gpsfly.org gone

Cartography, maps, navigation, GPS and more.
Webfoot
Posts: 1759
Joined: November 25th, 2015, 11:06 am
Location: Troutdale

gpsfly.org gone

Post by Webfoot » September 27th, 2018, 10:54 pm

It appears that gpsfly.org is no more. A number of Forum members were regular contributors; thank you, your uploads have been very helpful to me. I hope you will be uploading your GPS tracks to a new site and I would appreciate an invitation to whatever that site may be.

gpsfly.org recently had this banner:
Dear visitor! This website, gpsfly.org, will close very soon. If you need to download something, please do it now.
I took this message as permission, set up a bot to pull as much as I could, and I believe I was successful. It's all an unorganized blob at this point, but theoretically I have most of the kml/gpx data with author, date, and description for each. If this data would be helpful to others please let me know.

User avatar
mjirving
Posts: 1185
Joined: July 5th, 2011, 10:40 am

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by mjirving » September 28th, 2018, 4:30 am

I use the app Gaia GPS and now put all my tracks on their site and pull tracks from others on their website at Gaiagps.com. I used to use gpsfly a lot though, it was very helpful. It is also the reason I learned how to do search terms using google since it has no search functionality. :D

User avatar
adamschneider
Posts: 3710
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:02 pm
Location: SE Portland
Contact:

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by adamschneider » September 28th, 2018, 6:12 pm

Webfoot wrote:
September 27th, 2018, 10:54 pm
I took this message as permission, set up a bot to pull as much as I could, and I believe I was successful. It's all an unorganized blob at this point, but theoretically I have most of the kml/gpx data with author, date, and description for each. If this data would be helpful to others please let me know.
That was a good idea. I wonder what would be the best way to make that stuff available...

User avatar
aiwetir
Posts: 600
Joined: December 10th, 2014, 11:54 am
Contact:

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by aiwetir » September 28th, 2018, 11:21 pm

How much data is it?
- Michael

Webfoot
Posts: 1759
Joined: November 25th, 2015, 11:06 am
Location: Troutdale

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by Webfoot » September 29th, 2018, 2:42 am

It's a 300MB archive, but I believe most of that is not for our area; I made no attempt to filter what I downloaded. Since there is interest I'll see if I can process what I have into something more directly useful. Don't be surprised if it's a while before I get around to it.

User avatar
aiwetir
Posts: 600
Joined: December 10th, 2014, 11:54 am
Contact:

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by aiwetir » September 29th, 2018, 10:02 pm

If you don't mind, it might be useful to distribute some copies of it just in case. I probably have time to deal with it relatively soon.

A preliminary plan would be to upload them to Strava for the heat map or OSM traces. I'd probably anonymize them too by removing any user names.

My AWS bill is a little higher than I want right now so I'll have to figure out where or if I could host them somewhere.
- Michael

Webfoot
Posts: 1759
Joined: November 25th, 2015, 11:06 am
Location: Troutdale

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by Webfoot » September 30th, 2018, 4:39 am

You prefer the full thing with tracks from Europe, Asia, etc.? I can do that, I just thought it would be nicer to remove those.

Does Google Drive let other people download things, without fees for either party? They keep advertising 15GB free storage or something like that, but I've never used it.

User avatar
kepPNW
Posts: 6411
Joined: June 21st, 2012, 9:55 am
Location: Salmon Creek

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by kepPNW » September 30th, 2018, 9:05 am

Webfoot wrote:
September 27th, 2018, 10:54 pm
I took this message as permission, set up a bot to pull as much as I could, and I believe I was successful. It's all an unorganized blob at this point, but theoretically I have most of the kml/gpx data with author, date, and description for each.
Also snagged all the tracks, but didn't find any good way to snatch anything other than the page title along with them. Is the description you refer to that one that ran under the page title, and was sometimes more detailed? Would love to see a table that held track#, description, and author! Happy to contribute page title, if that's different.
Karl
Back on the trail, again...

User avatar
aiwetir
Posts: 600
Joined: December 10th, 2014, 11:54 am
Contact:

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by aiwetir » September 30th, 2018, 11:43 am

Webfoot wrote:
September 30th, 2018, 4:39 am
You prefer the full thing with tracks from Europe, Asia, etc.? I can do that, I just thought it would be nicer to remove those.

Does Google Drive let other people download things, without fees for either party? They keep advertising 15GB free storage or something like that, but I've never used it.
There are only storage limits on the drives, not bandwidth, although I'm sure you could get their attention if you abused it somehow.

I'd sort stuff out regionally but honestly I have to figure out what people want other than to download them for themselves. Easy enough to make a map where people can look and download, but I'd have to figure out something for hosting costs.


Let's talk about what to do with this stuff so people don't duplicate work or do unnecessary work.

• Karl wants a sortable table, author, date, location, description
• I'd like to see an interactive map, popup with stats, a link to download track
- Michael

User avatar
kepPNW
Posts: 6411
Joined: June 21st, 2012, 9:55 am
Location: Salmon Creek

Re: gpsfly.org gone

Post by kepPNW » September 30th, 2018, 12:35 pm

aiwetir wrote:
September 30th, 2018, 11:43 am
Webfoot wrote:
September 30th, 2018, 4:39 am
Does Google Drive let other people download things, without fees for either party? They keep advertising 15GB free storage or something like that, but I've never used it.
There are only storage limits on the drives, not bandwidth, although I'm sure you could get their attention if you abused it somehow.
Interesting thought! Never considered trying to share that many files, publicly, from a Google account. My recollection is that each one would need to be individually shared, and there'd be no logical association (track#) between URL and filename?
aiwetir wrote:
September 30th, 2018, 11:43 am
Let's talk about what to do with this stuff so people don't duplicate work or do unnecessary work.

• Karl wants a sortable table, author, date, location, description
• I'd like to see an interactive map, popup with stats, a link to download track
I do have the 6435 tracks (that were still there when the closure was announced) downloaded. Together, they're 2.29GB uncompressed, and 658MB compressed. I also have a spreadsheet that links each track number with the page title, which looks like this...

Image

If we can get more info added to that, like author and description, it'd sure add a lot of value for searches! It's also possible I may be able to secure bandwidth to share it all, but would need to confirm.
Karl
Back on the trail, again...

Post Reply