I think it was sometime in late 2007 that I first allowed posts to have a country, and thus flag, attributed to them. The Post Country plugin was eventually released to the WordPress community in April 2008. Although the plugin has always allowed a Latitude & Longitude to be entered and saved along with the country, promising that the location would be plotted using Google maps, this location data has never been used. Until now!
The observant may have already noticed that the box for entering location data has some extra hint-text…
Hints:
- The crucial hint is Please use decimal values.
- To help get the Lat & Lng values use the map (initially hidden, click Show Map). Search by name (e.g. Paris), address, place (e.g. Todra Gorge), etc. or simply use the map to zoom to a location and click.
- Lastly, please try not to create multiple posts with the exact same Lat & Lng values as this would make displaying the locations discretely impossible. This is because locations that are close to each other are grouped to de-clutter the display. Therefore two or more locations that are in exactly the same spot can’t be ungrouped.
The location map is easily accessed using the Venues button 
on the index page or the location links 
found with reports (there’s one below for Show all locations). Links underneath the map allow you to reset the map (if you loose yourself panning and zooming around the world), filter the location markers by category (e.g. Caving), and provide hints and instructions on using the Google mapping.
So, knock yourselves out, provide some location data with your posts if you want to have the venue of your latest adventures plotted on the map!
:geek:
A true adventurer spends part of the time lost. How is this handled by the software ❓
Well, I must be an expert then as I seem to spend quite a lot of time lost – as Ian enjoys pointing out! 🙄
Are all locations plotted at the surface, or can we have locations at negative elevations (caving) and positive elevations (sky diving)?
I’m not sure how serious you are… ❓
There is an elevation capability in the Google API, but what purpose would it serve?
If I could understand how it might be used purposefully on the site you never know… :geek:
🙂 I suspect vertical exaggeration may be important if you try it.
Some people like to plot the route taken on the adventure. For a parachute jump adventure the vertical capability would allow the readers to see the start and end points of the jump and the line linking the two.
Indeed. We posted an adventure about flying to New Zealand, not to mention Ian’s posts about travelling on the Shackleton.
Mind you, neither of those are straight lines (particularly not the Shackleton), so start and end points won’t do. 🙁
And thinking about it, 💡 I’m not really sure what path the flight to New Zealand took, although I know the start and end points, and one point in the middle…
I don’t know, are people never satisfied? 😆 Perhaps simply continuing to use the traces like those from a GPS, like the ones on Richard’s mountain marathon reports, will be sufficient? As for altitude, hmm, some GPS traces also give that as a profile… :geek:
That’s unfair though Pete :cry:, as when caving it’s impossible to obtain a GPS track :!:.
Still, I think we should seriously think about the tracking idea… and if we did this properly we could try to cover the UK in adventures (the north anyway)… if we had elevation, we could even create ‘adventure volumes’!
Also, even with GPS there is bound to be some uncertainty on our positions, so how will we represent that?
Rach, Pete is not being unfair he is just being a git :star:
Why limit the tracking to the UK? We could aim to cover the world in lines 💡
GPS uncertainty is quite small these days (unless the US – with us in tow – is actually invading somewhere at the time) so thicker lines could work :geek:
Opps, sorry I’ve just reread Richard’s comment above and I see that thicker lines will not work in all cases. We will need lines that vary in thickness throughout the trace but how do we do that 😕
I’ll go back to the corner now with my pointed hat on (you know, the one with the big ‘D’ on it). 😳
Having just spent part of the weekend underground in an urban area I think that some indication of how far below the surface I was would be useful (for when I can no longer hear the cars on the road above my head). So, come on Pete, do your best to work out how this can be done – or aren’t you geek enough ❓
“… underground in an urban area …”?
Where is the report? This sounds interesting and worthy of sharing! C’mon Colin, get writing…
Do the links appear on google maps? I assume not.
Links?
pins in the map with the blog post attached…
Umm, I’m a bit confused… Yes, posts with Lat & Lng provided are plotted on the Google mapping. For example, the location of your Geekery in action post is shown.
The pins could be pushed in further for underground exploits and left hanging in the air for parachute jumps.
Colin: like acupuncture?
but the pins are not visible on http://www.google.co.uk/maps...
Ah. No, the locations are just provided here. Sorry.
Are pins the right thing?
Adventures don’t happen at a point but along a line between two points so do we need some sort of blob to indicate where it all happened. I guess there is a simple way of calculating the area covered by such a blob :geek:
Sorry, no more bait is to be swallowed! :good:
It’s even easier to find values for Lat & Lng now…
I have done away with the iTouchMap link and embedded the adventures map in the In which Country was the Adventure? box. This helps see what other markers are already near your new location and thus avoid placing a new marker that can’t be un-grouped. Also, it’s right in the WordPress interface so there’s no cut & pasting of values needed. Just click and drag your new marker as required, the Lat & Lng values update dynamically. The embedded map allows geo-location searching for place names, addresses, etc. too. Have fun!
:geek:
I have accepted the challenge above – to provide mapped tracks within posts from uploaded GPX files that many GPS devices provide. There are elevation graphs too associated with those GPX files. Check out this adventure for an example…
As for underground elevations for caving, sorry I can’t automate that, as Rachel says GPS does’t work underground. But the software will show them if the GPX file holds the data. So I guess it’s up to you to either manually create or update the GPX file, or to figure out some other way of getting the location and elevation data in to the GPX file while out of sight of the GPS satellites.
With respect to the point in the trace where you go underground (and lose sight of GPS satellites), as the tracking will show named waypoints, I suggest adding a named waypoint at the points of ground ingress and egress.