Tag: Google Maps

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Mapping, Google and geocaching and meeting notes – 10th May 2018

Ocado
Quick hints:

  • Getting short cuts for documents on your Desktop – Go into File Explorer, find the document you want to create a Shortcut for, single click on that document, right click, select Create Shortcut.
  • Format painter in Word. It’s the paintbrush in the home menu. Highlight the area of text that shows the format you want to copy. click on format painter. Highlight the area of text you want to copy the format to.
  • Bullets – highlight the text that you would like to add bullets for. Click on the bullets in the Home menu – about half way along in the top row.
  • Disabling touch pad – on a Lenovo machine press F6. Only works for that session.

News:

  • Windows 10 update
  • Google launches
  • Broadband speeds

Google maps

  • Getting coordinates – go into Google Maps. click on where you want to get the coords for. Rich click. Go down to What’s here? A box will appear at the bottom that includes the coordinates. These coords are often not in the format you want for your SatNav so have to be converted. A good website for doing coordinates conversion is: http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi
  • https://www.google.com/mymaps – this website appears to allow you to plan routes, whereas the https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ site does not
  • Saves to Google Drive – the route you plan seems to save to Google drive.
  • Saving as KML file – this seems to be the only format you can save a route in and not the ‘.gpx’ format that is often used. There is probably a way to convert KML file to a GPX file somewhere.

GPS
Geocaching

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Creating a Map using GPS device, OS Maps, GPS Visualizer, Google Maps Engine

I’ve had a couple of comments from family members that reading my blog posts, where I’ve been using  Ordnance Survey maps to display the track of the walk, has not been very friendly when read on a phone. The post doesn’t scroll very well when the map takes up the whole screen width.

So from my last post – the Rhossili to Port-Eynon walk on the Wales Coast Path – and on into the foreseeable future, I’ve decided to revert to using embedded Google Maps on these Posts. [NB I’ve also edited all the posts from the last one I used Everytrail to produce maps in June 2014 so that the Map now appears at the bottom of the text – which should make it easier to read when scrolling on a mobile device.] For my own benefit, but maybe for anyone else interested in doing the same sort of thing, I’m recording the Workflow that I’m now using to produce the maps and to then incorporate them in a self-hosted WordPress blog. [Some of the links to the actual maps and Google Drive might not work for anyone other than me, however.]

Here goes …

1. Connect the Garmin (I have a Garmin 450T GPS device) to a computer
2. Download the Current Track, having first noted the walk statistics from the Trip Computer
3. I’m going to save on my Google Drive in a folder – Walks & GPS Tracks > GPX
4. Upload the GPX file to the WordPress blog (in my case “Just thoughts …”) into the Media folder so that the OSMAP plugin can be used to create a Page for the OSMap , if needed/wanted, or to embed into a Post [As mentioned above, I’ve now decided not to embed into a blog post.]
5. Start the really excellent GPS Visualizer in your browser (I’m using Chrome)
6. Select the Google Earth input form page
7. Complete form parameters, eg output format (must be .kml, not .kmz), metric or US (miles), I’ve decided to choose magenta for track colour
8. Start Google Maps Engine Lite (or https://www.google.com/maps/d/?hl=en&authuser=0&action=open) in  a different browser tab
9. Set Base Map to Satellite, Import the kml file (created in GPSVisualizer) as a Layer and select colours of track (f not previously set in GPS Visualizer), then Save adding a name to the track and (optionally) a description
10. Finally,  change the access rights to Public from the Share Button, and select Embed this map (from pull-down Menu). The embedded map should look something like this …

… and the code, after you’ve pasted it into your blog post, should look something like this …

<iframe src=”https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=zkpaIhkzLG5s.klzwzxxHfEsM” width=”640″ height=”480″></iframe>

… or, if using the OSMAP plugin …

NB REMEMBER TO PUT THE MAP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.