Periodically I have to take a break to let the past catch up to the present, or in another words, back up my most recently made maps.

This process is a lengthy one that I’ve got down to a somewhat sophisticated science:

1) Take the source imagery, the source tessellation(s), the full map (usually 18,000 x 12,000 pixels), reduced map (9,000 x 6,000 pixels), and the on-line maps (2 zooms, 2 cuts, and the scaled map) and burn them on to a CD
2) Burn a duplicate copy of the CD
3) Write the CD # on both CDs
4) Enter CD # and map details into a master excel file

Thats it….
…oh wait, no theres …

As easy as it may appear, it takes roughly 20 minutes to back up each map. This includes finding the files, burning both CDs, and entering the meta-data. While I am currently at CD #380, early on I changed the back-up format from DVDs to cd-roms around #30, whereupon I began to back-up the CDs twice. So there are a little over 700 CDs that I’ve created in the last 4 years…

If each CD takes 8 minutes to burn, the total amount of time its taken to burn the maps is:

700 CDs X 8 minutes = 5,600 minutes
5,600 m / 60 m = 93.3 hours
93 hours / 24 hours = 3.8 days

Thats a long time to spent on just backing up the maps!

Also, a few months ago I mentioned that I thought I had made a half mile of maps. After doing some more number crunching, I can say, without a doubt, that I’ve surpassed the half-mile mark and am well on my way to reaching a mile of maps.

Currently the master excel file says:

there are 8,155,257 pixels backed-up
8,155,257 / 150 DPI (pixels per inch) = 54,368.38 inches
54,368.38 / 12 = 4,531 feet backed-up
5,280 – 4,531 = 749 feet left until the mile marker
749 X 12 X 150 = 1,348,200 pixels left
1,348,2000 / 18,000 = 74.9 quilts left to make

Wow.