I’ve made a lot of progress in the last week with the implementation of a gis utilizing google maps as the front end and a mysql/php backend. It has taken a little work, but hopefully by next week I will have some running models on the site.

My first encounter with google maps was several years ago during the pre-design phase of Ecotope.Org. Dr. Ellis asked if it was possible to implement a google map of his study locations on his website. After a few weeks of tinkering I came to the conclusion that I didn’t have the knowledge of GIS or programming ability to put together a satisfactory package.

Today however is a different story. After four years of working with geographic information systems, I understand enough of the basics to roll out my own system. Also, there are just a lot more tutorials and api references out there to learn from. Here are a few that are filling up Safari’s history: Google’s Mapping API, Mapservers MySQL Spatial to KML reference, and the occasional links on SlashGeo.

Finally, I have spent a little time trying to fix the Projects page. All of the images on the site are now hosted through Picasa. I did this for two reasons: 1) Limits the bandwidth on my account 2) Picasa automatically creates four different image sizes (144px, 280px, 400px and 800px). If you notice that the images are distorted in anyway or just do not look right, please drop a line. I have only been testing this on Safari and Firefox for Mac. I do not like to do too much personal computing at work, so I only occasionally check my site on IE7 or Firefox for Windows.

Thanks for stopping by,

Christopher A. Fricke