Mapping of the Surgeon's Mate Complete

The events of The Surgeons Mate, rescue by HMS Shannon, a long chase in The Packet Diligence and the final voyage of the HMS Ariel, is complete.

Over a year and a half ago, having taken an unprecedented eight months to map The Fortune of War, I had anticipated:

I hope my distracting forays into other projects will be less frequent for the next one.

Instead, I have managed to distract myself with more and more projects and found myself with less time to work on mapping the cannon than I would like. Despite the distractions, The Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project remains a priority and in the last few months I have managed to build some features that I am very happy with:

• POB Quotes - A free iPhone application to view a selection of quotes and maps from the project.
• Google Maps Version Three - In May, Google announced that the new version of the Google Maps API would replace version two as the production API. Ever since then I have been meaning to upgrade the rather archaic implementation of the project. I managed to do most of this at the recent Google DevFest in Sydney. As of today, that new version is live on the site and you will notice a new look and feel for the maps. I would love to hear your feedback on the new and (hopefully) improved Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project.
• New backend architecture - Part of the work to move over to version three of the maps API involved changing the way the data is stored in the project. You will now find that links to individual map notes (from the title of the map popups) will be more reliable.

Once again I will optimistically declare that the next book will surely be quicker than the last. Time and Tide etc...

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