I had fun wowing my uncle tonight on how easy it easy to create rich gps tracks in just 8 easy steps (minus time to create the actual gps track, this should take around 10 minutes). Recipe is as follows:
Step 1: Get MyTracks from Android Market (Step 0: purchase Android phone if you don’t already have one).
Step 2: From MyTracks, ‘Record track.’ This does the actual GPS logging for you, and embeds stats (e.g. max speed, elevation gain, etc) into the track.
Step 3: Do something fun, outside. Make sure to take lots of (geo-tagged) photos/videos (your Android telephone can do this for you).
Step 4: When done with step 3, stop recording track from inside MyTracks. When this is done, long press on newly-created track, select ‘Send to Google’ and choose Maps as the home for your track data. Be sure to choose an easy-to-remember name name for this new map (mine: ‘Kayaking the Otter Tail River’).
Step 5: Upload media from step 3 to Picasa (or if you have G+ mobile, instant upload should already have done this for you).
Step 6: From step 5, create a Picasa album for your trip and populate with the media capturing during your trek. Once done, right click and copy url from ‘View in Google Earth’ link. This is a kml file which makes it easy to view your photos in a geo browser (e.g. Google Maps, Google Earth).
Step 7: Navigate to Google Maps, select ‘My Places’ and choose edit on the named map from step 4 (trust me, it should be there). Click import and paste the url of the Picasa album kml from step 6.
Step 8: Click save and done on the map, click on the link icon on the top right of the map to get url for sharing. Viola! 10 minutes!
For health and for taste, I’ve really been getting into green smoothies (why?) of late. These assortments of fruits and vegetables, blended together and enjoyed in a frosty glass, have become a staple of my morning ritual (happening at some point after snoozing 11 times and leaving the house 39 minutes late).
In my attempts to make the perfect smoothie, I’ve found a recipe that I can confidentially share with any noogler. I call it The Dancing Strawberry:
Enjoy with the aforementioned frosty glass and a granola bar (or if you prefer, Bavarian creme donut). You can put any excess smoothie (I usually have just a glass) in a mason jar, where it’ll store for a day or two in the fridge.
Dragon Noodles at Kao Thai, Saboteur (1942) and a beer at AFI Silver (“the most technically advanced Motion Picture exhibition outlet in North America.”). Good times.
It was the first of May
A lovely warm spring day
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,
But my knees were all a-flutter,
And I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Yes, I lay there in the gutter
Thinking thoughts I could not utter
When a lady passing by did softly say
‘You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses’ — And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
“The Pig” by Anonymous.
