This page is meant to answer some of the various what, why and who questions you may have about the site.
I'm Jonathan. I program computers to make money, or write articles about programming them, or do other related things. Along with my love of technology, I have a love of travel (which gets me outdoors, thus contrasting nicely with the first). I also have an interest in language and linguistics, which feeds into both my programming and traveling interests.
My programming work gives me plenty of opportunities to go to conferences and talk about what I'm hacking on. I also decided to give working as a consultant a go after graduating rather than settling into a 9-5 job, meaning I'm able to take plenty of breaks (I'm my own boss, and I graciously grant myself lots of vacation days). Between the two, I get around a lot. And I'm loving it.
When I travel, my camera comes with me. At first it was just for me to remember my trips by; then friends started saying they liked them, and I even got a couple of emails from people who just randomly stumbled upon them too. They were vaguely organized-ish, into albums with sections...which were on a long page that took ages to scroll through if you wanted to see photos from just one specific place. And they might have been spread over many pages if I visited the same place many times.
So, I set about pulling together a quick bit of code to plonk my photos on a Google Map, then got them tagged up with co-ordinates too (in fact, they were already sectioned by place, which made life easier). A nice side-effect was that it collected photos from multiple trips to one place together too. A six-pack of beer and a few evening's hacking later, the homepage of the site as it exists today was pretty much completed.
With time, I've set about adding my various impressions of countries and then also places that I've visited, and added a page per country and per location. I'll also be adding ho(s)tels that I have stayed at and thought were good (useful for people planning trips there, but also for me if I return to a place to know what was good last time) and no doubt other bits of travel information that I harvest as I go along. In some ways, it's my personal repository of travel hints and photos, made available for all to use and, hopefully, enjoy.
I don't plan for this to become some kind of travel resources database with lots of people throwing stuff in. There's plenty of sites that already do that just fine. This is just my own take on the world, from a visual angle in the photos and with some words here and there to express what the photos don't.
It all started because I thought it'd be a fun hack to put my photos on a Google Map, and had just discovered Lightbox when sticking it on a client's site and thought it was a nice way to present a series of photos. The experiment worked out fairly well, so I've continued developing it since.
I also found that having a map of all the places I've been gave me a sense of just how little of the world I had seen compared to what there actually is to see. It was both humbling but also a challenge to go out and see more! And it showed me where I have least explored too. Europe coverage is going pretty well, but there are entire continents I've yet to set foot on! (At the time of launch, the site stood at 24 countries, 134 places and 6492 photos. That was December 2008.)
It is mostly a fun, when-I-have-time side-project. Of course, hosting it costs me a bit, and I have put a few Google Ads on, which may or may not help towards that. Or, in some dream situation, my expensive travel hobby will start paying itself back somehow. :-)
See the contact page on my main site for details of how to get in touch with me.