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Logging My Oldest Flights

27 Oct 2024 · Using airline timetables and Nintendo Power issues to research my oldest flights

Changing Flight Historian Boarding Pass Email to AWS SES

13 Aug 2024 · With simple authentication being deprecated, it was time for me to move Flight Historian away from reading a webmail account using IMAP to a proper automated email service.

Hub Airport Territory

7 Jul 2024 · Maps of small airports which only connect through a single hub.

Flight Historian Version 2.5: Interactive Mapbox Maps

1 Jul 2024 · New and changed features in version 2.5 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Historian.

Lifetime Hilton Diamond

24 Mar 2024 · Many hotel chains will grant different loyalty levels depending on how often you stay each year, with each level giving more hotel perks. By staying 1000 nights at Hilton properties, I’ve managed to earn their highest status tier for life.

2023 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2023 · I spent 87 nights traveling this year, picked up ten new airports, visited Iceland and Japan, and drove a go-kart through the streets of Naha.

Hotel Internet Speed 2022–2023

16 Jul 2023 · A decade ago I tracked my internet speeds in hotels, and from July 2022 through June 2023 I tracked them again to see what had changed.

Driving Log 3.0: KML to GeoPackage Conversion

26 Jun 2023 · Many of the requirements that caused me to store my driving log in KML are no longer applicable.

Tenth Anniversary of Paul Bogard’s Flight Log

27 Apr 2023 · Ten years ago, I launched the predecessor to Flight Historian.

New York, D.C., and Iceland

31 Jan 2023 · Travel stats and photos for my January 2023 vacation, including the TWA hotel, Reykjavík, Akureyri, and mall cats.

Creating a Fictional Airline With ChatGPT

16 Jan 2023 · I was playing around with the ChatGPT language model, and accidentally ended up developing a fictional airline.

2022 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2022 · This year I spent 97 nights traveling, visited my 100th airport, flew 74 times (including my 1000th flight), and had some issues with rental cars.

Automating myTracks Driving Log Filtering with iOS Shortcuts

18 Dec 2022 · How I use iOS automation to record when I start and stop driving.

SCC vs. OCCC Size Comparison

4 Dec 2022 · A size comparison of the Seattle Convention Center (Seattle, Washington) and the Orange County Convention Center (Orlando, Florida).

Driving Density Maps

29 Oct 2022 · Maps showing how often I’ve driven in various places.

Logging GPS Tracks With a Bad Elf GPS Pro+

3 Oct 2022 · This tutorial will give you the basics of using a Bad Elf GPS Pro+ to record driving data and export the data for use in mapping software.

PAX West 2022 Map

8 Sep 2022 · A map of Seattle-area places I visited during the weekend of PAX West 2022.

I’ve Flown Through One Hundred Airports

21 Jul 2022 · In 2013 I set a goal to travel through one hundred different airports. In July 2022, I finally achieved my goal.

Flight Historian Version 2.4: GPX/KML Map Downloads and AeroAPI

4 Jul 2022 · New and changed features in version 2.4 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Historian.

2021 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2021 · My travel statistics for 2021.

Driving Log Version 2.1: Track Gap Fix

21 Dec 2021 · I made an update to fix small gaps in my driving log data.

Seattle Heatmap

2 Sep 2021 · A heatmap of where Paul spent time on a September 2021 trip to Seattle.

A Water Salute and the Breaking of a Voucher Chain

30 May 2021 · I earned a United voucher from a trip I booked on another United voucher, but I finally broke that trend by taking United’s first flight between Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Maine.

Driving Log Version 2.0: Canonical KML File and Import Script

9 Feb 2021 · I organized my driving log into a single KML file and wrote a script to automatically import GPS data.

City Population Gravity

15 Jan 2021 · Using a gravity metaphor, I calculated the U.S. cities with the most attraction from my hometown based on population and distance.

Distance From Home by Day

1 Jan 2021 · On average, I’m furthest from home in mid-February each year.

2020 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2020 · My travel statistics for 2020. For obvious reasons, travel has been substantially lower than in recent years.

Work Travel During a Pandemic

11 Nov 2020 · My job has had me fly a few times since COVID-19 restrictions started, and it’s an odd experience.

Cincinnati Heatmap

25 Sep 2020 · Ever since I learned how to make heatmaps, I’ve wanted to track everywhere I go within a city I’m visiting on a given trip. I did so this weekend for a Cincinnati staycation.

Ingress Mosaic Maps

19 Sep 2020 · The geocaching game Ingress has been a great way to explore new cities when traveling, and it gave me the opportunity to create some maps as well.

Visualizing GPS Data With QGIS

29 Jun 2020 · This tutorial will teach you how to use QGIS to generate a map image from GPX track data.

Song Lyrics Graph

13 Jun 2020 · I combined a word cloud with a graph to show both how often each word appeared in song lyrics, and which words followed which other words.

Mapping GPS Data in uMap

5 May 2020 · uMap is a website which allows you to import GPX data and overlay it on an OpenStreetMap layer. This tutorial will teach you how to view GPX-formatted GPS data in uMap.

Mapping GPS Data in Google Earth

4 May 2020 · Google Earth is a map viewer that provides an easy way to view GPS data files. This tutorial will teach you how to view GPX-formatted GPS data in Google Earth.

Logging GPS Tracks With iOS and MyTracks

3 May 2020 · This tutorial will teach you how to use an iOS device to log GPS data and export it to a GPX file (which can then be used by mapping software).

Converting GPS Data Between GPX and KML

2 May 2020 · GPX and KML are both file types used to store GPS data. This tutorial will teach you how to convert between GPX and KML (in both directions) using GPS Visualizer.

Logging GPS Tracks With a Garmin Automotive GPS

30 Apr 2020 · This tutorial will teach you how to record route data on a Garmin automotive GPS and extract it into a GPX file (which can then be used by mapping software).

Travel Heatmap

26 Apr 2020 · For my 2010s Decade in Travel post, I manually created a heatmap showing the parts of the United States and world where I’d spent the most time traveling. Since I’ve been playing around with QGIS recently, I went ahead and used it to create a proper heatmap of my travels.

Time at Home During COVID-19

19 Apr 2020 · While I’m fortunate that my health and finances have both been well during the COVID-19 crisis, this has been the longest time I’ve been home for this long since I started traveling for work in 2009. I created a chart and some statistics about this time spent at home.

Unlucky Gate 13

18 Jan 2020 · Map of U.S. airports with or without a gate 13.

A Decade in Travel: 2010–2019

1 Jan 2020 · My maps, charts, and other travel statistics for the entire decade of the 2010s.

2019 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2019 · My travel statistics for 2019.

Generating GPX and KML Maps with Ruby on Rails

1 May 2019 · How to use Ruby to create GPX and KML map data files.

Flight Historian Version 2.3: Automatic Distance Calculations and GPX/KML Maps

30 Apr 2019 · New and changed features in version 2.3 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Historian.

What I Packed for PAX West 2018

26 Apr 2019 · A guide to packing for conventions.

Size Comparison of NRT and DFW

18 Feb 2019 · This past week, I took a trip to Tokyo via Dallas/Fort Worth. Since I just completed my Tokyo Narita terminal silhouette yesterday, I used it to create a size comparison of the two large airports I visited on my trip.

My “Worst” Layovers

7 Feb 2019 · Using math to figure out which of my layovers were the most out of the way relative to the net distance traveled.

2018 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2018 · A summary of my 2018 hotels, flights, and driving.

Driving Log Version 1.0: A Collection of KMZ Files

1 Dec 2018 · My driving log was originally kept in multiple individual Google Earth files.

Nashville Hex

20 Jul 2018 · After a trip to Nashville, I realized that the city’s central freeways mostly intersect at Y-intersections. That meant that I could draw Nashville’s freeways on a hexagonal grid.

State Abbreviations Graph

8 Jul 2018 · Visualizing which US state abbreviations are one letter different from each other.

A Primer on Car Rentals

29 Apr 2018 · Some tips and tricks for your first car rental.

Interstate Grid

21 Apr 2018 · A visual representation of major cross-country interstate highways on a grid, inspired by Cameron Booth’s “Interstate Highways as a Subway Map.”

Flight Historian Version 2.2: Regions and Flight Lookups

15 Mar 2018 · New and changed features in version 2.2 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Historian.

2017 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2017 · My 2017 travel statistics.

Switching Flight Historian to ICAO Regions

7 Sep 2017 · I used to manually keep track of which airports were within the contiguous United States in Flight Historian’s airport data, but I realized that I could determine airports’ regions by looking at their ICAO codes instead.

PAX West 2016 Area Map

15 Jun 2017 · PAX West spreads out beyond the Washington State Convention Center into many downtown Seattle event spaces. I created a map of convention venues and affiliated hotels.

Flight Historian Version 2.1: Import Flights From Digital Boarding Passes

29 Apr 2017 · New and changed features in version 2.1 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Historian.

Creating Multiple Flash Messages in Ruby on Rails

5 Apr 2017 · On my Flight Historian application, a number of my pages make use of the Ruby flash and flash.now session messages for alerts. However, some of those pages needed to have multiple messages of the same type, which flash didn’t allow me to do. To fix this, I wrote my own messages structure.

Parsing Boarding Pass Dates in Ruby on Rails

16 Jan 2017 · Boarding pass barcodes contain data that’s useful for automatically filling in flight data, but their dates are particularly difficult to parse.

2016 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2016 · Overall, my travel increased slightly this year. Unlike in 2015, my travel was relatively evenly spread throughout the year.

Ohio County Courthouses

4 Jul 2016 · In the summer of 2016, I visited every one of Ohio’s 88 counties.

Time Zone Changes

10 Apr 2016 · With two recent work trips and a five-city European vacation, combined with the changes to summer time in the US and Europe, I’ve gone through quite a few time zone changes in the past six weeks.

Counting Visits to Airports: The Significance of Trip Sections

25 Feb 2016 · Why did I build my own flight log instead of using an existing one? One big contributor was that existing flight logs all seemed to double-count layovers.

Flight Log Version 2.0: Flight Historian

31 Jan 2016 · New and changed features in version 2.0 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Historian.

2015 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2015 · 2015 was a relatively strong year for me for business travel, with the first and last thirds of the year being particularly busy. Due to that, my total flights and hotel nights just edged above 2014’s numbers, for another record year.

No, I’m Not Flying From Honolulu

1 Oct 2015 · Somehow, I managed to get an already used record locator for a trip I booked, which led to some issues on the airline’s website.

Size Comparison of the Busiest US Airports

21 Sep 2015 · The three busiest airports in the United States—Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago-O’Hare—are all enormous, but I was wondering how big they are compared to each other.

Finding Your Tail Number (When You Can’t See It)

13 Sep 2015 · Every aircraft has a unique registration number, usually printed on or near the tail, which you can use to track which specific airplanes you’ve been on.

Creating a Regular Expression for US Tail Numbers

4 Sep 2015 · Each country has its own assigned format for tail numbers, so it’s possible to look at each tail number and determine what country it’s from. I wanted to create a regular expression to recognize US tail numbers.

Turbine Interchanges in Cities: Skylines

18 Apr 2015 · I decided to try to create a 6-way turbine highway interchange in Cities: Skylines.

Flight Log Version 1.3: Distances and Annual Summaries

8 Feb 2015 · New and changed features in version 1.3 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Log.

2014 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2014 · 2014 has been a record travel year.

A Single Flight Round Trip at DFW

7 Nov 2014 · Due to a mechanical issue, my flight had to return to Dallas.

Flight Log Version 1.2: Operators and Codeshares

27 Oct 2014 · New and changed features in version 1.2 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Log.

Tulsa Travel

29 Aug 2014 · It’s not uncommon to have delays going through Chicago, but this Monday’s trip to Tulsa was a bit involved.

Percentage of Flights on American Airlines

31 Jul 2014 · For a while, over half of my total flights had been on American Airlines.

Comair Rerouting

10 Jun 2014 · Comair’s strike meant I got to avoid the uselessly short flight between Cincinnati and Dayton.

Valentine’s Day Winter Weather

17 Feb 2014 · Due to the system delays caused by Winter Storm Pax, my flights home on 14 February went through rather a lot of transitions.

2013 Year in Travel

31 Dec 2013 · The end of 2013 is here, which seems like a perfect time to summarize my flight activity over the last year.

Flight Log Version 1.1: Routes, Top 5 Lists, and More

24 Oct 2013 · New and changed features in version 1.1 of Paul Bogard’s Flight Log.

More Tail Numbers

15 Sep 2013 · I was able to use BTS data to help me fill in a good portion of my missing tail numbers.

One Hundred Airports

16 Aug 2013 · My long-term travel goal is to fly through 100 different airports.

Flight Log Version 1.0: Initial Release

27 Apr 2013 · Features in the initial version of Paul Bogard’s Flight Log.