White Boy/White Dog Move To Skid Row

Certified Beach Dude Moves To Downtown Los Angeles

If you used to use the old filming map application that was created by Dave Bullock (of eecue.com and blogdowntown.com fame), then you know what a slick application it was. I used it daily to plan where to walk White Dog (some film stuff I wanted to see, some I wanted to avoid). But Dave ran into some time-constraints maintaining it, so I decided to learn the Google Maps API and write my own version of a filming location map.

The application is ready for public testing- just click on the “FILMING MAP” button at the very top of any page in my blog. If you have any suggestions or bugs, I would appreciate if you’d add a comment to this entry.

There are a few caveats that go with using this application:

• You cannot bookmark the page right now- to create a “favorites” link, use the URL:
  http://www.uznotes.com/skidrowdude/filmcalendar.nsf/gmap
  for you techies, the url takes start date and end date params if you desire:
  …./gmap?openagent&s=04/18/2008~e=04/21/2008~
• The data comes from e-mails by FilmLA and is automatically parsed by my program and added to a databsse. Unfortunately, the data from FilmLA is not very consistant and this causes many problems. Do not bet your life on the data in my program. Also, I receive updates from FilmLA on the day a project is to film, so check often if you are concerned about a particular street or project.
• Some addresses may not map correctly- I try to “clean-up” but FilmLA will enter addresses that Google does not understand, particularly around bridges and tunnels (for example, 4th St. and Flower cross, but there is no intersection as 4th St. goes over Flower, so I need to change the address “4th St and Flower” to something Google can map, like “400 S. Flower St”).
• Entering a large date range (weeks) is not advised at this time; use a sensible range of 3-7 days if it makes sense for you to see that much data plotted at once.
• I have data back to about 04/03/2008 - in the future you will be able to search the database to show things like “where was CSI filmed in the past month?” or “what has been filmed on 7th St?”. I will also add the “Street View” functionality, and a link to IMDB so you can see the cast/directors, etc. for a movie or TV show.

Thanks again Dave for coming up with the original (and probably best) version of this application- not trying to steal your thunder at all, just trying to organize the filmLA e-mails into something that makes sense…