Monday, April 21, 2014

Lab 10

Lab 10  was quite annoying for me. At first I had trouble getting my maps to show up at all. I thought that I needed to put all of the scripts for each map under the same "function initialize ()" section; but that did not work for me. So I created a new section of "function initialize ()" for each map. It took a long time for me to get my third map to show up. In the end, I have no idea what the issue was. I worked on it one night with it not working, then when I checked it in the morning it worked- only the styled map was completely orange- no matter how zoomed in/out it was. Luckily, I had some code saved of another styled map I created; the new code worked just fine.

The maps that I chose are all places that I've visited here in Virginia: Merrimac Farm, Leesylvania State Park, and River Farm. All of the photos were taken by me.


Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Lab 9: Google Earth Experiments

Here is the link to my Avenged Sevenfold North American tour leg from October - December 2007.
Avenged Sevenfold Tour

(The KML files for Parts 1 and 2 are located within our class Dropbox folder)

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Final Project Proposal

For our final project, I will create a virtual tour of the annual Bluebell Festival at Merrimac Farm for Prince William Conservation Alliance. The current web page for Prince William Conservation Alliance features photo collections and lists of the flora and fauna found at Merrimac Farm, as well as other Northern Virginia wildlife. There is a very simple trail map of the farm; it consists of aerial imagery with simple drawn trail lines.  Overall, the organization is lacking an online presentation of the bluebell festival. The actual festival is held on April 13, 2014.

The festival features ten separate tours of Merrimac Farm, each lasts approximately 90 minutes and covers approximately one mile. The tours are staggered to begin every 30 minutes, from 10:30 am to 3: 30 pm. Due to the timing; I will only be able to go on about three or four of the tours. Below are the tours.
Time
Tour Leader
Focus
10:30am
Things that fly -- Birds, butterflies and dragonflies
11:00pm
Ernie Sears
PWCA
Visit some of the best places for photos with camera and guide
11:30am
Julie Flanagan
PWC Arborist
Trees and forest ecosystems
12:00pm
Native plants - identification, interaction with wildlife and role in the floodplain environment
12:30am
Jeff Irwin & Bill Olson
PWCA Historic Prince William
History in the woods at theGreenlevel Cemetery
1:00pm
Harry Glasgow
PWCA
Birding the Bluebell Trail
1:30pm
Judy Gallagher
PWCA
Butterflies, bees & other pollinators that make wildflowers possible
2:00pm
Especially for Families
A hands-on, interactive exploration of habitats and wildlife.
2:30pm
Rachel Habig-Myers, Mosquito & Forest Pest Mgt.
Native trees, floodplain forests, and wildlife diversity
3:00pm
Kevin ParkerPWCA
Wildlife in the wetlands
3:30pm
Charlie Grymes
How Merrimac Farm was protected and opened for public use.
Source:  Prince William Conservation Alliance. http://www.pwconserve.org/merrimacfarm/bluebellfestival/index.html

While I’m on the tours, I will take significant amounts of photographs, videos, and notes.  The collected material will then be used as content for the virtual tour. The tour will be constructed in Flash, although it is likely that I’ll use Adobe Illustrator for details.  For the scope of this project, I will only create a presentation for one of the above tours. I will, however, add in additional tour data at a later time.  The image below shows the splash screen for the Prince William Forest Park virtual tour. My splash screen will either provide a selectable list/menu of each tour (or subject), or I might create an all-inclusive tour that encompasses everything. Either way, once the user selects a specific point on the base map, the tour will launch from that site. The base map will be a faux GIS style, featuring, at a minimum, aerial imagery and your standard Google-style street map. Ideally, there will be numerous photos for each spot, a brief video of the tour guide, and text. Additional photos can be obtained from the organization’s website. At the beginning of each segment, I’d like to use the VCAM on a photograph of the trail so that the user feels like they are actually entering the trail. The floodplain is supposed to be entirely filled with bluebells, so a 360 degree view would be great, but I’m not so sure about my video capabilities.





More inspiration:
http://www.naturevalleytrailview.com/#