Some Mapping Foo

Update 2009-10-29: changed links to point to the new home of the KML files.

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Don't reinvent the wheel. Unless you're Joel Spolsky or Fog Creek. I am neither of these entities, in case you didn't know. So when I want a solution, I first check to see if someone else has done it already. And then I check to see if I can do it better. Usually I can't do it better in a reasonable amount of time because I would rather be doing other things. Like getting on to the next problem, cooking a killer meal, drinking too much wine, or riding my bicycle.

I have mentioned My Oregon Adventure. Part of the plan is to show you, dear reader, the places I have been and how you too can randonnee a la mode allure libre and still have a verifiable record of the journey. And with a little luck, I'll have a couple nice pics along the way.

A large part of the planning thus far for My Oregon Adventure is just finding all the places in Oregon. This is not as easy as it sounds, and I think I am missing some townships. The next step was to stick some virtual pins in the incredible Google Earth. But then I needed to find a way to display that in Google Maps for easy display here.

Lo, some rocket scientist has already solved this problem. In Google Earth, export your Place (or list of Places) to a .KML file. Post that .KML file somewhere online. I am currently using Google Pages. If you have a Google account, you have Google Pages, too (username.googlepages.com). Now all you need to do is point Google Maps at the .KML file. In my case, the file is at http://waynemyer.org/OregonSurvey.kml. And you can embed the map anywhere using their convenient link (just above the map image on the right). Simple stuff!