If you own a GPS

You will need

• A camera obviously, any digital will do. I’m currently using a Canon EOS 400D
• Said GPS unit, again any unit will do. I have done this with both the Garmin Etrex and the Garmin 60CSx
• Access to a computer and the Internet, obviously, more specifically to certain on-line tools and open-source software.

The method

1. Go for a hike somewhere in the wilderness with your GPS activated and recording a track-log
2. Take some beautiful photos.
3. Upload said photos to your flickr account.
4. Download you track-log from your GPS unit in .gpx format. You will need some kind of cable to access the data on your unit. If you don’t have one you can buy them on-line, so go ask Google. If your unit doesn’t store track-logs in this format you can use GPSBabel which is open source freeware or the on-line version at GPS Visualiser, to convert any GPS data you may have into the required format.
5. Upload this .gpx file to the GPSTagr service and follow the 3 easy steps to geotag your photos. Really the instructions are very simple, even my parents could follow them and they are serious technophobes.
6. That’s it you are done. Click on the view on flickr map link on the final page of the GPSTagr service and admire your photos positioned on the map, using data from your GPS unit.
7. You can also view your track-log in Google earth and Google maps. GPS Visualizers Google earth converter tool can be used. This form will import your GPS data file, or plain-text data (tab-delimited or CSV), and create a KML file that you can view in the Google Earth application. I use GPS Trackmaker which will open your GPX data file directly in both Google maps and Google earth.

The walk itself

• The track-log as seen on Google maps
• The track-log as viewed on Google earth (via Google earth forums, click the link to view on Google earth if you have it installed)

The photos taken on the walk

• All photos taken on the walk displayed on my flickr map
• Photos taken on a part of the walk ( Carn) displayed on flickr places
• Photos taken on a different walk, just so you get the idea!
• Photos taken on a Causeway Coastal Walk
• Photos taken on a hike in the mournes
• Photos taken on a hike around Rathlin Island May 2008

If you do not own a GPS

You will need

• A camera obviously, any digital will do.
• Access to a computer and the Internet, obviously, more specifically to certain on-line tools and open-source software.

The method

1. Go for a hike somewhere not in the wilderness and take a note of the address or postcode where you are.
2. Take some beautiful photos
3. Upload said photos to your flickr account
4. Using one of these services, Input from GPS coordinates or Input from postcode or address obtain some geo codes to add as machine tags to your flick photo.
5. Enter the resulting latitude and longitude data in the following format [geo:lat=47.620628, geo:long=-122.349329]
6. Here is an example of one of my photos with geo machine tags
   

That’s it. Have fun. I hope this was useful. If you need any more pointers or have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

UPDATE

I have noticed on the bottom of my flickr photo page where it says, subscribe to waveneyavenue’s photos, there are options for geofeed and KML (google earth file) . I assume this will happen to you too if you geotag your photos using either of these methods.

Subscribe to waveneyavenue’s photos – Latest | geoFeed | KML

The photos taken on a different walk

Another walk I have geotagged

In particular as we are concerned today with environmental issues, so I will specifically draw your attention to Global Energy Bank whose aim is To solve 3/4 of all world problems. Creating green energy banks around the world, providing fresh water and clean green energy to all by 2050, for FREE. Currently in discussions with our first government to provide 98% of all energy needs by 2012. An ambitous goal to be sure but I will be very interested to see how they get on.

White Orchid An Island project for girls rescued from the sex trade, currently concentrating in Asia. Building schools on Islands for rehabilitation and education. Eco-Friendly and also used as a reserve, in part for rescued animals, with breeding programmes. Reefs will be cultivated to create more breeding environments for marine life and flora & fauna will be cultivated.

Blood Rose An extraction/rescue team for girls rescued from the sex trade. Using ex-military personnel to; liaise, observe, rescue young captive girls and prevent acts of genocide.

Real Global Solutions Working with other organisations that are proactive. RGS will give solutions to any global problem, from ending world hunger to environmental concerns and solutions. More than a ‘Think Tank’ offering solutions and actively affecting this change to global problems.

1. Freedom of speech. Blogs allow ordinary citizens to exercise the power of the freedom of speech in ways that have never been possible before. Sure, we were always able to get on a soap box and spout off, but until now, there was no way to really be heard. And sure, even now it’s hard to be heard with so many blogs out there, but there’s no question that it’s much easier to be heard by a global audience now than it once was. The freedom of speech is a powerful tool, and one that is taken for granted by many people in the industrialized world. Blogs make that tool even more powerful.
2. Power of the pen. Along that vein, the pen has always been a powerful weapon (and is famously, of course, mightier than the sword). When people are silent, things stay the same. But when they wield the power of the pen, things can change. Blogs give the power of the pen to more people, and make it mightier than ever.
3. Reaching the public. There was a time when you could organize a small group of people, and come up with an agenda that could change the world … and then have it go nowhere. Why? Because there was no good way to reach a large portion of the public. People just couldn’t hear you. Newspapers and televisions would ignore you, because your agenda didn’t fit theirs. And so your ideas went nowhere. Today, all of that is still very possible. But it’s also possible to reach a much wider audience than ever before, and thus powerful ideas can actually reach a general audience.
4. Raising awareness. The main problem with trying to effect any change with any issue is that people are ignorant of the issue. With enough awareness of an issue, and the reasons that the issue is important, things will start to change. And if one blogger talks about an important issue, and other bloggers hear him, their awareness will be improved, and then if they blog about it … you can see how blogs can change the way that awareness is changed, and therefore the way the world is changed.
5. A global discussion. In no period of human history was it possible to have a discussion that reached as many people in as many parts of the world as it is today, with blogs. In even the recent past (just 10 years ago), if you had a discussion about something, even a community-wide discussion, the reach of that discussion was limited — unless you had the power to reach the global media, which is a power given to a limited few. Today, the things I write about on my blog reach dozens of countries in every continent in the world. It’s “globalization” in a positive sense of the word.
6. The power of many. One person fighting for change is like a butterfly trying to fight a windstorm. But if you get two people together, or 10, or a hundred, and soon you have a group strong enough to stand up to that windstorm. And if you can get thousands or hundreds of thousands of people together, talking about one issue, fighting for change, pretty soon they ARE the windstrom. And the power of the group becomes multiplied, and change is inevitable.
7. The speed of change. In the olden days (again, 10 years ago), an idea or a movement, if it were powerful enough, could spread like wildfire. The movement for change could spread from town to town, city to city, country to country, at a rapid speed. Today, the potential speed of an idea makes wildfire look like molasses on a cold day. Change is no longer measured in years, months, weeks or even days — it’s measured in minutes and seconds.
8. Interaction. While in the olden days (see above), the mass media could reach a wide audience quickly, it was one-way communication. Print publications or broadcast media reached the many, but the many couldn’t really talk back or interact with the news in any way. Sure, there were letters to the editor and similar features, but that was slow and extremely limited, and in effect made it a two-way street (even if one of the lanes on that street was really tiny). Today, it’s not just a two-way street — it’s a million-way street, as every person can interact with every other person directly. Bloggers can comment on other blogs, or post about things written on other blogs, or link to posts, or email each other, or IM each other, or work together on a group project. The limits of interaction between the blogging community, and the world in general, are the limits of imagination only.
9. Instant news and opinions. While once upon a time, the news came out the next day (and later, the news began to come out that same evening), these days the news cannot keep up with the blogs. An event happens, or is speculated to be happening soon, and it’s blogged about instantly. The news cannot compete with that kind of speed. And while commentary would usually follow the news by a slight lag, today commentary is just as instant as the information it is commenting on. It’s in the same blog post, in fact. With that kind of instant news, and instant opinion-giving, change is not only inevitable, it is coming at you faster than you can press the “publish” button.
10. Coverups are uncovered. It used to be relatively easy to cover up a scandal or negative information. The government, or a large corporation, just had to ensure that the information didn’t reach the media — not that hard a task, as the media was made up of only a handful of people, who were already too busy trying to cover the rest of the world’s happenings. Today, bloggers have replaced the media (to some extent), and they are many. And while they are busy, they are never too busy for a good scoop. It’s much harder to cover something up these days (though not impossible), as it just takes an errant word or email or Twitter from an employee or a family member, and the blogging word has it. A politician cheating on his wife? While the media’s cameras might not have been at his motel in the olden days, the motel’s janitor could certainly be a blogger these days (or more likely, the motel’s tech guy), and he might just have a camera on his cell phone for taking juicy pictures. Coverups aren’t so easy anymore.
11. Easier to research an issue. With old media, we were told something, and unless we had inside information or detailed knowledge, it was hard to dispute the information given to us. That’s changed. Now, every fact can be verified or researched, every topic is easily accessible, and everyone can check the facts themselves. That empowers the average citizen, instead of making him a passive consumer of information. And empowerment is the first step towards change.
12. Viral ideas. This is an overused term, of course, but the term “viral idea” is in itself an example of a viral idea. It was used a few times, and the power of the idea caused it to spread rapidly among bloggers. The ability of an idea to spread throughout the blogging world depends upon its power, its usefulness. And so, one idea can change the world, if it’s the right idea and if it catches on.
13. Created a new world. Bloggers haven’t just begun to change the world — they’ve created an entirely new world. It’s often (annoyingly) called the “blogosphere”, but we’re just going to call it the blogging world, or community of bloggers. It’s a virtual world, of course, and the bloggers don’t actually physically interact (except during conferences and meet-ups), but that doesn’t make it any less of a real world than other communities. For example, in most places, physical interactions between most citizens of a city are very limited. Sure, I might interact with a dozen people today, but don’t physically interact with many more that I see on the streets, and I don’t even see most of the people in the city. Still, we are a community, because we have similar concerns, we are affected by many of the same things, we interact with each other in many ways — physically, on the phone, through the media, and virtually, through representative government. The blogger community is just as real, and in fact we interact with each other even more than many people in the physical world do. At any rate, we have become a world of millions of people, and that world is growing, changing, forming itself, and shaping future reality.
14. Government-influenced media bypassed. In many countries, there is a nominally free press, but the media is actually greatly influenced by the government. Actually, that’s true to some extent even in countries such as the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and other places with a supposedly free press. The government has a larger control of the media than many people realize (see Chomsky for more). But the control by government of the media is extremely strong in other countries, and it is in these countries that bloggers can have the most powerful and immediate impact. Government can control the media, but in most cases it cannot control the bloggers, and therefore the bloggers are the instruments for getting the truth to the citizens of that country, and to the rest of the world.
15. No central control. Along those lines, besides the lack of government control, there is no central control whatsoever. One problem with the corporate model, and the model of a central government, is that it relies on central control. That inhibits the individuals who are not in control, restricts their power, stifles speech, cramps creativity and imagination, and severely limits the potential of any group. But bloggers, on the other hand, are a community of individuals, free to do and say as they want, free to associate as they please, free to create without approval, empowered to act and to enact change.
16. It gets you thinking. Aside from lack of awareness, one of the problems that prevents positive changes is that people often don’t think about certain issues very much. They are apathetic, or they passively consume information, or they think about what’s going on in their daily lives without thinking about what’s going on in the world as a whole. But blogs get discussion going, and get people talking about issues, and get them thinking about them. And just that little act, of getting people to think about an issue for a couple of minutes, has the potential for powerful change.

Why are blogs good?

• Freedom of speech
• Power of the pen
• Reaching the public
• Raising awareness
• A global discussion
• The power of many
• The speed of change
• Interaction
• Instant news and opinions
• Coverups are uncovered
• Easier to research an issue
• Viral ideas
• Created a new world
• Government-influenced media bypassed
• No central control
• It gets you thinking

Get the low down here.. How can you help? Sign up to be a part of Blog Action Day, and join your voice with the rest of the blogging community for one day.

The initiative is a vehicle for change, a powerful concept: thousands of bloggers unite, for just one day, to talk about one issue. Will that change the world, just one day? Not immediately, but it in effect unites the blogging community. And once the community begins to unite, anything is possible.

I have stolen the copy above from the actual website, but it explains it well and it is late and I don’t feel in the mood to write.

Blogger James McGovern talked about how bloggers could change the world if they focused on others instead of themselves:

“If every blogger reading my blog instead of choosing to exercise their right to remain silent instead decided to spend just five minutes talking about poverty to one or two other individuals, poverty would be eliminated.”

I couldn’t agree more. Every once in a while I think all bloggers should use their blog to promote a good cause, so I’ve decided to jump on this bandwagon and see were it takes me, why not jump aboard!

At the weekend , whilst enjoying a day out at Ballintoy, I was able to pick up some mackerel directly from the fisherman, thus cutting out the middleman (I have nothing against middlemen per se,  everyone is entitled to a living I suppose) but it was a much nicer feeling to buy direct from source. What has this got to do with open source free software or even the idea of open source everything? Maybe nothing at all, but I liked it.

Far be from me to interfer in American politics or foreign policy, but this was too disgusting to ignore. So in an unprecedented move I veer away from web development, scuba diving and more personal ventures to draw attention to this banned excerpt from the video on war profiteering Republicans don’t want you to see….. Its progressive film director Robert Greenwald is scheduled to testify at a hearing on Thursday, May 10 about war profiteering, and had hoped to show this film at the hearing. It has been blocked by the republicans in the land famous for freedom, liberty and…yadda yadda! Go figure. Shit now I’m starting to sound like one of them. [note: this is humour and I am not intending to come across as racist in anyway or incite hatred of Americans , republicans or anyone else for that matter. But it does stink!]

Not sure how spreading this is going to stop it happening, what with corruption being rife the world over, and those involved being very unlikely to change seeing as they have so much to gain…but anyway here it is, watch it, get annoyed, think what you can do to rebalance the scales, so to speak and get to it. Find out more about the film and maybe do something to help if you can

Anyway I have not turned into a wild flower spotter, but these flowers made for some nice photos. Z, G and I all went on a camping trip to Rathlin last weekend. We braved the elements and slept in a tent through a force 7 gale as it was battered and shaken, coupled to which the tent was pitched on a slope…doh. mental note always remember to take the time to check the tent is on smooth level ground. the basics of camp management, camping 101, how foolish can you get?

In truth we were tired and the weather was starting to take a turn for the worse so we rushed and well paid the penalty. Anyway all was well the following morning and with some creaking bones we both enjoyed the finest eggs i have tasted in quiet some time, all cooked in a Trangia Stove, aghh the good old days. Then off we went on our 9 mile hike to Bull Point bird Sanctuary and back. We saw some puffins that had just arrived a few days before and had started making theoir burrows. I also saw, Razorbills, Kittywakes, Fulmars and Gillamots all nesting and a Raven chomping on a dead kittywake, oh the horrors of predation, ain’t mother nature a bitch!

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There really is a great variety of non fish aquatic life on Rathlin. It was reported recently in various publications that there was something like 70 new species of sponge identified during a survey of the water surrounding Rathlin Island. Some of these can be seen on Waterworld a programme broadcast on BBC last Autumn. Not sure if this footage shows any or not. There is some Grey elephant sponge though.

For now I couldn’t resist cross posting from flickr and choose this photo taken in “Central de Abastos” on the last day of ur holiday. We were dandering around the city buying some last minute chocolate, mezcal and other goodies before our flight. We also took the opportunity to to do some photography, some of wich can be found in my flickr.

These likely lads had scoped me snapping away and in a way it seems only they copuld, indicated that theywould like me to take a photo of their stall. Global marketing?? I think not. Anyway I’m sure they never thought their mugshots would end up online. Say cheese boys!

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Another successful ascent of Slieve Donard and this time we were rewarded with a clear day and a wonderful view. Photos available as always at flickr