Date: 2004-08-27 08:51:00
Tags: maps, amy
amy's round the world trip maps
Amy is well into her round the world trip - 114 days so far! Back when she started she said she wanted some kind of map of her travels online. I said I could do that, and about two months ago I started working on a map page for her.

Finally, I have added enough information to the page to make it interesting. Here it is: Amy's Round The World Trip Maps

Behind the scenes, there is a Python script that reads an input text file containing place names and locations, each leg of the trip including mode of transportation, and boundary coordinates for the small maps on the right. The map data (land and water) comes from xearth. To find the location of some of the more obscure place names, I look them up in the GEOnet Names Server from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. I drew the little transportation icons myself, after failing to find an appropriate set online. The page is laid out with CSS, and since I don't really know all the good CSS layout tricks, things tend to bunch together and overlap if your browser window is too narrow. And the small maps use the same (rectangular) projection as the main map, which makes them look squashed, especially higher latitude locations like the UK (it should be taller - Edinburgh to Swansea should look nearly twice as far as Swansea to London).

Yes, sometimes I do this sort of thing just to play with technology.
[info]cetan
2004-08-27T14:31:34Z
Very cool!

I used to have a Transportation Font that had a whole mess of useful icons...I'll see if I can find it (though it might be buried on a zip disk somewhere).

Is it possible to put directional arrows on the lines on the maps?
[info]ghewgill
2004-08-27T15:52:09Z
Good idea, reload.
[info]cetan
2004-08-27T15:54:11Z
Excellent. :)
[info]nugget
2004-08-27T21:25:18Z
The little icons are cute.
[info]decibel45
2004-08-30T19:22:09Z
And yet we still can't add beers to beer.hewgill.com, the prices are out of date, and we still can't get a list of what's left to drink. Pfft. :P
[info]ghewgill
2004-08-30T20:12:25Z
Priorities!
Greg Hewgill <greg@hewgill.com>