No, I Did Not Croak!

Picture I took at Big Cedar Lodge

Well, I am back. I didn't want to rush back into the rush of digitalness too fast, so I've been a bit slow returning to my blog. But, I want to assure you I did not croak — I am still here. I had to say that since I got a few really great pictures of the above frog while at Big Cedar.

Big Cedar, as before, is just amazing. I wish I could live there — it is a paradox of rustic wilderness and the amenities of civilization. Johnny Morris's (owner of Bass Pro Shops, Tracker Boats, etc.) creation here — as with his other businesses — is a spectacular thing to see. Unlike many of the resorts in the area, Big Cedar takes on the personality of the beautiful Big Cedar Hollow, which has a small finger of Table Rock Lake running through it. It is made even better because everyone who works there seems so happy to be there and intensely loyal to Big Cedar and determined for Big Cedar's guests to have a delightful time. I am left amazed each time I leave there; I first saw Big Cedar in 1991 (and have eaten at the Devil's Pool Restaurant there probably at least once a year since) and have stayed there a number of times since 2001, but it never loses its wonder.

What can I say? It was great. And, I came back with some 2,275 photos to sort through. I'm really pushing the limits of iPhoto these days, I think. The neat buzzword of this trip is Geocoding. I kept my Garmin Foretrex 101 wearable GPS unit on my arm at virtually all times. It recorded nearly 1 MB of tracks, which I downloaded on to my computer when I got back. I've experimented with Geocoding over the last six or eight months, but this was my first full scale test over a trip.

Using GPSPhotoLinker, those trackpoints my GPS unit recorded were time weighted against the EXIF timestamps embedded in the photos to provide reasonably good positioning of each photo I took. GPSPhotoLinker then placed the positioning and altitude information it aggregated into the appropriate EXIF fields of the photos for me. Then using iPhotoToGoogleEarth, I was able to actually place my photos as layers in Google Earth. Geocoding is still pretty much a technological wilderness of underdeveloped software, but I think getting in on the bleeding edge will pay off in organizing my photos in the coming years. You can read more of my thoughts on Geocoding in an article for Open for Business from last fall.