2007 Iditarod Tracking with Google Earth

March 7, 2007

I’ve created a Google Earth KML Feed of the current Iditarod standings. I’m generating it with Ruby. It’s pretty cool. If you want to try it, do one of the following:

Download the Network Feed KML, which contains a link to the following KML and automatically updates every 10 minutes

*or*

Download the Current KML, which does not update, but is that actual static file the above KML uses.

I recommend the feed. Here’s some pictures of the current state:

Iditarod 1

Iditarod 2

Iditarod 3

Iditarod 4



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Comments

  1. Lauren

    March 7, 2007 at 10:43 AM

    Hey, I wonder if you might write a post about how you used Ruby/Rails as a cgi to dynamically generate the kml for this fantastic Iditarod feed, since that’s something I’m interested in doing with my own geo data sets.


  2. Lauren

    March 7, 2007 at 10:43 AM

    Thanks for making that available. I’m in the process of learning Ruby and I thought I’d try using it to experiment with dynamic kml feeds. This is my first try at any sort of cgi application, and most examples I find are coded in Python and PHP, so I really just needed some basics to get started, optimized or not. I did have a nice tour of the sled route; made me want to visit Alaska again.


  3. elliott cable

    March 7, 2007 at 10:43 AM

    Do you live here? Just OOC. And that was a very useful feed, thanks for it!


  4. Hank

    March 7, 2007 at 10:43 AM

    Lauren,
    I should do that – but instead I’m just going to link you to the code. Its GPLv2 so feel free to use it and modify it as long as credit is given where it’s due. I must admit the way I did it is a bit lame, and given more time I would have planned a little better, but I managed to throw this together during the race since I didn’t get the data feed until the day before. The code takes about a minute to run since the way it goes through the Checkpoints is very lame and unoptimized. Had I a chance to do it again, I would go back and modify everything to be more object oriented (Checkpoint models and such), but the way it currently is coded worked fine for my needs. The README contains all the information needed to set it up – it’s currently geared for Linux/UNIX systems since `cron` is a major part of its functionality. Thanks for the interest. Here’s the link to the source:

    http://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/work/iditarod_feeder/

    You can check it out with subversion like this:

    svn co http://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/work/iditarod_feeder/

    All the magic happens in `client.rb`. Hope you can use it. Reply to this thread if you end up making a public feed.