MPD

Today I was kind of a lazy day for me… I slept in, then just hung out for a while. I made some phone calls to friends, cooked food for the next few days, etc. I also got a chance to work on my image map again. I cleaned up some of the code by putting it into an object in a separate .js file. I also added a timeline background and changed the slider image. I think it looks a lot better now. Check it out at: http://web.mit.edu/mpdaugh/www/maps/photoMap.html?set=72157594201283566

As usual, let me know what you think. I know the timeline is a little off and the slider has a few quirks as well; I’m working on polishing them up.

Also, if you are trying to few the site in IE and it doesn’t work, let me know. I don’t have a computer that can run IE handy, so I’m having trouble debugging it. Right now the site will probably only work in FireFox.

Tomorrow, Thomson West is flying me out to Minnesota, where I will be visiting with Ken Ross, etc. through Friday. I’m excited because this is my first business trip ever.

Tonight, I also wanted to mention that I’ve worked a little bit more on my map. After some trouble getting the Flickr REST API working because I didn’t realize that cross-domain xmlhttp requests were not possible, I finally have the site set up so that the photos come from a specified photoset on Flickr. For example, the set that I have summer pictures in is 72157594201283566, so the url you would use to see these on a map is:

http://web.mit.edu/mpdaugh/www/maps/mapPage.html?set=72157594201283566

To see other photosets mapped this way, just replace the number at the end of the url with the set id of your desired set. In order for my application to map the photos, though, they must be geotagged. This means that they must have two tags, one starting with “geo:lat=” and the other starting with “geo:lon=”. Check out one of my photos in the set Summer06 for an example.

Right now, the time scale on the bottom only goes from June-August of this year, but I plan on having it dynamically rescale based on the time of the photos in the input set.

In any case, I probably won’t be able to work on this until next weekend, so let me know if you think it’s interesting, and if so what features you’d like to see. Thanks for your feedback!

As I mentioned in my last post, we’ve had more trouble with our internet connection here… We tried for a while to get the router to work again, but it wasn’t a quick fix. Then, I didn’t take time to work on the problem again for a while because I became pretty busy. Let me explain…

Steph has built up some vacation time over the last year, so she decided to come and visit San Jose for a week before spending the Fourth of July weekend with my in Las Vegas.

A few days after she went back home, my family came to visit for a week, so then I spent my time not at work with them.

They just left yesterday, and since then I’ve started to work on a little project visualizing all the photos that I’ve taken over the last few weeks. Check it out here (I can’t promise that it will be working when you look at it, since it’s still under construction): Mike’s Map

To use, drag the slider (the blue icon at the bottom of the page) to the right. As you move, you will see the current date range change and any photos taken within that range will show up on the map.

It’s such a beautiful day out right now, though, that I think I’m going to stop writing so I can go out and enjoy it. I’ll write more later.