[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Do you know travel blogs that have animated ...
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       Ask HN: Do you know travel blogs that have animated SVG maps of
       their travels?
        
       I'm searching for a travel blog that wrote a tutorial on how they
       created custom SVG animations for the routes he took along his
       trips.  I've been banging my head against Google for a solid 3-4
       hours at this point but it is pointless to try to search something
       there these days so I come here.  I remember that the blogger in
       question was into photography and photographed the Te Whanganui-A-
       Hei (Cathedral Cove) in New Zealand during early morning with no
       people there and wrote a post about the process. And of course they
       had these small SVG animations of their trips at the top of their
       posts, with a map displaying the route they took, animating the
       path.  They wrote a pretty in-depth article about how they
       accomplished this with the help of some custom JS and SVG
       animations too and I am after that article.  If you know the name
       of the blog that would absolutely make my day!  Please also feel
       free to answer if you know anything _similar_ to the title of the
       blog where somebody has created stylized animated SVG maps of their
       trips and documented the process they used to create those.
        
       Author : trebeljahr
       Score  : 167 points
       Date   : 2025-02-04 01:40 UTC (2 days ago)
        
       | sflanker wrote:
       | https://tympanus.net/codrops/2015/12/16/animated-map-path-fo...
       | Not an exact match for your description, but in the same vein
        
         | lbebber wrote:
         | Oh, I made this! (almost a decade ago, huh)
        
       | sflanker wrote:
       | Tangentially interesting: while leveraging Perplexity to try and
       | find the blog post in question this post and your StackOverflow
       | question already pollute the results it draws from and causes it
       | to abort any more detailed search for such a blog post. I find
       | this mildly amusing.
        
         | throwaway519 wrote:
         | haha, I just asked ChatGPT and it references this HN post.
         | 
         | It's a small world.
        
         | datadrivenangel wrote:
         | Like when my googling solutions to a niche data integration
         | interaction between two tools resulted in a first page result
         | for one of my coworker's linkedin posts asking if anyone in her
         | network knew the answer... The internet is shallow sometimes.
        
         | jachee wrote:
         | This is Dead Internet theory in action.
        
       | rvrs wrote:
       | Is it this one? https://photos.paulstamatiou.com/new-
       | zealand/coromandel-peni...
       | 
       | EDIT: Any HN mods/devs reading this -- there seems to be a
       | display bug for comment creation time? On edit it says 20hrs
       | (accurate), whereas viewing the comments otherwise shows that it
       | was posted an hour ago. Not sure what's going on
        
         | yapyap wrote:
         | I also see it as posted an hour ago, and see the original
         | thread post as 2 hours ago.
         | 
         | Odd.
        
         | mtmail wrote:
         | There's something called a second-chance queue for overlooked
         | submissions https://news.ycombinator.com/pool (listed on
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)
         | 
         | Some older users (I think YC alumni) can nominate articles and
         | moderators give them a boost. The timestamp doesn't change,
         | I've seen 2 day old articles appearing. It's a bit confusing, I
         | think it was hacked in years ago but works good enough.
        
       | jfkrrorj wrote:
       | Heh, i just asked deepseek for fun. It gave me python script that
       | takes photos, uses exif coordinates and OSM. 15 minutes
        
         | anonzzzies wrote:
         | How about at least put it in a gist?
        
         | chewymouse wrote:
         | what was the prompt?
        
       | peterldowns wrote:
       | Craig Mod's "Koya Bound" website has beautiful photos and custom
       | SVG maps.
       | 
       | https://walkkumano.com/koyabound/
       | 
       | I thought this was so compelling that I ended up walking the
       | trail myself. Incredible experience.
        
         | benabbott wrote:
         | This is really well done.
        
         | exabrial wrote:
         | This is the first time for me where a website hijacked the
         | scroll wheel, and it's actually _really really_ well done. This
         | is amazing. Thanks for posting it.
        
           | daemonologist wrote:
           | The key is that it doesn't actually hijack the scroll wheel -
           | the main content (header and text and photos on the left) all
           | scrolls normally, controlled by the browser. The map just
           | monitors the scroll position and element client rects and
           | runs its own non-blocking visualization on the side.
           | 
           | I agree - beautifully implemented, and great content too.
        
         | lbebber wrote:
         | Oh, this was based off of a project I made for Codrops[1]. Let
         | me know if you'd like some help or input!
         | 
         | [1]https://tympanus.net/Development/StorytellingMap/
        
           | CharlesW wrote:
           | That and your other projects at lbebber.github.io/public are
           | stellar, Lucas!
        
             | lbebber wrote:
             | Thank you, glad you like it!
        
           | whycome wrote:
           | Is there something like this that uses KMZ waypoints to craft
           | the map/animation?
        
           | peterldowns wrote:
           | I didn't realize you were the original programmer on this --
           | amazing work!
        
           | neuraldenis wrote:
           | Amazing project, love it!
        
           | cmod wrote:
           | Thank you for building this; over the years the bus animation
           | has gone a bit wonky, but otherwise the page holds up really
           | well. It's a great library you built.
        
             | lbebber wrote:
             | Beautiful work! I thought the bus was a fun goofy touch on
             | its first appearance hahah
        
         | nicwolff wrote:
         | That's just terrific!
        
         | kyleblarson wrote:
         | Doing a temple stay at Koyasan is by far my favorite lifetime
         | travel experience.
        
         | skadamat wrote:
         | I came here to link to this! I also spent a week trying to find
         | this a few years back :)
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | His newer Iseji one is nice too
         | 
         | https://walkkumano.com/iseji/
        
         | BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
         | This gem.
        
       | illwrks wrote:
       | So.. I don't know what you're talking about but I work in a
       | corporate environment where we can't use JS but we can use SVG
       | images... As a consequence I end up creating graphics in
       | illustrator, exporting to SVG and then hand animating them with
       | CSS animations.
       | 
       | I wouldn't recommend doing it my way, but for path animations
       | they are likely animating the stroke length. Here is an example
       | that might help, but use an animation tool if you can.
       | 
       | https://css-tricks.com/svg-line-animation-works/
       | 
       | One thing of note with stroke animations.. if you transition
       | to/from negative numbers the animation breaks in Safari (negative
       | numbers are out of spec aparently). There is a work around but I
       | can't remember it at the moment, it results in the stroke
       | animation playing in reverse though.
       | 
       | As mentioned above, if you can use a JS library, use one.
        
       | chris_overseas wrote:
       | Not quite what you're asking for, but there was this discussion
       | and website that you'll hopefully find relevant:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42660255
        
       | hipinspire wrote:
       | https://momoadvisors.com/sourcing.php by https://hipfolio.co
        
       | knowknowledge wrote:
       | Here's one from a few months ago "HOW I ADDED MAPS TO MY TRAVEL
       | POSTS"
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41532958
        
       | 1wheel wrote:
       | https://www.lkk-store.com/lkk-map/
        
       | matallo wrote:
       | I built something similar for my blog
       | https://matall.in/posts/vietnam/
       | 
       | I didn't write a tutorial but you can check the code here
       | https://github.com/matallo/matall.in
        
       | CharlieDigital wrote:
       | Might not be what you're looking for, but about 2 years back now
       | I built a little tool that does something similar to this (not
       | SVG) and no special coding/skills required
       | 
       | Check out the sample story here: https://turas.app/s/japan-x-
       | taiwan/BtEjycbA
       | 
       | As you scroll down past the days, it will show the map and places
       | for each day (on desktop).
       | 
       | The front-end of this is a planning app for planning the
       | itinerary and the "story" is one output of the planner.
        
       | alanbernstein wrote:
       | I have been working, slowly, toward a way to do something like
       | this, for years. My latest attempt
       | (http://alanbernstein.net/galleries/2020-pecos/) is not
       | professional or polished, but it does work. IIRC it is canvas
       | rather than SVG, and the "animation" is driven by the photo
       | slideshow.
       | 
       | Tangentially, I find that the bulk of the work is in compiling
       | and prepping the assets, including multiple camera devices,
       | incorrect timestamps, buggy rotation exif data, captions from
       | multiple sources, GPS tracks from multiple sources...
       | 
       | Thanks for asking here, I'm looking forward to finding a better
       | way to do it.
        
         | wonder_er wrote:
         | This is a cool project!
         | 
         | I tried to do something similar using the Strava API. Never
         | could get precise-enough lat and long to place them nicely on a
         | map.
         | 
         | Some of my wild amount of data is visible here:
         | 
         | https://joshs-mobility-data-54dab943ebba.herokuapp.com/?zoom...
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | I remember Google had a really cool tool based on their maps that
       | could animate journeys. It was pretty good but I haven't heard
       | about it for years. I don't even remember the name. Probably
       | killed anyway, knowing Google.
        
       | kawsper wrote:
       | Is it this? https://cyberb.space/notes/2024/how-i-added-maps-to-
       | my-trave...
        
       | bazzargh wrote:
       | Not animated or svg, but along the same lines, some years ago I
       | wrote https://bazzargh.github.io/stripmap/ which automates
       | generating stripmaps. The idea was to eventually use this for
       | travelogues of my cycling trips; a map of the route would be a
       | sidebar to the text.
       | 
       | Since then I learned about
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubins_path as a way to find the
       | path segments; combined with Douglas-Puecker that's probably what
       | I'd use today.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-06 23:02 UTC)