Adventures in the supermarket aisle

When you're unemployed, you finally have time to do those things you've been meaning to do for years, including those unexciting adventures in the supermarket aisles.

Well, actually, I was walking through the aisles of REI with (quad-ruled) notebook in hand, writing down the nutritional information and cost for various freeze-dried foods.

At home, I started a spreadsheet of various hiking foods, along with their weights, calories, costs. For the weight weenies among us (and who isn't, especially when packing for a 5-day backpacking trip?), some things really jump out - which I've highlighted in the spreadsheet.

When it comes to freeze-dried foods, the Mountain House Mac & Cheese is a clear winner. I've known for years that it is tasty and packs in a lot of calories. What I didn't realize is that its value in calories per cent, at 145 calories per dollar, is almost 50% better than any other freeze-dried meal out there! (Note that in the spreadsheet I've treated the "2-serving" freeze-dried meal packages as single-serving, since that's how they're usually consumed in the field.

When it comes to snacking, the Trader Joe's Sesame Sticks is the hands-down winner. At almost 1200 calories per dollar, you could (if you had a real stomach for oil, sesame, and salt) fuel an entire day of climbing (around 4000 calories) for under $5! These sticks get 63% of their calories from fat... yum!

One thing that was a bit surprising to me was that trail mix was a better deal than I thought. For its volume, trail mix usually seems a bit expensive, but it's actually very good in terms of calories per dollar, at about 6 calories per cent.

Having said all of this, the spreadsheet is incomplete. I'd like to do some research to add some other trail favorites, such as candy bars, salami, chocolate, and gummies. Another aspect that remains to be explored is the calories per unit volume, since being able to fit more calories in a smaller pack (to keep the weight of one's pack closer to one's center of gravity and squeeze through tight spots) is desirable, especially when travelling off-trail.

I'd also like to check out the value offered by other retailers, such as the bulk sections of Whole Foods, Fred Meyer, and others. I'm optimistic that Fred Meyer will offer good value.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions for additions!

A little funny, a little sad: GeoFlickr

I've put a bit of work into my Flickr2KML tool, which has been fun, interesting, and good practice for me to get my hands dirty in code after some time off. And I thought that I was doign something that no one had done before but would be useful to Flickr-philes who wanted to see their photos in Google Earth.

Today I decided that development work had gone far enough and that I should start putting my code into some kind of repository before I a) accidentally made changes that I would need to revert or b) suffered some kind of hard drive failure.

I checked out Codespaces, as a friend of mine is using that for a current fun project, and decided that I might as well go ahead and give their 45-day free trial a run. And when prompted for a project name, I thought about using "GeoFlickr" as a name instead of "Flickr2KML", since I recently realized that my tool could be used for more than just Google Earth integration (i.e. KML-file generation).

Before using a new name, I of course Googled it to make sure that it wasn't taken. Ah, the irony! "Geo Flickr" is an application, made by Ravensoft software! And yes, it brings Flickr photos into Google Earth! Egads!

My first reaction was to feel stupid about the fact that I hadn't discovered that someone had already done what I was working on. But two things made me feel better: 1) A Google search for "flickr google earth" doesn't find Geo Flickr (at least, not in the first 4 pages of results), so it's not that I missed something completely obvious, 2) the app wouldn't start for me (I've e-mailed the creators), 3) I'm not sure if it actually does everything I want anyway.

Incidentally, during this recent searching, I did discover www.trippermap.com, which seems to do a lot of cool stuff with Flickr photos on maps, including bring them into Google Earth. I'm optimistic that it does most or all of what I want it to, and am awaiting the results from its scan of my photos! One problem that I have discovered with trippermap is that it only works with public photos; another missing feature is that it doesn't allow you to look at friends' photos. My Flickr2KML supports both private photos and accessing friends' photos. On the other hand, trippermap is a beautiful website that seems to do a lot of great things!

Adventures in Geotagging

I have a GPS that records where I've been at what times. I have a camera that takes pictures with timestamps. It seems logical that I should be able to plug both into my computer and - as my host at a B&B in France was so fond of saying - voila! - I should be able to have a map of my route with photos on it, no?

Or at least, I should be able to quickly embed the latitude and longitude (location on the planet) of each photo into its EXIF data, right?





I knew that there was software out there to do such things. I didn't expect that it would take several after-midnight hours of banging my head against my desk to achieve the desired results.


So here I blog, to hopefully save some other likeminded souls from similar agony.



Long story short, here is what I did that actually did work:

1. Download your photos from your camera to your computer. (I'm assuming you already know how to do this.)


2. Download your tracks from your GPS to your computer. I used Garmin's MapSource software to do this. I have this software installed because I normally use it to upload topo maps to my GPS. It's also pretty decent at managing waypoints, routes, and tracks.


3. Delete any data from this file that you don't want displayed on your map that you want to share. For example, we drove between two trailheads in my recent 5-day trip; since I only wanted to show our hiking/scrambling route and not our driving route, I deleted these extra tracks, as well as some old tracks that were still on my GPS.


4. Save the file as a *.gdb file. For some reason, MapSource v 6.15.4 (what I have installed currently) crashes if you try to export as a .gpx file (one of the few standards out there).


5. Use GPSBabel, a free utility, to convert this .gdb file to a .gpx file.


6. Use Microsoft Pro Photo Tools (ironically, I had never heard of this application while I was working at Microsoft!) to geotag your photos. The UI isn't completely intuitive, but the two buttons you'll need to find are "Track Route: Load from File" and Track Route: "Place Images". You should see a route after loading the .gpx file and you should see pushpins representing each photo on the map after clicking "Place Images". Note also that you need to "Save All Images with new data" after these first two steps to store the latitude and longitude information in the EXIF data for each photo.


7. Import these photos into Picasa (I'm using v. 3) and upload. Note that using the online web tool to upload photos to Picasa will strip out the latitude and longitude information that's embedded in each photo, so you must use the desktop application for uploading. Note also that Flickr will ignore this EXIF data, which is why I finally tried using Picasa.


8. View your newly-created Picasa album online and click on "View map". Then click on "View in Google Earth". Note that it's also possible to view these photos in Google Earth directly from the Picasa desktop app, but the results are better if you go the online route.


9. Now that you're in Google Earth, you can import your .gpx track that you created in Step 5. And - voila! - you've got your pictures in their appropriate locations around the globe, and your route there, too!
10. Try out the coolest part of the whole thing: flying from photo location to photo location. The terrain appears to be 3-dimensional during the fly-by!
    

Long story short: I expected that this would be a simple process, but it still has too many gotchas and pitfalls along the way for the average consumer to handle. One of these days I expect it will be easy enough, but until then, it will take a bit of work! Note that I had to use a total of five software applications* to achieve my goal, and I'm still not completely happy.

My main issues that I'd like to resolve (or see resolved by the appropriate parties)

1. I'd like to continue to use Flickr. I'm already paying for an account there; I'd rather not pay to use Picasa. Flickr allows unlimited uploads for $25; Picasa can get very expensive (on the order of hundreds of dollars per year) if you upload thousands of photos like I do. However, Flickr ignores the GPSLatitude and GPSLongitude EXIF data. I have already started working on the problem in the tool that I'm working on (Flickr2KML), but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix it easily or not.
2. I wish MapSource didn't crash.
3. I can import a .KML file from Google Earth to Google Maps, but Google Maps won't display all of the photos for a set at once; it only displays about 20 items at a time. I don't want to force people to use Google Earth, though... I want them to be able to click on a link and see everything in their browser, without installing yet another application to their machine.
4. I'd like the photo thumbnails in Google Earth to appear larger when a user zooms in on an area. Currently the user has to click on a photo to make it more than, say, 30 pixels across. At least it is possible to click on each thumbnail to make it bigger.
5. The "Play tour" feature in Google Earth is very very very cool, but not very smart. It seems like each photo should get bigger when the tour is visiting it. Or the tour should just make one stop for each group of photos taken at a particular location.

Happy geotagging, folks! Have fun with it!

* Note that it's possible to skip steps 2, 3, 4, and 5 and import tracks directly from a GPS unit into Google Earth, but I wasn't able to figure out a way to geotag photos without a .gpx file.