Jonathan's blog

My iPhone automatically records geo-location information with each photo I take. I’ve never used the information, but today I happened to be prodding about in the menus and it drew me a map of where I’ve taken photos.

It struck me that, by pure coincidence, all of the places are in a straight line.

So, where might I go next? Land’s End? Hull?!

Failing that, Norway or Venezuela.

Since getting my iPhone 3GS, I’ve been playing with a few apps. Today I tried one called Cyclemeter, which is a GPS tracker and can provide some interesting stats about your cycle rides.

I set it to track my journey to work (Speedwell – Clifton) and was quite interested by the elevation graph in particular. (N.B. this route is slightly shorter than my usual one, since the Bristol-Bath cycle path is currently closed near Lodge Causeway, so I’ve been taking a shortcut on main roads).

I’ve included some iPhone screenshots of my results:

Map of my route to work

Graphs of my route

Key points:

• I start at home, taking the roads
• At 2km, I join the Bristol-Bath cycle path at Rose Green Rd. You can see a dip in my speed where I stop and push my bike through the gate.
• Most of the cycle path is gently downhill towards the city centre
• At 5km, I reach the end of the cycle path and proceed through Old Market. It’s a bit stop-start in traffic.
• From 6km onwards, it’s a steady uphill climb (Woodland Road today, sometimes St Michael’s Hill instead) from about 85m to almost 160m above sea level!

As much as I hate Facebook for its annoying apps, there are one or two good ones.

Cities I’ve Visited is one such app that I like. You can add new cities either by scrolling, zooming & clicking, or by typing in a name. I like maps so I find it pretty interesting to see where I’ve been.

The application itself uses the Google Maps API so it’s interactive. Unfortunately the embedded version of this app for blogs is just a static image. You can’t change the zoom level or centre point, which is annoying, since you can see I’ve never been to America or Asia.

One day I might have a go at building my own app for fun. It shouldn’t be horrifically difficult to build a simple, single-user app for having an interactive map with points on it. The difficult parts are making it multi-user, and having a system for adding cities by name (rather than by grid reference).

I could even steal the work of my colleague, who built a map of wireless hotspots at Bristol University.

When I first started using the Bristol – Bath cycle path I was frustrated by the lack of decent maps. Most of the ones I’ve come across that show the exits of the bike path are schematics, like maps of the London tube. It can be pretty hard to figure out how that ties into a real map, for planning real-life journeys that use roads and off-road paths.

So I spent an hour using the schematic at the link above, Google aerial photos (which show the path), an Ordnance Survey map of Bristol and Bath, and a black pen. I marked in the route of the cycle path and all the exits from the path onto public roads. This map is now on my wall at home and it’s a great reference.

Unfortunately it’s a little too big for my scanner so I’ve had to settle with taking a photo. Unfortunately the problem with photos is that my head casts a shadow, but never mind. Hopefully this will prove useful to someone. Click for a bigger version of the map.