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.

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

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.

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…

The message from the press conference was that Iraq is fine. The surge worked and now it’s just down to democratic growing pains. I guess that’s what she calls car bombs and mortars.

Matt has dubbed the Iraqis that frequent the CPIC embed room, “the eaters”. They are here, no doubt to work some, but by-and-large many just they bullshit with each other, talk on their mobile phones very loudly, surf the internet and eat everything in sight. I used to think that mobile ring tones in the states were annoying. Not any more.

Leaving the bathroom before going to bed I heard the incoming alarm followed by 2-3 explosions that sounded like they were a few blocks away.

I watched the remake of 3:10 to Yuma on my laptop. Not a bad western, but the end was pretty improbable with the bad guy having a huge change of heart. Wouldn’t it be great if people could realized they were “evil”, giving them the ability to have an epiphany like Russell Crowe’s character? Problem is that nobody really is evil, or at least “evil” people don’t see themselves as evil. They just make choices and to them all those choices and deeds are justified based on the circumstances that brought them to that point. Evil is just a term people use to pigeonhole people with diametrically opposed ideologies so they can deal with them.

Deep thoughts, I know, but wow am I bored.

On the uspide, it’s Gunner’s birthday today. I wish him lots of love and laughs and I can’t wait to get home to play with him. He and his sister got light sabers right before I left. I imagine the house is taking a beating.