Mapping Hacks

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Chapter 5, Mapping with Gadgets

#56 Animate Your Tracklogs

HACK

GPSBabel to convert between different, custom GPS data output formats

into one that different applications can work with.

HACK

#56

Animate Your Tracklogs Hack #56

Get more from your tracklogs by making them move.

Maps are static things. We dump our tracklogs on a map, and there they sit

like old Popsicle sticks, marking the carcass of something that was good at

the time but now is done. Tracklogs represent movement, so what if we

could animate our tracklogs to keep alive that sense of motion? Well we can.

If you have a tracklog in a GPX file, you can animate it at http://www.

mappinghacks.com/projects/animate. If you have a tracklog that is not in

GPX format, then review “Speak in Geotongues: GPSBabel to the Rescue”

[Hack #51].

Click the link “Simple Animation of a Track Log,” Select a tracklog from

your system in GPX format and click on “Make Animation,” as shown in

Figure 5-27. You can also upload a waypoint file in GPX format.

You’ll get a simple animation like that shown in Figure 5-28. But do you see

the problem? Exactly! The printed version shows all the animation of a Tup-

perware party on the moon. Fortunately the web version is a tad more

active.

Hacking the Hack: Do More with Geo::Track::Animate

This animate script uses the Perl module Geo::Track::Animate to create a

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) image. With a bit of programming, ...