Come down to the Woodland Art Fair the is Saturday and Sunday and check out our new maps. We will have the spring release of the Red River Gorge and the Sheltowee Trace South, both of which were designed and printed in the past 6 months. The map to out booth is provided below: Read the rest of this entry »
Woodland Art Fair, Aug 15-16
August 15th, 2009Sheltowee Trace Suspension Bridge Quiz
August 11th, 2009How many scenic suspension bridges exist on the Sheltowee Trace and where are they? If you think you know the answer, then please take our quiz and you might win some free maps.
Directions: If you can name or locate all of the suspension bridges on the Sheltowee Trace, then you can receive our new Sheltowee Trace map for free. Name all of the them and tell us which is the largest and which is the smallest, then you’ll get three free maps of your choice.
How to submit you answer: Email your answer to contest@outrageGIS.com beginning Friday, August 21, 2:00pm EST. You must be the seventh correct email to win. You only get one try and we’ll take your first answer.
If you’re not the 7th person to answer either question correctly, then you will still receive a bonus coupon to use at our online store. Just give it a try!
Ok….which bridge is this? If you need a little help, visit http://www.sheltoweetrace.com
Lexington Community Gardens
July 13th, 2009
London Ferrell Community Garden
Locations of Lexington’s community gardens. Gardens maintained by Seedleaf: Nourishing communities by growing, cooking, sharing, and recycling food.
Neck deep in the Sheltowee Trace
June 16th, 2009
After the successful release of our new edition of the Red River Gorge Backpacking Guide last May, we’re now deep into making a comprehensive map of the Sheltowee Trace.
This is our most ambitious mapping and publishing project yet. We’re showing the entire 282 miles of foot, equestrian, and multiuse trail at 1:32,000 scale…that’s 1 inch to a 1/2 mile. So in this publication, you’ll be able to hold the full Trace in your hands…all 12 feet of it.
Let’s think of it a different way. To show this trail adequately, we’re designing and printing over 24 sq. ft. of map at full-color. That’s equivalent to making a 4×6 foot map that labels every stream, destination, and trail. This is a generous allotment of time and paper, but the trail’s incredible beauty and future deserve it. The Sheltowee is Kentucky longest hiking trail and frankly certain parts need to be used more by hikers.
Like our other maps, the Trace map will be a fine navigation tool. We’re dropping in latitude/longitude grids for GPS navigation, mile markers for the Trace that have been meticulously measured, 50-ft topographic elevation contours, canopy cover, and connecting trails and trailheads.
We’ll release the South edition for the Woodland Park Art Fair this August, with the North edition following shortly after. Each edition will have same format: an overview map that gets you to the major trailheads and the topographic trail maps. The image on the left shows a draft of the overview map. To the general layout of the detailed maps, visit here (note these do not show any text yet, just a preview of how we’re gonna make the Sheltowee).
The Trace is a 286-mile National Recreation Trail that connects recreation areas in the Daniel Boone National Forest, Big South Fork, Cumberland Falls, and Natural Bridge State Park.
Animations of the Atmosphere
June 5th, 2009As a lover of the atmosphere and sun, I want to see how light and sky change over the course of the day. I also want to see how large-area weather events, such as the passage of a front, impact different places in the Great Smoky mountains. The inspiration behind this page was a desire to record weather changes at different elevations on a mountain and to help the photographer in me better understand a secretive and dynamic landscape.
Enter Yesterday: a site of prior-day animations of federal web cams and satellite imagery located here at http://www.outragegis.com/weather/img/animation/yesterday. Note this page always shows conditions for the prior day since they are full-day timelines.
The Great Smokies have about one mile of vertical relief and weather conditions can be dramatically different depending on your elevation. Whatever it’s a line of thunderstorms or fog in the valleys on a calm morning, this is a visual record of evolving conditions…only of course it happens during daylight. For the weather nut who likes to take it a step further, the page gives data from park’s 5 weather stations for the same day….and it’s all archived.
How was it done? After tinkering with ImageMagick and FFmpeg, I made a script that creates full-day animations of the webcams in the Great Smokies and visible satellite images from NOAA. What will it become? Consider it a visual archive of the atmosphere and movements of the Sun in the Great Smokies. Any suggestions are welcome.
Some notes for updates: I haven’t fully utilized the flash embedded video (see the two samples below, top is animated gif and below is embedded flash video). The problem is setting animations in sync together, e.g., sun rises at the same time in all movies. With an animated .gif, I think you simply need to refresh your browser after all of the images are loaded to get a partial sync. A better solution is out there. I can also increase the sampling rate for smoother play; now it’s two samples an hour.
Weather map and webcam animation for the Great Smokies
These are also archived, so if you go to the smokies for a backcountry trip, you’ll be able to find your days here.