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I just got back from the trip to Key Biscayne. I'm still messing with the pictures but I have put some up on the Home Gallery. More to come in the near future.

Recently, during some boredom, I started working on pulling the GPS coordinates from some of the photos I had taken. It was mostly to get ready for some vacation to Florida, Vegas, and hopefully later, Europe. I thought it'd be cool to be able to show on a Google Map. It would allow me to upload photos while on a trip and have them show up on Google Map as we went.

So the first issue I came across was getting the GPS coordinates to my photos. I don't have a GPS attachment for my camera and don't really want to have to buy one. They're not cheap. An app that myself and Randy McCaig tested on the way to Texas last year was an application for the iPhone called GeoTag. Basically, you'd give it the photo naming convention (ie DSC_0001.jpg) and then hit the capture button to capture save the GPS coords, which would be sync'd back to the photos later. The app did a great job as it would increment to the next photo name (DSC_0002.jpg) but wasn't as preferable as we had to remember to hit the capture button everytime a photo was taken.

I found another app that wasn't specifically designed for this use but would be more efficient and automated. Trailguru allows for tracking of biking, hiking, walking, driving, etc. It records the GPS coordinates over time, speed, etc. You upload the trail info after recording to their website and their site allows for exporting as a GPX file. After recording the trail, you can take the exported file and use an application like HoudahGeo to sync the GPX file with the images, based on the time taken of the photos. You only really need to leave the application running on the iPhone and sync up later. Works really well after testing.

The second issue was creating a script to map out the photos on a Google Map. It took a while but I finally managed to get the script to read all the images in a directory and display them on a map. Needs a few changes so that it displays the thumbnails when the marker is clicked but it's working a lot better then I expected.

Above is a test of both Trailguru and the Google Maps script I was working on. Both worked really well and I expect to be tweaking and using the script in future vacations and such. Maybe I'll put the script up for others to use. Ah, who knows?

So, I thought I'd post something I came across but appear to have lost the link to. It came from somewhere online, that's all I can garauntee.

It's surprising how many of these hold true for me

- More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

- Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

- I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

- Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

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I recently won an all expenses paid trip to Key Biscayne, FL at the 'ol job. No real details yet but should be a lot of fun and was quite the surprise. It's always interesting when you start receiving messages from people congratulating you when you have no idea what they are talking about.

Recently, George updated his site. I think it looks pretty good. His previous version of the site wasn't too bad at all but it had a few small display issues.

Also related to George's update, I released version 2.4 of ReedGal. This version brings a few nice additions including making it easier to integrate the gallery into a pre-existing layout. George's gallery and Mike Aubin's gallery are good examples of how it looks when integrated. I will say that Mike's gallery reminds me that I need to add a pagination style setup for the gallery so all images aren't on one page.

Another year gone, 2010 is now upon us. Should be an interesting year, but then again, every new year looks interesting when looking ahead.

Some New Year's Resolutions (that are bound to be ignored like everyone else)

• Stop procrastinating and earn my CCNA
• Actually continue working out every week instead of stopping and starting 20 times a year
• Possibly look into new job opportunities more toward the south (I'm not a cold weather kind of guy and wouldn't mind changing things up a bit)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head but I'm sure I'll add a few on by the end of tonight.