Ornoth

In typical user-unfriendly fashion, Google has unilaterally decided to shut down the web version of users’ Location Timeline, forcing everyone to transition to a mobile app with only half of the old functionality.

In addition to the entire web interface, one of the features they’re taking away is the ability to summarize your travels by year, something I found useful and informative.

As an example, I thought I’d share the following three screen shots from the soon-to-be-removed online version of Location Timeline. Each map summarizes all my travels for a particular year. In this case, it’s 2018, 2019, and 2020.

It’s a stark comparison, as my travel horizons shrank from global to national to zero.

Thanks largely to Inna’s work and family, in 2018 I set new records for the farthest I’ve travelled to the east, west, and south – but not north! – planting little red dots in Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. As always, click thru for teh bigness.

My travel in 2019 was in service of finding a new hometown, so we stayed within the US, but still managed to hit Denver and Boulder, Portland OR, Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham, plus northern Michigan for a bike ride.

In 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns were declared, I picked Inna up at the Pittsburgh airport, about 25 miles outside of town. That was the farthest I got from home all year, as I limited myself to the distance I could bicycle without refueling. And 2021 looked similar, except we made one excursion north to the beaches on Lake Erie at Presque Isle, PA.

Small world, huh?

Since then, travel has remained limited, mainly by my choice. 2022 saw two trips to Austin: one to evaluate Austin as a place to live, and the other to secure housing. 2023 brought the actual move, including our three-day road trip across country. Since then, I’ve been more interested in getting settled and learning about Austin than in spending time away.

I’m sure more travel is coming soon. But looking back at how quickly and drastically my horizons shrank between 2018 and 2020 was an eye-opener that was worth noting.

And I think it’s sad that Google won’t let me see this data anymore.

I’ve always been a big fan of maps and mapping. I can remember living in Portland (see below), and making a map of the streets in the neighborhood. That’s pretty early, because we moved out of Portland when I was eight years old. I had a whole collection of topo maps by the time I was thirteen, and I one of the first people to own a handheld GPS, back back in March 2000 when Garmin produced its first model. And, of course, I’ve stayed on top of Internet-based mapping technologies from Etak to Mapquest to Google Maps and MS Live Search. I wrote my first Google Maps mashup as soon as the mapping API was released.

However, the mashups I created have been somewhat superceded by new functionality that Google has added to Google Maps, including the ability to share maps, if you so desire. So here’s a few of the maps that I’ve put together, in case you’re at all interested:

Ornoth’s House

A pointer to where I live, Boston’s former Hotel Vendome. Mostly this one’s just somewhere I can point people if they need directions.
 

Places I’ve Lived

A plot of all the places where I have lived, which are all in Maine and Massachusetts.
 

Places I’ve Visited

A general view of some of the places that I’ve visited. It’s only really valid at the state/city level.
 

DargonZine Summit Locations

These are the places where my magazine has held its annual writers’ gatherings. Virtually all of them are located in a place where one of my writers lived at the time.
 

Pan-Mass Challenge

The route of my annual Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride. The route varies slightly from year to year, so it’s not perfect, but it’s close, and will give you an idea where we go.
 

Flickr Map

This one’s actually a mashup hosted by Flickr, but it’s a nice geographical plot of the photos I’ve uploaded to my Flickr account.