Check This Action Out

Okay, so, I added a Postgres database (which has support for PostGIS) to the system. I've got a "location" table and a "tracklog" table.

In the location table I added about a dozen points-of-interest, including McKinley base camp, the five other camps and the summit, Talkeetna, Anchorage Airport and my homes in New York and Atlanta - each of which is defined by a longitude/latitude, altitude and a description.

In the tracklog table, which starts out empty, I add a row every time a position broadcast is received from the Spot locator (that I mentioned in a previous post) - so that I can see everywhere we've gone and when we were there.

So, you combine this altogether, specifically including PostGIS's ability to find the closest point to a given point (our current location) from a set of points (the points-of-interest) and you should be able tell about where we are. Specifically, when we're climbing, it should be obvious which camp we're at.

Next up: since my iPhone can feed me a longitude/latitude, I think I'm going to make a simple Loopt-esque iPhone app that'll push my location to the server (which is my laptop at the moment), log it to the database, and push it out to the blog. And I should be able to view, edit and add defined locations through the app as well. Hmm.