs in Mapcruncher can be a laborious process and avoiding ugly seams is harder than I thought...working on a script to export tiles from ArcGIS. I can't believe there isn't one on ArcScripts yet...hopefully that will change soon.

A month later...

Since I realized the possibility of duplicating the topo-hillshade I've spent a good chunk of the last month grinding out coverage for the great state of Washington.

So far only to a limited zoom (11) but that will change. Check out the results. And if you dig it leave me some feedback for cryin' out loud...

Coverage

Just added a feature to the smaller scale basemaps - upon loading the initial page you'll notice some red pock-mark looking things - no it's not dying forests but rather the current coverage of the trails database.

A label is a label is a label

Alright sports fans - I don't know why it has taken me so long to get around to doing something so simple and useful...

Now when you mouseover a trail a label will pop up with the trail's name. Click on the trail and the dialog box expands to show the approximate (very important) length and the export options.

Enjoy!

Life without Starbucks

Topo maps coming soon...

Yes that's right, I have blasted away tens of hours uncreatively duplicating National Geographic's hillshaded DRGs. Resampled, tiled, crunched and uploaded to end up with some pretty schweet results - plus more seams!!...so far only a Central Washington sampler but stay tuned - as the bugs work themselves out you'll see more coverage.

Shouts go out to:
William J. Drummond
The surprisingly robust new version of Mapcruncher
The all-stars at WAGDA

Terraserver and Virtual Earth?

Lately I've been wondering why, if Virtual Earth is based on imagery from Terraserver why the Topo/DRG layer didn't make it across? Granted their imagery is not the greatest. I've been pursuing the possibility of serving hillshaded DRGs as a tiled layer for the map...we'll see how that goes, the imagery so far is excellent but the logistics are probably going to be a nightmare. We'll see.

Here comes National Geographic...

As quoted from the NG Topo Explorer website-

"Discover great new places to recreate no matter your passion by browsing our nationwide set of detailed topographic maps, aerial photographs, and unique HybridQuads."

"At launch, the TOPO! Explorer Web site (topo.com), will contain between 7,500 and 10,000 unique files provided by government agencies, regional trail and access clubs, publishing partners and National Geographic. Users will be encouraged to review posted trip files and share their own files using an integrated publish-to-site feature as a component of a larger social-networking portion of TOPO! Explorer."

Read More

WOW! - trails data from government agencies - WHO'D A THUNK IT?!!

Rick Steves is The Man

As Quoted from the Seattle Times this morning:

"Travel writer Rick Steves and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington have formed a partnership to tackle a topic they call the equivalent of the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s: the criminalization of marijuana. "

read it here

How to tackle giant vectors...

I realize that one problem with the interface is the lack of trails at low zoom levels. I've thought about using Mapcruncher to give users an idea of coverage but I really am not into uploading 7 trillion tiles to my host. I've recently been looking into tiled vectors - a new Microsoft Research idea for Virtual Earth. I've been able to run my data through the gauntlet and get decent output but customizing the code is about ten floors above my head in python and javascript....so....in the meantime I'm looking at dropping points on the map at the lower zoom levels...stay tuned...

First blog ever!!

Howdy-
Thanks for visiting the redtrails blog - this is where I hope to post updates, changes and general info on the site- and where you can send me comments.

Other recent changes:
- Removed confusing Pacific Crest Trail data for various forests and split it up according to the official PCT sectioning.
- Over 4000 trails are now indexed in Google.
- Via Windows Live has picked up redtrails.com - visit their site for other great Virtual Earth Apps.
In the works:
- Florida state trails system
- Fishlake Nat'l Forest
- Tongass/SE Alaska Trails
Until next time-
Ben