From Trailguru

Thanks Justin for your submission -- you managed to discover a bug which I have subsequently fixed. Sorry about that -- the code previously assumed that the user would submit track information in addition to waypoint information. Right now, your GPX Track will appear blank but I am working on including the waypoints into the mapping and google earth views. Give me a couple of weeks and i will have it up there. Thanks again for your submission. Tpark 22:56, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Sadly I have no GPS hardware, so I thought I'd try a route hand-built on MapMyRun. I realized the missing time values were the problem when I read the error message, but didn't know it would lead to a new feature. This is an awesome site, thanks for putting it out here. --Justin 23:15, 1 March 2007 (CST)

I suspect you are not the only one without a GPS so I will work on supporting this. Thanks for a description of how you generated the file -- that helps in terms of thinking about the different usage scenarios. Tpark 21:06, 2 March 2007 (CST)

Done -- I added waypoint support -- have a look at Image:BillygoatLoop.gpx again and let me know what you think. Tpark 01:16, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Oh cool (but I also picked up a cheap GPS unit now). I'll try building another timeless track for import to really kick the tires, then give feedback. --Justin 10:34, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

In terms of disambiguating Mountains -- let's do exactly as Wikipedia would do. Let's create a disambiguation page and then move (see the tab to the right of the edit tab) both mountains to pages like "Mountain (Area)". In any case, thanks for your support and words of encouragement (you never quite know if things you build like this are helpful until you throw them up there and until someone says something like this you keep thinking ("why am i spending so much time on this!!"). I have some great ideas for how to take this forward and really make it useful. I am putting together sort of a vision document for the site -- when I have a draft of this, I will post it on the site for comment -- and I would be really interested in your input. Tpark 21:06, 2 March 2007 (CST)

I look forward to the vision doc, I'll be glad to review it when it's ready. --Justin 10:34, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

Justin, have a look at my blog -- I'll keep it up to date with my latest development activities and would love any comments that you have... Thanks again for all your contributions to the site. Tim 01:24, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

Oh, very cool. I'll keep an eye on it. --Justin 13:35, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

Question from An

Hi Justin!

I'm curious how you incorporated the mapmyrun.com functions into TierraWiki. I do not have a GPS device and don't know how to make use of mapmyrun functions for this website after having drawn my trail on that site. How did you do it?

Thanks a million! An Tran

Hi An,

I'm glad to help. On MapMyRun, draw a new route, and save it. After the first save, the "Save" button will offer a new menu option when you mouse over it. Select 'Save as GPX'. This will let you create a file that can be uploaded directly to TierraWiki.

One warning, though. I've only had this work with a new file I draw from scratch. Trying to save GPX versions of some old mapped routes on MapMyRun have given me empty files (with only the GPX headers, no geo data).

Good luck, and let me know how it works out.

Justin

Hi Justin,

It works quite nicely. The picture is here: http://www.tierrawiki.org/wiki/index.php/Image:Weekend_run_-_out_and_back.gpx. Mine is the yellow line.

This website is so much fun! Thanks for the help!

Antran 02:04, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

An, looks great, and yeah these GPS tools are very fun. Look forward to seeing more of your routes posted. --Justin 00:23, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Your Tracks

Hi Justin,

Thanks again for your GPS Track submissions. I was looking at your most recent contribution (Big Iron) and I had some questions about it. Was the first section of the track under heavy tree cover or otherwise? I ask because I see a lot of error in those tracks but then promptly the rest of the track looks very good. Just curious -- I'm working on some algorithms to automatically detect these sort of error conditions to improve the quality of the computed trail database.

Thanks again for all your contributions-- Tim

Oh hey Tim. Yeah, the track started and ended in a canyon, so reception is spotty with my GPS (a Garmin eTrex Vista, which has a small internal antenna). I saw the speed graph spike after I submitted the GPX, and thought I should hand edit those points out of the file. On the other hand, if you're planning to program these problems out, I'll leave it for you to work with. This is a common issue for me, since many of my routes start in steep canyons. Great work on the new features, Tierrawiki is really coming along. -Justin

Thanks Justin -- that is helpful. I noticed that you have also been using the routes functionality of the site and I wanted to ask if you had an feedback on it. It is a "beta" function and I am trying to see what users think about it. I am working on a simplier "Web 2.0" version of it but any ideas you had would be greatly appreciated! Thanks again for your contributions-- Tim 20:28, 8 February 2008 (CST)

I'm digging the new function, and want to play around with it some more. I'll go into tester mode and offer any feedback that occurs to me. I'm still having trouble collecting clean tracks to work with, just 'cause I bought a cheap GPS with an old style antenna. Garmin MapSource always breaks my routes into multiple tracks, with breaks where I lost reception for a short while, need to find a less tedious way to clean that up. --Justin 11:01, 29 February 2008 (CST)

Great -- thanks! I am about 3-4 weeks out from being finished with a major upgrade of routes so they should be much better then. Perhaps wait on that release -- it will be fully AJAXified then and hopefully much more intuitive. Tim 05:21, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Sounds good Tim, looking forward to it. --Justin 09:09, 5 March 2008 (CST)