iPhone Enabled
The site was updated to be iPhone optimized a few months ago. (more…)
Map: Regional Paddling Activity
I added a new page to the main menu which displays a regional map of all the different paddling activities Richard is involved in. Actually, a more accurate statement would be: all activites that get posted on this site!
I’m still working on it so it’s a bit of a mess. I want to rewrite the way the categories are sorted and displayed. As it stands, there are too many categories listed. I’ll fix this later. First, we paddle.
Gallery Woe
Well, maybe not woe. Pre-resignation-frustration.
Ok, there’s a new rule: All camera and gps clocks must be synchronized before we put in!
You may stop reading now. Just remember the new rule.
I spent some time this morning, trying to refine the mass keyword tagging of Richard’s Picasa Web Albums (PWA). Every image has a collection of common tags e.g. Richard Grove,kayak,paddle,river,river guide etc. The idea here is to make it easy for people to find the information they’re looking for… Given that there are 1,700 images from his Etowah trek alone, I mass-inserted a collection of tags expecting to eventually visit each image and refine those specific tags.
Now, I can’t usually tell where a photograph was taken, so I clicked the heels of my ruby slippers together, which scuffed them up and now I can’t return them. Just kidding! I got them from REI. Of course I can return them. I did, after all, find them stuck in the intake grate of a Power Georgia plant (Plant Hammond?) and what the river giveth, REI taketh back. I worked as an REI customer service peon for two wasted years at the REI Perimeter location in Atlanta, Georgia, so I know what I’m talking about!
Anyway, photographs. So the image file tells me when it was taken according to the camera’s timestamp. I mate this with the GPS track to display the images along the track’s timeline. Magic. Geotagged photographs! Not quite. If the clock on the camera and GPS are out of sync’ by a few seconds, the images are geotagged with the wrong location. If you change batteries and do not resync’ you make it worse. Then, if you cross a timezone and sync’ one device and not the other -ouch.
The best for last: 12:00am or 12:00pm? There were some bright as day midnights on that trek! I was ploughing through the tagging process on picasa, being methodical, going day by day, reading Desi’s post and adding names to faces, adjusting the photo’s location on the map etc. I suddenly realized that the text was referring to images in the previous day’s gallery. A period of panic as I considered the possibility that all of my work, album naming conventions; file grouping; tagging; etc was off by 24hrs. Yikes. As it turns out, that would be an easier fix than the current reality. Some images are off by +12hrs, others by 23 minutes, some +24hrs. So much for batch automation. WE‘re going to have to go through each image and geotag it manually by dragging it on picasa’s map.
It makes you long for the good ole days, when you were lucky if your mom had even bothered to write a blurb on the back of the photo’. Who were those ladies with their eyes scribbled out in black pen? Oh, just some girls that your father used to date before she met him…
Stupid internet.
The Georgia Kayaker Website
Richard Grove, a.k.a “The Georgia Kayaker”, is a well known paddle-sport promoter and kayaker in the SE USA. Based in Dawsonville, Georgia, Richard is active in helping local governments and novice paddlers develop the skills and infrastructure required to better experience the rivers and lakes of the region.
Although Richard is a prolific paddler, he’s not been as diligent about documenting his trips. We (his paddling friends), hope to change this by encouraging those who paddle with Richard on one of his trips, to share their experiences on this site.
As a content contributor, you will be able to link to your images on Picasa (or elsewhere), retaining full control over your images. You will be able to share your GPS logs and trip data with the rest of the community, hopefully encouraging others to join us in our paddling adventures.
We are actively working on developing the site, so you will see test content etc. Simply disregard it! If you find a bug, or would like to see something specific put in place, let us know!
The forums are open too…
