Sea of Cortez and New Google Earth Functionality

[geoffschultz]

As you may have noticed, we're back from this year's cruise through the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. We had an absolutely wonderful time. No safety concerns, the people were wonderful and the scenery was stunning. It got really hot towards the end (one day we had a heat index of 123F!), so it was good to get back home to the Boston area. Next year we're going to spend another year in the area, but will move BlueJacket further S to Puerto Vallarta in preparations for the following year's trip to Panama.



Since I've been home I've been busy working on the web site. I've added a lot of capabilities, including much better photo indexing. One thing that I just finished was the dynamic creation of Google Earth (KML) files. If you've never used Google Earth, it's a free program from Google Earth that allows you to fly all over the earth (and now space) and zoom into things down to the street level. Through the magic of databases, I'm able to dynamically create a KML file that has placemarks for all of our anchorages and the placemarks contain links to logs and photo albums. There's even a route built into it that allows you to "fly" over our cruising route. That's pretty cool. And since this is dynamic, it can generate KML files for everywhere that we've been.

My logs for 2011 are located BlueJacket Trip Reports for 2011 and if you want to see them in Google Earth, just click on the link at the top of the page.

Note that I've also geo-coded my photos, so when you're viewing a photo album you'll see a globe icon in the navigation buttons. If you click on the globe icon, a Google Maps window will appear showing where the image was taken.

-- Geoff

[Svsilvergirl]

Originally Posted by geoffschultz

As you may have noticed, we're back from this year's cruise through the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. We had an absolutely wonderful time. No safety concerns, the people were wonderful and the scenery was stunning. It got really hot towards the end (one day we had a heat index of 123F!), so it was good to get back home to the Boston area. Next year we're going to spend another year in the area, but will move BlueJacket further S to Puerto Vallarta in preparations for the following year's trip to Panama.

Since I've been home I've been busy working on the web site. I've added a lot of capabilities, including much better photo indexing. One thing that I just finished was the dynamic creation of Google Earth (KML) files. If you've never used Google Earth, it's a free program from Google Earth that allows you to fly all over the earth (and now space) and zoom into things down to the street level. Through the magic of databases, I'm able to dynamically create a KML file that has placemarks for all of our anchorages and the placemarks contain links to logs and photo albums. There's even a route built into it that allows you to "fly" over our cruising route. That's pretty cool. And since this is dynamic, it can generate KML files for everywhere that we've been.

My logs for 2011 are located BlueJacket Trip Reports for 2011 and if you want to see them in Google Earth, just click on the link at the top of the page.

Note that I've also geo-coded my photos, so when you're viewing a photo album you'll see a globe icon in the navigation buttons. If you click on the globe icon, a Google Maps window will appear showing where the image was taken.

-- Geoff

That is the most amazing website I have ever seen. Simply amazing. Me and my lovely wife are sitting here oohing and awwing in unison , me on my iPad , her on her computer. Great job. I will be back to this page , when I have an entire afternoon to fully take in all the work you have put in here.