lectroid.net

I finally finished a large round of sactraffic.org updates and if the huge jump in site traffic is any indication, they’re working out pretty well.

By far the most important update was finally figuring out how to convert the proprietary coordinates provided in the CHP incident feed into real latitude and longitude for mapping. I literally had an epiphany in the shower and ran out to finish the conversions on paper. It turns out that it’s just math, man. Anyway, I’m still tweaking the scale (the further you get from Sacramento the farther off the points are) but now almost all the incidents map correctly.

The most obvious change of course is that now the site has some style to it. It was looking pretty drab so I dressed it up a bit (and I matched the Twitter page to it too). This in, turn lead to a custom iPhone site that only shows the incident list because having the list and the map was just too much on the small screen. I also got a set of really nice icons for the various traffic incidents so the map itself looks pretty good too.

Along with the style updates I integrated Google AdSense ads into just about everything. Its good for a few pennies here and there so I figured what the heck. Even the live camera pages have a new look with ads that match the width of the video.

Oh and I added more live cameras off the DOT video site too. I also re-enabled the cameras on Macs because they kinda sorta work… sometimes. They’re still freakin’ cool on Windows.

Finally, I started playing with Google’s Webmaster Tools and created a sitemap and submitted it to the big search engines. Maybe that is the reason for the spike in traffic ;).

Anyway, more to come…

If you go by the Rescue Fire department you can get these nifty license plate frames that say, “Where the hell is Rescue, CA?“. It’s funny because, as anyone who lives in Rescue will tell you, you get a lot of “Where there hell is…” when you say you live there. Now that’s cool and all, but what I’d like is, “Where the hell is Skinners, CA?“.

See, the US Postal service says I live in Rescue, CA. Anyone driving by would say I live in Cameron Park, CA because while Rescue is mostly rural I live in a slice of suburbia that borders Cameron Park and is pretty much indistinguishable from it. Turns out they’re both wrong, I live in Skinners, CA.

Never heard of Skinners, CA? Don’t worry, neither had I until first Google and then Yahoo maps enlightened me.

So what’s this about Skinners? Welp, near as I can figure, in 1860 (James?) Skinner set up a vineyard about a mile up the trail from the then brand new Pleasant Grove House Pony Express stop. Today, vestiges of the old Skinner winery are still visible at the nursery at Cameron Park Drive and Green Valley Road, which also happens to be the centerpoint of Skinners, CA on the online maps. Go figure.

In the 1950s roughly 5000 acres was sold to Larry Cameron and later slowly sold off to developers (and I assume something about a Park was also involved ;)). Now somehow ol’ Larry retained top billing rights and James got relegated to cartographer minutia.

It wasn’t until I started messing with the online map engines a while back that I discovered this “Skinners” guy and looked up the history.

Now it’s a lot of fun to put in “Skinners, CA” in various online services knowing that most people — even people who know where Rescue, CA is — will look at it and go, “Where the hell?!?” but most computers will be able to pinpoint it within a few feet of the nursery up the road.

A great example of this is Flickr’s new places feature. When you put in “Skinners, CA” what do you get?

So now you know where the hell Skinners, CA is.

And the sign said anybody caught trespassing would be shot on sight…

Today being Veteran’s Day I took the day off (I’m a veteran, I can do that) and finally hit one of those ever present TODO items on my mental list: to go scope out the old, abandoned Titan 1 missile bases in the area.

Or put another way, I went off to examine various gates and fences and ponder all the implications of the phrase: “Violators will be prosecuted”.

In short, it was a bust.

My first target was the former site of the 851st Strategic Missile Squadron base at Live Oak. After beautifully scenic 2-hour drive around the north side of the Sutter Buttes (aka, the middle of nowhere) I got quite close.

To illustrate just how “middle of nowhere” I was, I received a call from my boss (yo, day off here) as I was trying to watch the road and my maps but there wasn’t enough signal to complete the call. Can you hear me now? No.

Finally I reached the turnoff from the main road. An encouraging, bullet riddled sign read: “Private Road: use at our own risk” which meant that maybe no one cares and the site would be accessible “at my own risk”. A few more feet and there was the original USAF sign frame, I was almost there…

Then came the gate with the sign, “violators will be prosecuted.” Damnit, so close.

I perused my maps, I was maybe a half mile away if that. I was prepared for such a situation as I’d packed my Army rucksack and some water and had on my trusty boots. Except there was this house, right there, and a guy out front chopping wood. Hmm, mulling over the phrase “prosecuted” in my head I tried another tack, I moseyed up to the guy and asked about the silo.

Apparently I’m not the only one who comes by looking for the site. Yes it’s all on private property and he gave me the guy’s number who owns the land. No, he said, the guy probably wouldn’t let me on. When you think about it, it makes sense: abandoned silos are great places to get injured or killed and the liability must be a nightmere.

I thanked the guy and drove off considering my options. It’s was not outside the realm of possible to just overland it, I was very close and a hiking few miles through the countryside was really an inviting idea (I’m serious, it was quite beautiful up there), but that whole prosecuted thing… I decided to punt.

Next on my list, the boobie prize, was the 851st site in Lincoln. I hadn’t actually planned to go there at all because I’d read it was a parking lot for Placer county vehicles or something (read: local government types with locked gates), so I didn’t bring any maps of that site. I just knew it was near Highway 193 just west of Lincoln and I happened to have it’s grid coordinates in my notes. So I popped the coordinates into my trusty GPS and went for it.

It’s actually really easy to get to, yes it is right off Highway 193, just outside of Lincoln… and yes it’s a parking lot for Placer county vehicles or something. I pulled up to the expected locked gate with the mean, angry signs (”violators will…”) and peered in. Again, so close.

Much like the Live Oak site, while the place was deserted (Veteran’s Day) there was a fire station just right there. Even though I could literally hit one of the silo doors with a rock (the air vent railings were clearly visible), hopping over (”violating”) a county fence within direct sight of a fire station would almost certainly lead to “prosecution”.

Damnit again.

So, the journey wasn’t a total loss. I now have contact info for two of the three former 851st SMS bases (Chico, the site of the third base, was a little too far to drive) so if I ever have a reason better than “Uh, I just want to look around,” I’m sure I can finagle authorized access.

I also got to drive through some beautiful Northern California countryside.

Edited to add:

There are more photos from the above mentioned sites available at SiloWorld.

After thinking it through a little bit I decided a while back to run with the Traffic on Twitter thing and do it up right. The result: sactraffic.org.

I used that same XML feed from the CHP and in addition to Twittering new incidents I created a local JSON feed of just Sacramento area incidents and “mashed up” some geocoding/mapping, local news, videos and even local weather.

Hopefully this makes a simple, yet useful, tool for folks as there are RSS feeds that can be tailored to a particular set of streets or freeways (think: check your commute in your RSS reader before you leave for the day) and what’s even slicker is using Twitter’s new “track” feature to get live updates on traffic incidents at the street or freeway level right to your phone.

Most of this was made possible by the Google Feed and Maps APIs.

It’s been a fun hobby project and was a good refresher on JavaScript which I was getting rusty at (and perhaps still am). Clearly my design skills still suck (hey, anyone have a line on decent traffic icons for Google Maps?).

I’m serious when I say “hobby project” as I’ve tried really hard to keep work on this limited to my spare time at home. I have plenty of work-type work to do at work, messing around with stuff like this at work would probably be frowned upon.

Anyway, I stuck a big ol’ Google AdSense ad on it so if it gets popular maybe I can subsidize my caffeine habit ;).

Google Mapplets

Ok, work with me here: you go to Google Maps and you see “FooNews.com” listed. *click* and you add the last 7 days of stories and photos.

And garage sale ads… ooh ooh and classified ads… no wait! Upsold ads!

Now THAT would just so rock!

I was thinking that you’d have to give writers and photogs GPS units, but no, Google can do geocoding. All I’d need are addresses. You get addresses with your stories, right?!?

I’m gonna float this to the various online folken I work with and see how far it goes.