Vibe Coding to my Travel Map

 

Every dot is a location I've been and taken a photo. When you see it all on a page it shows just how much is left to see!

I spent my career in technology. A 9 year run at Arthur Andersen working on development of a large financial system and then Lotus Notes, Sametime and QuickPlace along with building out a webcasting video platform long before YouTube, Teams, Messenger and Slack came along. Long forgotten names that came out just a few years ahead of their time.

I was fortunate to spend that time with an amazing team and still 24 years after we all worked together miss the camaraderie. I went from that through a winding and dim tunnel to arrive at M&S Technologies where I'd spend the next 21 years, building out solutions for optometry and ophthalmology with our Smart System 2 systems, CTS and SSVR. 

All this to say I've spent a lot of time in software development, much of it prototyping new tech and getting things through proof-of-concept and ready for "real" developers who I'd then attempt to manage. Despite doing COBOL, C++, C# and some Java professionally, it wasn't my strength. Now retired and looking for some winter entertainment I've been experimenting with Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT - building book ideas, designing blog templates, and finally tackling the 200,000+ photos I've taken over 30 years.

With GPS Data embedded in the EXIF data in many of my photos I tried Gemini to extract the data so that I could see some nerdy photographer data like which focal lengths I prefer, but I also extracted the locations.  I had Gemini write Python code that I could then modify to better suit me and arrived at a pretty great map of my travels. 

I've loved to travel since I was a young kid and did some amazing road trips around the US as a child. My adult life had me traveling both personally, but always hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles professionally. I'm a Million Miler on United, with another 300,000-400,000 miles on assorted other carriers. I really wanted to see it all laid out - the visual record of my adult life on a map.

Realizing that there were photos in Google Photos that weren't on my PC I looked for ways to extract the information from Google, but they make it hard to extract locations because of privacy concerns.  However, Google Takeout lets you download everything with JSON files for photos with information that can then be analyzed.  After a bit of trial and error and eliminating a few spurious locations such as Null Island I had my map!

Null Island, for geography nerds is 0°,0° where the Prime Meridian intersects the Equator. Sometimes rather than inserting a Null or NA or just nothing, the EXIF data will get 0,0 which is then mapped to this location off the south coast of Ghana. 

Having worked in 45 states and visited all 50, and done the same in nearly 20 countries while visiting another 35 on the 6 major continents I thought I had seen a good chunk of the world. When you see it all out there, though, it shows just how much left to see there is. Hopefully the world political climate will change in the years ahead some big areas of this map will be filled in with more color. There's still so much more to see and so few years yet to see it!

Vibe coding the Python needed to do this was absurdly fun.  It probably helps that I know how to describe what a program should do after decades of explaining features and functions to talented developers, but I was stunned at just how quickly it could generate code.  I've worked on some Android apps in Android Studio connected to Gemini and in a few hours put together an app that would have taken me 1-2 weeks to write from scratch. It is mind boggling.

I started by asking Gemini to write a Python script to extract all of the EXIF data to a CSV that can easily imported into Excel. Then I had it write a second script to extract the GPS data and create the map.  Realizing that a lot of my photos from my phone were in Google Photos I faced the challenge that I could not just have Gemini extract the information already in Googles ecosystem. I had to download all of the files.  225 GB worth of photos! 114 zip files.  It took nearly 12 hours to create the zips and all morning to download them! Then another script to extract the data, create a new map and see where I'd been! Once I understood how it worked, I added some locations that I visited where I didn't have GPS data in the photos and arrived at a finished map. 

It is a bit humbling to see it all in one image. 

Detailed US map where the lines of interstates  I-80, I-90, I-10, I-40 and more are clearly shown indicating road trips across the country!

I'm not sure what this means for new CS students and grads. It is great so much can be generated, but debugging and optimizing? I think my University of Illinois education still gives me the tools to know what to do, but how soon will I be superfluous? Oh, I'm retired. Question answered.

Kevin

Collecting

As a kid, I was never able to collect anything. No—I take that back. I had a small penny collection. For a few weeks, my dad brought home rolls of pennies and sometimes nickels, and we’d search for wheat-back pennies and any missing coins from my little brown, fold-up book. I had most of the pennies between 1956 and 1982, and a few steel wartime cents.

I think it was the prospect of finding the needle in the haystack that propelled me—that if I searched hard enough, I’d find something valuable nestled in a paper tube with 49 other cents.

But baseball cards? Hot Wheels? Matchbox cars? Knives? No. Sure, we had Star Wars action figures, but just enough to act out adventures, arriving at random birthdays or holidays.

Maybe my mild hoarding—random and scattershot as it is—is a way of collecting. A collection of the everyday. Tic Tac boxes. Altoids tins. Every book I’ve purchased. Am I secretly building a unified collection of ephemera? Or am I just a mild hoarder?

I thought maybe I’d found my way into collecting with watches. After getting into a watch podcast in 2019, I joined a community of enthusiasts and, over time, doubled the number of watches in my drawer. Was I becoming a collector? Once the number crossed ten, was I officially one?

Let’s take a step back. I’ve worn a watch nearly every day since I was six. Without giving away too much, I’m well past that now—well beyond the halfway point.

When I was struggling with anxiety over my parents moving again, they gave me a small 28mm Timex manual-wind watch so that, at school, I could always know how long it would be until they came back for me. If that sounds ridiculous, consider this: I went to three kindergartens before I turned six. Anxiety has always been a feature of my life. So have watches.

I still have almost every watch I’ve ever worn. Early digital. Early ani-digi. Manual. Quartz. Automatic—they’re all in a box.

But is it a collection? I don’t know. I don’t part with things. Books. Bikes. Cameras. Telescopes. Watches. I don’t cycle through them—I keep them.

The longer I’ve spent in the enthusiast world, the more I’ve realized watches are an accessory to my life—maybe more a touchstone—but I’m not enthused the way others are. I don’t debate whether something should be 1mm larger or smaller. Thinner. Lighter. Blue. Pink. Purple. I’m not fixated on Swiss or Japanese or German. And as an early retiree, Rolex or Omega is probably out of reach anyway.

Lately, I’ve started to think I might be done collecting watches.

But I do love them. I love wearing them. I love knowing that certain pieces have been with me on particular adventures, at pivotal moments. If I had to run into the house for anything—after my wife, dog, and passport—it would be that early Timex and a cheap-ish quartz Tissot chronograph that’s been with me to 30-plus countries.

And maybe that’s the answer. Maybe what I collect isn’t watches—it’s the moments attached to them.

Completeness in travel matters to me. I’ve been to all 50 U.S. states—finished just after turning 35. I’ve worked in 45 states, plus Puerto Rico. I’ve worked in nearly 20 countries, across all six “major” continents, plus the subcontinent. Antarctica is still out there, and I can feel the pull of it—the need to complete the set.

I’ve even had a Wisconsin Old Fashioned in every supper club in Door County.

So maybe I was wrong at the start. Maybe I’m not a collector of things, or even a mild hoarder. Maybe I just collect differently.

Not baseball cards. Not Matchbox cars.

Experiences. Places. Moments.

Maybe that’s enough.

Kevin Butler - London 2021

Through the storm

On Saturday night, a winter storm swept over the Door peninsula. We woke to inches of snow that even bi-hourly shoveling and blowing could not constrain. By Sunday afternoon, the snow was more than the snowblower could handle and I was reduced to shoveling a path out the door and a spot for Gus to use as his winter latrine. He was not amused with the 35+ mph winds and driving snow. 

Monday the blizzard continued and despite putting in trails the snow was hip-deep in the yard. Tuesday we were due to drive to Chicago for the Matt Berninger concert at Park West, but we had 3-4 feet drifts across our drive and our cars were snowed in. Finally on Wednesday afternoon, 3/18/2026, we were plowed and set free!

It is a strange feeling being snow-bound. Not even being able to walk to the road except through hip-deep snow. It is quiet. There are no cars. The only sound is the wind blowing at 35 miles per hour, building the snow into more than it seemed. More than the record-setting 33 inches. The lack of traffic feels like early in the lock-down in 2020. Where nothing moved. Except this would have an end. The snow will indeed melt. Most likely soon. But nothing moved. 

I trudged through the drifts to the garage and then to the bird feeder. It isn't not the birds' fault that Mother Nature covered their thawing ground leaving them without much food. Within hours they were huddled under the feeder or on the feeder, taking turns, refueling. 

The snow will melt. Spring will come. We'll joke about this in the years to come. But for now, it feels like all of us here survived something. 

Kevin

The drive and porch

The road with limited visibility

Looking north

The garage is unreachable

The best path I could dig

After the storm, a wonderful sunset on Monday afternoon

 

King Tut's Tomb

Just over a year ago I had the privilege to go to Egypt, see the Pyramids and cruise the Nile from Luxor. Having wanted to visit the Valley of the Kings since childhood, getting to descend into King Tut's Tomb was a culmination of many dreams. I'll have more to say about Egypt in the days ahead, but for now the pictures are at my photo and poetry blog imatalossforwords.com

Descending into King Tut's Tomb

Kevin Butler and the Temple of Doom Scrolling

Mexico 2026

One of my resolutions for 2026 was to stop endless scrolling on my phone. At just over two months into the year it is time to take stock of the progress or lack thereof. I would argue that I'm not a "Doomscroller" really. Really I'm not.  I'm just a news junkie. Or maybe in these current times it is important to stay on top of the news. I wonder what is happening in Iran right now. I should go check.

Ok, I'm back. Nothing new in the headlines. 

I got rid of the Google News feed from my phone so I'm not being pulled down that rabbit hole. Google knows me well enough to serve up a smörgåsbord of interesting stories from cycling and photography to early retirement and technology. It was easy to get pulled in for an hour when I just planned to "check the news". But the WSJ app? The Daily Mail for my UK tabloid press? Those are still there to pull me back. And if that weren't enough, a Slack group with channels neatly tailored to nearly all of my interests.

The James Bond films were not part of my childhood. Between the lothario James Bond and his questionable, one might argue, "morals", I missed the classics. So in 2026 I have endeavored to go through them in order to see what I was missing. I loved the Ian Fleming novels. I sped through them one summer so quickly I should probably read the cycle again. I guess where I'm heading with this, is that while watching the Bond films, I find my attention drawn away to my phone. What's new? What's interesting? What watch should I buy next? Do I need a new camera lens?  I'm missing the cinematography and nuance because my attention is elsewhere. And it isn't just Bond. It is everywhere.

I've spent a year reading the story of the British quest for Everest in the years after the Great War. Into the Silence demands attention. I need to finish it. The writing deserves more attention than I'd give my phone. It is just that good. But my phone is always there! Always bright and shiny and new.

What's the solution? Other than feeling like a failure at the 18% mark of 2026? I still have 82% of the year to correct course. 

1. I've put a book downstairs by the couch where I cuddle up with the dog. The Dig Tree on the exploration of the center of the Australian continent in the 1860's is there to give an alternative to phone. 
2. I need to finish Into the Silence and feel the satisfaction that comes from completing something big. Then find the next big book to read! 
3. Start working down my list of personal chores. I have a long list of things I need to do so that the bikes are ready for the outdoor cycling season that will hopefully start soon. I have decades of digital photos to organize and last year's travel photos of Egypt along with France and Northern Ireland to process, print or post.
4. Get on the house projects that simply require "doing". Last year was my first year of  true retirement and ChatGPT helped me reflect on the year and remarked it was a year of decompression from a high stress career. That was a spot-on assessment.  Now that I've decompressed, however, it is time to start taking action in life rather than coasting through the days.

We'll circle back in a few months and see how this feels.

What are your solutions? Comment on this post and let me know!