Rob’s Journal

Eurosatory and Normandy at EveryTrail

View Eurosatory and Normandy at EveryTrail

It’s getting there. I just found a site called Everytrail.com and it does exactly what I was looking for. It’s the only site I’ve found that allows you to place geotagged photos and GPS tracks together on an interactive map. Its free, for now, but it shows. The interface is wonky and the uploader only allows 4 images at a time.

I found a workaround by uploading the geotaged images to Flikr, then importing them into Everytrail.com. But it still choked after 16 images, leaving 8 behind. I can’t seem to get the last 8 to load.

Here’s a zoomable image of Point du Hoc looking to the east.

Here’s a zoomable image of Point du Hoc looking to the west.

This is pretty cool! Here is the track log from my GPS on my side trip to Point du Hoc, France. You can see the routes Dave and I took along the Normandy coast. I’m going to try to figure out how to add geotagged photos to the map, next.

Hey everybody- Bella won 1st place in her Brownie Pinewood Derby tonight! She was undefeated all night. I’ll post some more pics over the weekend.

Oh, yeah, and I’m back safely from my latest trip to Iraq.

“Were they witches or ninjas?”

Overlooking the P.C. aspect of it –they’re grunts ferkrisake, it’s pretty funny. While out on a patrol with Marines near Ramadi I learned that in the grunt’s eyes one can identify a female in the Iraqi countryside in two ways:

“Witches” are the older, more crotchety women that wear traditional garb, but don’t bother with a veil.

“Ninjas” are the younger women that keep their faces covered with a veil that only reveals their eyes.

Here’s a QTVR from the vehicle commander’s seat inside a Stryker MGS. Click and drag inside the page that opens up to look around. I’m using a flash based viewer, instead of Quicktime, so everybody should be able to open it even if you are on an office computer.

I’m finally over a nasty viral infection that had me down hard for a few days. Matt and I have moved down to the battallion this morning and will be getting into our story over the next few weeks.

What can I say? We did the whole haul-our-crap-over-to-LZ-Washington last night to get a space a flight up to Speicher. No more had we grounded our gear and walked into the trailer/office to be told there wasn’t one space-a seat/flight/prayer to be had this evening.

On our way walking back to to our bags we walked by a group of private military contractors. One of them asked Matt were we were going. Matt stopped to talk to the guy and became apparent that the guy had mistaken us for PMCs since he asked us who our”principle” was. I guess we have the contractor look down with our facial hair, softshell jackets, cargo pants and hiking boots.

That was last night. After we got back from the LZ. We called our powerful friends back in Washington to see if we could shake something loose. Tonight, we supossedly have reserved seats on a flight. Coincidence? Hmmmm…