AT Visual Progress Tracker

imported
#1

Greetings Everybody,

With 16 days left until I leave and a bad case of springer fever, I got an idea last night. Keep in mind, I’m a big geek.

I’ve been writing a page for my family and friends to use in addition to trailjournals, and I added a bit of interactivity to it last night. Basically, in addition to saying “Wyatt is 200 miles into his hike” the AT map on my page will now display an oh-so-classless marker of my progress as well.

The Normal Page (without marker) is here. Some examples of what the tracker does are here and here.

You can try your own examples just by changing the number after o= in the address of the page.

Keep in mind that this little diddy is still in beta, and that the locations are approximate. My goal with this is to test it with my hike and when I get back tweak it and make the code available to everyone (ahem: leif and zipdrive). I’ve also got some ideas about using the script to mark off “completed” sections for section hikers, or to track multiple users. Once I begin my hike, it will actually be tracking me.

So, opinions (honesty appreciated), comments, ideas?

Thanks,

Wyatt (as yet trailnameless)

Wyatt (as yet trailnameless)

#2

very cool I like it

tha wookie

#3

You’re right, a rather dorky picture.:tongue Can you make the picture marker bigger so say a 4x6 pic of your trip can go in with a bubble arrow pointing to the spot? Also a radio tracking tag stapled to your left ear may be useful in tracking. Kind of a Where’s Wyatt(Waldo) Game.
Neat idea, dude. Better than all those maps we mailed out.

Bushwhack

#4

very, very cool! I think that you should make the beta available for some others to test!:wink:
Anyway, great start and good luck with your hike.

chad

#5

Once again, very interesting. Way to go “Nameless”.

Buckwheat

#6

Just let us know when the beta is available for pubic use.

Tomato head

#7

I think I’ll keep “pubic” use in the distant future for the interactive map, pubic maps scare me. But public use might be around the corner, I may see if I can open it up to the Mid March '05ers, but it’s all a matter of how much time I can put into it before I take off.

Wyatt (as yet trailnameless)

#8

I was playing with an interactive map a few years back.

This is a far as I got. http://www.trailjournals.com/rick/movie1.swf

My dream map would be data driven, animated, work for all trails, option for multiple hikers (I want to see races), load custom photos (I want to see beard grow).

Wyatt, are you using Java to create the image?

Nice Job!



edited 02/24/05
<!-- I was playing with an interactive map a few years back.

This is a far as I got. http://www.trailjournals.com/rick/movie1.swf

My dream map would be data driven, animated, work for all trails, option for multiple hikers (I want to see races), load custom photos (I want to see beard grow).

Wyatt, are you using Java to create the image?

–>

ZipDrive

#9

Thanks for sharing the prototype. I hope it works out well and more folks are able to share in the fun!

Christopher

#10

Nice work, I think a lot of friends/family/followers will really enjoy the map.

A few possible additions/enhancements, some which may take a lot more work than others:

Having a link to each journal entry where it occured on the trail (i.e. a graphical way for someone to search your entries, rather than looking at a list of dates). For someone who journals every day, there may not be enough space along the line, but a zoom feature could solve this.

Along the same lines, you could use javascript to introduce a picture that corresponds to wherever you mouseover on the trail.

Another idea would be to animate the progress using flash.

Maybe adding something about where you stayed each night and/or towns stopped in and/or maildrops.

To do all of this might require a simple GUI where users could select what information they want to display. All in all, no matter how detailed it gets, I think its a nice feature. It could become a good tool for someone looking to thru-hike to gather information quickly. Personally, I’ve always liked to look at things graphically.

Charlie Brown

#11

Thanks for all the comments folks, keep it coming. There are a lot of good ideas, and although there’s no way I can get them done in a little over two weeks, I’ll put them all on the “to do” list. To answer a few questions:

The Non-Technical Stuff:

The next addition will probably be multiple user support, I’ll probably open it up to all of the folks in the AT “Mid March Company”, Longhaul can fill in on details as to who these folks are. But this is all dependent on how much I can code in the next few days.

How to update it? Well, while it’s still in beta, I’ll probably use a web form, but hopefully in the long term there will be a way to email your location to the script. Integration with trailjournals and such, well, that’s beyond my control, but I’m willing to make an effort (when I get back).

Animation, working for multiple trails: hopefully some day, a lot of this is tech speak, covered later.

The Technical Stuff:

Language and technology: So far everything is being done with PHP running on Apache and Linux. The eventual product will be data driven and MySQL will be the backend. I’m using the GD library to do image handling along with FreeType for the text processing.

Animation?: Animation has definitely come to mind, whether it be similar to ZipDrive’s example or just a rollover or frame by frame thing. Both types of animation should be possible with CSS/DHTML and Javascript. Check out maps.google.com to see what can be done with this type of stuff. I’m an open source guy (at least when it comes to server stuff), so I stay away from flash and other similar technologies.

Data exchange: I’m thinking about using xml for some data exchange, although it’s not 100% sure.

Multiple trails: Everything in the code is dynamic and stored in arrays. The image and all the info around it is dynamic and stored in an array, swapping in another trail map would be relatively easy. The tedious part is mapping out locations, all of which are stored as coordinates in a multidimensional array which could also be swapped out.

Custom Photos: GD is nice and flexible, custom pictures wouldn’t be too dificult to scale/crop/process but it’ll take a bit of time.

Overall I’ll probably use myself and as many other 05 hikers as I can find as guinea pigs and then refine the whole deal when I return. A little PS, I’ll be unemployed at the end of my thru if anyone’s working for a cool company that could use a programmer or IT guy ;).

Wyatt (as yet trailnameless)

#12

Pvt Red Hat, M Company 2nd battalion, tent platoon, reporting for duty March 14th. I love it Wyatt! See you on the trail!

Red Hat