Next Round of Updates

Aloha,

Yesterday I finally completed the first major update from our most recent trip, which were the Trip 3 Itineraries pages. While that took quite a bit of time to put together, we still have a lot more to add here.

The next planned set of updates we're working on are the videos from this trip and maybe even reviving a few from last year, too. I spent about 4 hours yesterday trying out different apps and settings for uploading to YouTube, yet I still wasn't happy with the results. I even tried uploading a view to Flickr, which faired a little better quality-wise, but I still need to find the sweet spot. Either way, we're hoping to have something added soon.

After we're finished with the videos, there are still more to update. We went to a good number of new beaches, restaurants and sights and tours that we will be adding here, and there's still the Road to Hana Photo Tour that I'll be putting together to match (nay, better) the one we did for the Ka'anapali Beachwalk. And then still, after all that, we'll be finishing our Books and Music pages in the Reviews section, as well as adding new pages for our favorite websites and blogs.

It's starting to look like a long summer of updates, so it might not be a bad idea to subscribe to our feed here at the blog to receive all the updates. With so much left to do, February (our next trip) is going to be here before we know it. :)

Mahalo.

Progress Report on Site Updates

Well, for better or for worse, we're back in the full swing of things. Which means, my full time job is taking the most of my week while my full time love (of Maui) takes a back seat, at least as far as work on the website goes.

It's not all bad, though. I was able to put in a good amount of time this weekend on the new Itineraries pages for our '08 Trip. It's not quite ready yet, but when it's finished, there will be tons of detail from each day, and leveraging the Maui Twitter archives from our trip, too. It's a pretty fun format that I'm using for those pages (you'll see when it's ready) and I'm thinking about adapting for the previous trips, too.

We finally printed our photos this weekend so Cindy can stuff them in an album and bring them to work, show them to all her friends, etc. I, on the other hand, had to spend sometime with the Flickr API yesterday and hammer out an interesting bit of code on my laptop that would update the Date Taken value for all of our geotagged photos, especially the ones from our Road to Hana tour. I've always used JetPhoto Studio to merge my GPS logs into my photos and upload them to Flickr, all relatively easily (as described here).

Well, it turns out there's a little glitch with JetPhoto that overwrites the Date Taken value on Flickr with the date you actually upload the photos. Not good. Took me about a day to programmatically clean that up, which it probably would have taken three to change it for each photo manually.

Anyway, I'm hoping to have something new go live in the next week or so, and there's still much more work ahead after these itineraries pages. Other than putting together the Road to Hana photo tour, all the other new pages will be far less of an effort.

Mahalo.

Sunday Photo: Grumpy Honu

Grumpy Honu
Originally uploaded by webnelly

Honu, is the Hawaiian name for Sea Turtle. These are green sea turtles that are part of the Turtle Lagoon exhibit at the Maui Ocean Center. They always seem to be grumpy (hence the name of the photo) whenever we see them in photos or even near Black Rock when we see them poke their head above water for air. I think one of the reasons we get a kick out of these guys is because of the Comcast commercials they had here in Chicago a few years ago with The Slowskys.

Unfortunately, we don't scuba dive and don't get the opportunity to go down under the water and watch these guys swim close up. There are tons of photos on Flickr that people have taken doing just that. Here's one of my favorites. Maybe someday we'll break down, learn to snorkel first and then take the plunge.

Road to Hana '08 Photos Added

New Flickr Set added - Road to Hana '08


Wailua Falls
Originally uploaded by webnelly

Catching up on photos from our last trip, I uploaded the new set of photos from our Road to Hana tour, all geotagged with the GPS data from the tour. Right now, you can use the Map feature on Flickr when viewing each photo to see where it was taken, but going forward, I will be putting together a photo tour like I did for the Ka'anapali Beachwalk here.

For now, there are still a lot of photos in the set, which I will likely end up trimming down some more. There are almost no titles or descriptions yet, and many will still need to be edited and cleaned up. It will probably take days if not weeks, but I will slowly be making progress.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Mahalo.

Hawaiian Island Popularity Based on Flickr

It was some time last year that I picked up the book, Flickr Hacks, and started reading through some of the neat things you can do with Flickr. One of the hacks in Chapter 2 talks about tagging photos and a little web page (now discontinued) that someone created called flickrTagFight. The concept was very clever, where a visitor could enter two competing tags (such as Cat and Dog) and it would count and compare how many photos existed on Flickr for each and declare one of them victorious.

Inspired by that idea, I put it to use in somewhat of a different matter. On the Photo Tag Match page here at Ka'anapali Dreamin', I put the same concept to work as applied to the Hawaiian Islands. Specifically, it counts how many photos per island are posted to Flickr based on tags, and shows a grid and a chart to showcase the results.

At the moment, it looks like Maui has a rather comfortable lead (no surprise there). These numbers update about once an hour, and the Flickr home page, last I checked, seemed to be averaging about 3,000 new photos a minute. Grant it, those 3,000 new photos aren't all about Hawaii, but after a few days you can see the numbers grow.

I'm also thinking of taking this one step further at some point. To expand it, I'm debating whether or not I want to do something similar for the top 10 cities in Hawaii from across the islands, and see what comes of that. If and when I put that together, I'll post it here on the blog.

As always, let me know what you think. Again, you can find that new page here.

Mahalo.

New Daily Content - Is It Maui?

I've just finished adding another fun piece to our site, and it's called Is it Maui?. Each day, a new photo from Flickr is displayed which was taken on one of the four major Hawaiian Islands. You get to guess whether the photo is from Maui or not, and if not, which island it is from.

There's a new photo every day, so be sure to check back often for a quick diversion from your everyday routine. Also, if you miss a day or two here and there, you can go back and view previous days here.

As always, let us know what you think.

New Flickr Group - Stars Over Hawai'i

With all my Maui photos posted on Flickr, it's no surprise that there are literally hundreds of thousands of photos there that share the Maui theme.

Of those, I started searching for particular shots of the night skies above Maui, and Hawai'i as a whole, and found some pretty spectacular pictures. Eager to share my starry photos within a group at Flickr of the same focus, I was a little hard-pressed to find one. I did try a few combinations and just came up empty.

So rather than closing my browser and calling it a night, I decided to create my first Flickr Group, and now it's out there for everyone to see: Stars Over Hawai'i

While my true love is Maui, I can accept that all of the Hawaiian islands, floating peacefully in the Pacific Ocean, offer stunning views of the night sky, and the stars over head. Rather than isolate and limit photo stargazers just to one island, I wanted a place for everyone to share in the hunt for the best starry skies caught on film, er memory card I guess.

I realize that Flickr is not the only photo sharing site out there, so if anyone knows of any similar groups elsewhere out on the web, please do share as I'd love to see those photos regardless of where they're posted. It's almost too easy (yet never boring) to find pictures of magnificent Maui sunsets, but I just wish a few of those cameras would stay out a little later at night.