Here is where you'll find what's going on with kayakvb.com. The site was originally built using MS FrontPage, but that became unwieldily, a major pain to maintain, and not really supportive of doing anything in other then MS XXscript. So I trashed it and came up with what you see here. It is still a work in progress, and will continue to be so for a while...
The various tools I use to put the whole thing together
I collect the data with a Garmin eTrex Legend, and upload it into the PC using Garmin MapSource software
The photos are taken with a Fuji FinePix 3100 and converted using IrfanView
The photo maps (not currently in use, but will be back) are generated using Topofusion
The topographic JPEG and SVG plots (not currently in use, but will be back) are generated from gpsvisualizer.com
All the code is written either using ActiveState Komodo (Mac) or PHP Designer 2005/6 (PC)
I am in the process of automating a lot of things, as I think it is still taking me to long to do the processes involved in uploading all the things related to a trip... We'll see how that goes...
Site News
2008-02-11
Added 4 new launches for the Elizabeth River, Portsmouth, James River Baileys Beach, and James River Lawnes Creek. Let me know if you know of any launches that I may be missing....
2007-04-28
Took advantage of a family trip up the Eastern Shore last week, and scouted out a few launch sites up there, I hope you enjoy...
2007-02-24
Ok since the wind is my major enemy right now, and doing everything it can to keep me off the water, looking at the river gages, the levels are about a foot below what I consider to low to paddle...
I took advantage of the downtime, and went out and took pictures and updated the Hutton Circle, Lesner Bridge, and First Landing Launch site pages..
If the water levels are up, I am going to try and get out tomorrow rain or shine, if not February will be a zero mile month...
2006-11-26
There is an email issue, again... I don't know why, but some email is not making it to so people. The thing is I reply to every email I get, so if you have sent me an email, but never received a reply, I was/am not ignoring you. If you have sent me email and have not received a reply, please let me know, and I'll get back to you somehow... The other thing I am working on, is a way to get a good idea of water levels at the various locations. On almost every trip I take, I usually take few reference pictures that relate to the water level at the launch site. Well the purpose of those pictures, and tying to data from various water level gages in the area, I will hopefully be able to provide some sort of method to let you know when the water level is to low to paddle on Southern watersheds.
2006-08-16
Well the move to the new hosting company is complete, there may be some small issues with email getting though for a couple of days, due to domain naming issues. If you send an email, and it gets bounced back to you please wait till Friday and try again...
2006-07-15
Trying something new today, I've been using enature.com to identify the various animals I see on my trips, and I found out that they provide links to most of the animals and plants in their database. So going forward, I am going to start adding those links to my trip reports. Clicking on those links will generate a pop up, but nothing more then that, it will not send you to some strange site trying to sell you something, just more information at that particular species.
I am still working on the maps, I know they can do strange things in Internet Explorer. I am also adding the ability to get automated directions just by clicking on a link in the launch site map. If you have any trouble finding a site, please let me know, I really want it to be easy and correct. I have been all over the back roads here, so I know the shortcuts, but they are not always the easiest.
I am also still working on a way to automatically map the location of where the pictures are taken, I could do it manually, but it already takes me a couple off hours putting together each trip report. I guess if I was a better writer it would be faster...
2006-06-01
Okay I am just about over google maps, the satellite views on google maps for much of Hampton Roads is old low resolution Landsat imagery, so the zoom levels are very limited... So I am going to transition the maps to Yahoo Maps, which have a great consistent resolution, and zooms down to about 1m. That should be done real soon...
2006-04-24
In the process of adding annotation to all pictures on the site.
Google has updated the Google Maps API, and I am in the process of updating all the maps on the site to version 2.x, I am also working on interfacing all the pictures from the trip reports to maps, to show the location that the picture was taken.
2006-03-05
As little time I have had in my kayak, you'd think I'd have a lot more done here then I do. Well I have been doing a lot behind the scenes here, and working on some other sites I deal with. It seem that every time the weather is decent, the wind has been blowing out of the North so hard for so long, it is hard to find a place to put my kayak in the water. I went out last week to a couple of places, and got some pictures showing the effects of the wind on Back Bay and i will be putting it all together soon.
2005-12-20
Continuing with the entry of launch site information, and I have a couple more launch sites to add. Also will be adding a google map link for each launch site page to make it easier to find.
Added "Kayak Web Links" and will continue populating that as well.
I am just about over this cold that has been keeping me off the water for the last three weeks in one way or another, but I will be on the water this week.
Still working on a better way to present the web links
Getting closer on getting the trips to plot on google map.
2005-12-14
Finally getting to adding all the missing launch site data, I am going to try to get a couple a week updated until I have them all taken care of. I have a couple of site that have been sent to me, and I will add those as I get some more information on them...
I am getting the bugs worked out slowly, but I am making progress.
2005-12-07
Still tracking down some gremlins here and there, but I am mostly happy with the overall look and feel.
Working on improving the way images are handled especially in the trip reports, I dont like sending it to a generic page with out any information blah...
The other issue is the links, they are ugly, got to fix them here and on all my other sites, just never happy with the look of the links pages...
2005-11-25
Okay, here it is the new and somewhat improved Kayakvb...
I took much longer then I wanted, and is not where I want it to be yet...
I have rewritten almost everything, and at least I can say good bye to FrontPage...
The majority of the entire site is now database driven, which allows for the dynamic linking of the launch sites, and trip reports...
2005-10-30
Still reworking things, I should have a preview available soon
2005-10-15
Reworking everything to make it database driven, and easier to manage. The Launch Site information will be the first section to be updated. I am really beginning to hate FrontPage.
2005-08-28
I really need concentrate on the launch site information...
2005-08-18
Still updating, I should have a preview available real soon.
2005-08-07
I have come to the conclusion that this is becoming a big mess, and I really need to fix it, so I am once a again going to redo this whole thing. My biggest issue is it take more time to post everything to the web site then I spent on the trip... I have some ideas, and I hope to have a sample posted soon...
2005-06-18
Added Pocaty River Launch
© 2008 Paul Perusse
For more information about Kayak Virginia Beach or comments contact me at webmaster@kayakvb.com