Wrightwood Village

[Walter]

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, at least one with as many pieces--An interactive map of a Southern California mountain village called Wrightwood. The concept is simple; click a number on the map, see a picture of the building at the location. The interactive map is included on each page throughout the village so one can virtually run rampant through the little tiny town at will.

No java, special software (other than simple coordinate mapping), or high tech other than the same html and server side inclusions that I've been using since 1994. I enjoy planning and designing this kind of junk. I used to use it extensively for floor plans in homes for resale--

http://wrightwoodcalifornia.com/village/

[Antarctican]

What an incredibly photogenic little town! I love the pics of the quaint craft (and other) stores, and the outdoor cafe. And I recognize the Grizzly Cafe from one of your recent posts. This type of interactive map is fantastic for showing houses/towns etc to far off people.

[Walter]

What an incredibly photogenic little town! I love the pics of the quaint craft (and other) stores, and the outdoor cafe. And I recognize the Grizzly Cafe from one of your recent posts. This type of interactive map is fantastic for showing houses/towns etc to far off people.

Thank you. In 94 I started doing interactive industrial/commercial building areas for distribution on disks. In 96 when internet browsers were cable of reading the mapping, I did a little model of this village. It took off, the locals loved it. I expanded the concept into homes for sale. I'm lucky that I like to draw. My previous business venture was cartographer and before that I worked as a draftsman for commercial;/residential buildings. Drawing the little tiny maps and floor plans was very easy and fun.

I'd mentioned a month or two ago me and a client had decided to part ways. Seeing that they were to become competition I started updating my Wrightwood website to bury them deep in the search engines. I can't stand the new broker, so when it was time to get rid of the site I'd built, I ended up selling it to one of his agents. Apparently they all got together and decided to ignore him, keep me and pay me out of their own pockets.

The services I'll be providing will be diminished (they'll do their own photography), but the actual per hour rate will be better. The way it looks is I'll be making about half as much for one fourth (or less) the work. Works out to at least twice, maybe three times as much as I was making if it's considered per hour. Not bad. 12 Hours ago the score for me was 0/0--and now I don't have to deal with a whining deadbeat either. Also less travel/commuting. It'll give me more time to work on my other projects. I'll know for sure next week.

& yes, the little town is awesome. I like working there, but wouldn't want to live there. Small town politics are a waste of life (IMO).

This stuff is just a couple miles west of town.
Big Pines Recreation Area (http://wrightwoodcalifornia.com/big-pines/fullsizemap.html)
(still needs work)



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[Antarctican]

Wow! Tons of photos and info in all the links. (Really love the Amboy Crater (http://proxychi.baremetal.com/digital-desert.com/lava/420-r7446-v3-2-ambycrtr.jpg) pic)

[Walter]

Wow! Tons of photos and info in all the links. (Really love the Amboy Crater (http://proxychi.baremetal.com/digital-desert.com/lava/420-r7446-v3-2-ambycrtr.jpg) pic)

:)

That's one of my all time favorites and it certainly was one of my favorite trips.

The Wrightwood model sort of became the prototype for the rest of the links/websites you seem to have found.

Here it is, an example of a floor plan;
Kelso Station (http://digital-desert.com/kelso-depot/ie01.html)

This sort of has to be 'imagined' as a home for sale although it works okie-dokie on its own. It's several years old, designed when the typical monitor was smaller. The pages very much need updating, plus on the lower floor the shaded area next to the rec room has been remodeled and is now called the Desert Light Gallery. It's where I had my exhibit/show last summer. I've been wanting to add that in.

Sheesh--Looking at my maps I can see I'm so far behind. I've been trying to come up with some GIS software to generate themed coverages/points and use captures of the maps. I'd like to have all my maps uniform throughout. Right now it looks like a ransom note when one clicks through them.

Region Map (http://digital-desert.com/regions/)

Here's more what I was thinking, but the system used to produce them is offline now
http://digital-desert.com/maps/


rambling...

[Terri]

Now, that is really cool. I like the concept and how easy it makes it for the end user to know exactly where they want to go. Good work!

Plus, I'm a sucker for a happy ending. ;) Glad it turned out well for you, business-wise.

[Walter]

Now, that is really cool. I like the concept and how easy it makes it for the end user to know exactly where they want to go. Good work!

Plus, I'm a sucker for a happy ending. ;) Glad it turned out well for you, business-wise.

I'm glad to put the real estate in more of an autopilot mode, and it's nice to get a little win. Things have changed and will continue to change, so I've been working on a few different types of opportunities. I'm thinking I'd like more independence and in an environmental, historical direction.

[Walter]

And as an awesome little side note;

The presentation I did last May regarding the ancient lakes of the Mojave project (http://www.thephotobeat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3646) just got me preliminary approval to produce a two page panorama of what the ancient 600' deep Lake Manly may have looked like 20,000 years ago when it covered the bottom of Death Valley. This will be for a natural history association geology book. I'll have until mid 2011 to come up with the image which I'll be shooting this next winter!

YES! That's a happy ending/nice start :)

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[Antarctican]

^^^ Wonderful news!!! ("One door closes, and another opens"). I'm really thrilled for you, Walter! :boogie:

[Walter]

^^^ Wonderful news!!! ("One door closes, and another opens"). I'm really thrilled for you, Walter! :boogie:

:)

I have a few ideas to open it a little bit wider. All I have to do is make it through, ... well, the rest of my life I guess. :irked:

[Tangerini]

That's a really cool tool! Plus it shows how nice simplicity is - no need for java or flash slowing things down to get the job done. :-)

[Walter]

That's a really cool tool! Plus it shows how nice simplicity is - no need for java or flash slowing things down to get the job done. :-)

The relatively simple html is what I like about it too. No need for a search engine to sort through java, php or flash- although I'm sure they can now much easier than they could 14 years ago when I got into this type of interactivity. When I can keep the map in the same place on the screen it looks/works the best. Then I can generate a base map and a separate location map for each page with the location highlighted, and it looks like something going on that isn't, it's just a different .gif file. When I designed the system I was on the web at 14.4 baud and made everything sing at the extremely low speed. Now, even with dsl I try to keep things small and snappy to keep bandwidth costs down, but then my hosting company found a way to serve my images by proxy eliminating bandwidth costs. I think I'll keep with what I do and the light graphics.

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