burnt embers

Today’s post is about a map that I have been developing as a geographical guide or index for my blog. But since that is a bit dry and the associated images are boring maps I also include the image above since I aim to include at least one of my photographs in each of my posts. This was taken on Harling Point, very close to Sahsima, the transformer stone frequently featured in this blog, but this time at a very low tide. There must be an undulating surface beneath the eel-grass in the foreground, perhaps a series of glacial striae?

BTW, yesterday was my 200th post – I missed that go by (I must be getting a bit blasé about this posting business). The second hundred went by way faster than the first hundred.

So, onto the maps I have been developing, here is a screen shot from one of them of part of the Harling Point area:

I have been mapping my blog in Google Maps for some time. I started by mapping my early posts on the Songhees history cairns in Oak Bay, and that map has now grown into a guide to commemorations of First Nations people and their history around the Greater Victoria area. The VICTORIA FIRST NATIONS MARKERS MAP (click in that map name to go to the map) includes places that are posted in Burnt Embers and each point on the map has a photo from the blog and a link to the relevant post about that spot. It is slowly growing as I add posts of other such places.

Recently I decided to make a BURNT EMBERS MAP  (click in that map name to go to the map) which includes each of my posts that are not on the First Nations map – I will keep the two maps separate since the First Nations map has uses beyond merely being a guide to the geography of my blog. I found myself quite often adding a google map without a pointer to the location, but with the map centred on where I was posting. I like my data more precise than that, in most things, but especially in maps. So, from now on I will be adding a map marker for each post that I make. In places where it’s a repeat of a subject (usually expressed in my post titles with Roman numerals) then there may be only one point but with several links in the display you get when clicking on the marker. My neighbourhood is getting awfully crowded since I tend to stay close to home (and there is no denying that, the map says it all…), but I will find a way to compress the information, and you will just have to zoom in more tightly in Google Maps, which helps separate the markers one from the other. For posts that occur in someone’s yard or house, including my own, the marker is placed in a green space, park, or road intersection in the general area to maintain a modicum of privacy. If you are using the map, turn on the satellite imagery (it’s a box called “Earth” in the upper right corner) – it makes for a more satisfying map.

How the map works: You may need to zoom in a bit first, then click on a marker and it will expand with a brief description of the relevant post, a photograph from that post and a link to go to the post. Likewise, on the left side is a list of all markers – click on any of the titles (which correspond to the post titles) and it will open the marker in question. As far as I can see this list cannot be organised in any way – it is in the order which markers are added to the map. You can see that this post is quite a way up the list – an expression of my optimism that I could get the map finished after scheduling this post; I barely made it.  In the First Nations map, the markers are coloured so that they represent one of these three categories (a) a physical commemoration of First Nations local to this area, (b) a local First Nations place mentioned on one of the cairns of plaques, or (c) a commemoration of non-local, or all First Nations from British Columbia. For the time being I see no reason to colour code the markers in the Burnt Embers map – I suppose I could code them for long exposure, macro, mono, or similar. However, some posts use a mix of such categories, and in any case it would be a lot of work.

By now you are probably asking yourself ‘why is Ehpem going to all this trouble?’ Well, I like maps and map-making – that is a necessary starting point I think.  The First Nations map started because I had so much trouble finding the Oak Bay markers which were erected with lots of public money and tons of good will but almost no publicity and no web presence to speak of. The map seeks to fill that gap (as do the associated posts). The general map for Burnt Embers is useful, I think, for people who like something they see in my blog, or want to know more about a location. These kinds of viewers can then browse other posts of mine by geography, rather than by the categories and tags I choose to classify them with in my blog, or generalised searches that may or may not get them what they want since I often don’t do much about naming the spot I took a photo. There is a lot to be learned from a map, especially one with good satellite imagery, and I think associating a post to a map can add some value to my blog.

A recent excellent example of how a map enhances a post can be found in Adrian Harvey’s recent post The Dam Of L´Isbert  in which he provides a link to map (and fabulous photos too) of an interesting dam accessible through a tunnel. One commentator wanted to know how long the tunnel was, which can be answered by looking at the satellite image – the clearly evident trail has a gap in it which must be the tunnel (which in any case is indicated by a marker he added to the map). I went to the map to see where in Europe this was since my knowledge of the area is nearly zero and I could not figure that out from his description. Zooming out on the map he provided answered my question, but I also poked around in the map at the scale he linked to got a better idea from the map and some linked photographs by other people of what it is like around there.

Another reason to build these maps is because I think that Google means it when they say the maps will be searchable. And therefore, one day, this map of my blog could also introduce new readers to my posts, people with a specific geographic interest in my area.  Even though I have checked the box that reads “Public – Shared with everyone. This map will be published in search results and user profiles” such google maps are not yet searchable (with some apparently arbitrary exceptions). There is quite a lot of chat about that on-line, but no one really mentions what I think is the real reason. Google has been under a lot of pressure world-wide from government regulators to protect personal privacy, especially with respect to their Streetview imagery. For that reason people’s faces, license plates and shiny wheels are blurred (I think the wheels must resemble, to the algorithms used, faces or the shiny spot on a car where the license plate is). Given this pressure, I expect that Google is struggling with the third-party maps and the images that can be embedded in them – they could easily violate local privacy, copyright and other laws and that might be construed as Google’s responsibility. If they are not searchable, Google’s problems must be very much reduced. Until they are searchable, the map will serve a useful purpose more local to this blog. And, once you get to the map, you can search the legend with your browser search tool (ctrl-f usually launches it).

Let me know what you think of my blog mapping project. Am I wasting my time? Would you do it if you were in my circumstances, or for your own blog? It’s been several hours of work to get the map in place, but won’t be much maintenance time from here on in – I just have to remember to make the map marker when I am scheduling a post for publication, and to put a link to it in my posts, either always, or one at a time.

The map for today’s post can be found at this link which preserves the intended scale better.

To examine how they look embedded in the file as an interactive Google map see below (press the plus mark several times on the upper left and it will zoom you in so that the exact location of the mark can be seen, or click on the map and drag it to a new location and so on):

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For the first image: Canon 5DMkii, Nikkor-N 24/2.8 lens, ISO100, 1/160th, f-stop not recorded, probably about f-5.6.