My own Motorcycle Diaries.
So, I just graduated university and am making the transition to being a full-time member of the workforce. Instead of taking the typical back-packing-eurotrip, I am heading off on my Ninja to travel the US for 5-weeks. The "plan" is to go down the east-coast, across the southern US through Louisiana and Texas to California, then travel along what used to be route 66 back home. I want to stop and take my time to see as many sights as possible so if I don't make the full loop that's okay too. If you see me in your corner of the map and have some suggestions of what's good to see, send me a tweet @somermckenzie.
The geeky technical details behind this site.
If you are curious what is powering this site, here are some answers to questions nobody asked.
How did you make the map?
My location is updated via the awesome google latitude app running on my BlackBerry Curve 8900. I then have a cron job running on my server to poll the latitude api every ten minutes and dump it into a database. Then it's as simple as pulling the most recent location and displaying it with some js in a google map. I think the old map paper overlay really gives it a nice touch, it was done using a single png as a GScreenoverlay.
Why do you only show your trail on the city list page?
I only had a few days worth of data before I left... which was already 1000 data points to display as gpolyline. I have no idea whether it will scale to 5 weeks worth of data so to be sure my friends and family can still see my location, the main map doesn't display a trail.
What are you using for a back-end?
Sweetcron, which is a self-hosted lifestream written with the Codeigniter framework. I added a few of my own models and classes to handle the geo-related data and then themed the hell out of it. Surprisingly, the site is actually IE6 compatible, though I didn't intend to do that...
How are you getting the data into sweetcron?
Since I am traveling light, the only piece of tech I have is my BlackBerry. Really, though thats all you need. I can tweets (twitterberry), upload to flickr (blackberry native app) or send an email (using posterous as a gateway) and it all gets aggregated onto the site.
The Non-geeky, motorcycle tech details.
What bike to you have?
A 2006 Ninja 650R that I bought used a week before the trip. It only had 6K on it, which I will promptly fix ;) Before that I had a Ninja 500 that I rode for 5 years (I haven't sold yet if anyone is interested...)
The Gear:
- 2006 Ninja 650R
- Givi V35 Saddlebags
- Givi E450 Rearbag
- Random backpack
- HJC AC-12 Carbon Fiber helmet
- Moto GP corkscrew jacket
- Alpinestars SMX gloves
- Shift Airborne mesh jacket
- Alpinestars SMX2 boots
- Scorpion mesh pants
- Padded cycle shorts underwear :)