User Map? (One for the Mods)

Karl_CLCoupe · Post by **Karl_CLCoupe** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:35 pm

Theres a guestmap service available on Bravenet. I have one set up that could possibly be used for members here. It only logs 100 locations, but would be handy as a guide to where meetings, etc are.

Over to you guys.

Karl.

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 1:48 pm

Of course its a bit busy (and i had to add a few towns), and needs local hosting somewhere as it'll need opening/editing/resaving every time another dot is added (pain in the arse with imageshack) .... but its a start

now we just have to rig up a way of accurately pinning down someone's location to put on there, even if it is 1 mile to the pixel (brewing a bigger one if it's wanted, too - approx 800x900, 1.5pix to the mile but too tall for most browsers to show in one chunk).

i'm thinking as several folks may end up located close to each other (if we suppose a "dot" may cover 5 miles, if it's a 3 pixel blob of colour with a 1 pixel black border), merging the blobs and having a scheme of different colours may help... red for one member, orange for two, yellow for 3, green 4, blue for 5 or more.... if it gets so that there's 5 within 5 miles of course, which to be brutal, is something doubt.

Can do this with most of the towns (except say, london, brum, manc/pool, newcastle, cardiff, edbro/glascow, dublin), all the town "dots", and much of the roads (save m6, m5, m1, m25) removed if thatd be clearer

EDIT: posted revised version with key and first dot: my gaff

tainmrk3polo · Post by **tainmrk3polo** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 6:35 pm

pic dont work mate

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:26 pm

hit reload dude.... its hosted on imageshack which can be temperamental one time out of a couple hundred

pic's optimised down to only 26kb though so shouldn't take any particular long time loading (7 seconds if you're stuck on an old dinosaur 28.8k connection)

fits snugly into one screen with firefox at 1024x768. Can't vouch for other browsers/resolutinos.

im thinking maybe i need to drop the contrast and colour saturation on the actual map (ie grey it out somewhat) so that the user's position dots show up better.. its too much of a fischer price eye-bomb at the moment

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:49 pm

a quick palette tweaking (including identification of one "dead" colour

) gives a slightly clearer map:

though still need to get a few more dots on it to see the overall effect. a few addresses from folk would help to get it going. Just need it down to the local town/village/district whatever you want to call it (eg in my case 'Boldmere' or 'Wylde Green', with 'Sutton Coldfield' as a 2nd-best choice and 'Birmingham' being a little too vague), obviously your road and house number is pointless at this scale - i could put a couple on from memory but it's better to be exact...

GroovyCarrot · Post by **GroovyCarrot** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:04 pm

Imageshack hates me, I hate it. For anyone else with the same kind of relationship with imageshack, I've rehosted tahrey's map, because it's pretty useful

[img]http://www.groovycarrot.co.uk/images/ra ... ied[1].gif[/img]

I must say that I object to the closest towns to me being Colchester and London.. what happened to cambridge, harlow, stevenage, hertford?

If you want an address to start with, Clavering's my village, Saffron Walden is my nearest town and Cambridge is half an hour or so away. Somewhere half way down the M11 would do nicely

GroovyCarrot · Post by **GroovyCarrot** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:31 pm

If you want to host pictures avoiding image shack (so that more than 75% of people can actually see them - nasty website.), I've set up a uk-polos ftp account on my domain. ftp://ftp.digital-crocus.com - (pm for details). Obviously I'm trusting everyone to respect this and not to fill it with crap, but you all seem trustworthy. IP addresses and useage is logged, etc etc, all the usual nonsense, just be good.

toXXin · Post by **toXXin** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:39 pm

Why is Cambridge now called Northampton?

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:11 pm

Because there was a gap on the map at that point, I know Northampton is within a few pixels of where I put it* as my dad used to live quite close, and i don't have a bloody clue about Cambridge.

(there's a couple others i added in)

As for all other town etc woes, sorry, i just lifted it straight out of autoroute. Added what missing ones i knew but it wasnt many. Was in fact planning to thin it down a bit...

Never had probs with imageshack personally btw, either hosting or viewing - thats why i use it

But I will add your dot to the map and upload it to your ftp, cheers

*edit --- ok, on reflection, it probably needs to move down 5-10 pixels or so, but it's roughly right.

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:25 pm

ok sorted

however i cannot even log in to the ftp - even when i just put the address in it gives me a 530 Login Incorrect error... i think i have to change the address somehow to include the login details (with colons & stuff) but to be honest its been so long since i played with such stuff i can't remember how to do it

so i'll just shack it again and see what happens in the interim (i can edit this post later with a different address inside the IMG tags anyway)

incidentally so far as i can tell, what i'd marked as northants was actually Corby, not cambridge ---- cambers is about the same latitude as northants but further east, rather than north.

GroovyCarrot · Post by **GroovyCarrot** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:27 pm

Nah, imageshack is fine for most people, and it's alright for me now, but while I was still on 64k AOL crapness half the files on image shack wouldn't display, very frustrating.. I prefer to use my own FTP rather than a free hosting website anyway, saves dodgy links, bandwidth overuse etc. Plus I have unlimited webspace and bandwidth due to having a friend with a web hosting company

Cambridge = end of M11. M11 = London -> Cambridge motorway.

www.multimap.com may help if you're stuck

GroovyCarrot · Post by **GroovyCarrot** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:28 pm

EDIT: (pm for address)

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:39 pm

well i just opened up autoroute to find it (and you), seeing as thats what i used to make the map

tainmrk3polo · Post by **tainmrk3polo** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:57 pm

you missed worcester!

GroovyCarrot · Post by **GroovyCarrot** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:59 pm

Now to test out your colour coding skills, you can make my blob represent 2 people, as polopowah is about half a pixel away from me