What started out as a 'I wonder if it is possible' thing is turning in to a 'I wonder how far I can take it' kind of thing.

What we have here is my daily commute to work on a unicycle, through the centre of London, tracked via GPS, and plotted on an interactive Google map.

Click read more to find out more, or click on the map to take you strait to the map

Right, ok, first of all, a typical example of a daily commute to and from work would involve the half a mile from my digs in Leytonstone to the tube station. From here, take the underground to Bethnal Green, at which point I pop back up to street level. I then unicyle along Bethnal Green Road, and at the end, either go left down Bishopsgate, through the City, and out via Bank, Cheapside and High Holborn, or I go strait on through Great Eastern Street, Old Street, and Theobalds Road, and end up in Eagle Street. The journey home is often the 4 mile trip to Bethnal Green tube via the Old Street route and tube back to Leytonstone, or it's the full 8 mile unicycle ride to Leytonstone. This clocks up either 8 or 12 miles in a day, depending on the return route.

After buying a GPS receiver recently to be able to use TomTom on my mobile phone for navigation, I begun to wonder about tracking where I had been, rather than planning where I am going. Once I had this worked out, it was a case of finding a way to get the raw data in to a map form, and then another step to hosting it as an interactive Google map on my website.

What you can see when you click on the map above is the two alternative routes I take in to work, recorded on consecutive days. The initial view is the satellite view, however, this can be change to a street map view, or hybrid of the two by using the drop down box in the top right hand corner of the map. The controls in the top left hand corner allow you to zoom in or out, and to pan around in any direction. You can also use your mouse to pan around by clicking anywhere on the map and dragging it. Clicking on the coloured routes in the Tracks box will also activate/deactivate the individual routes.

The first thing that you will notice is that the alternative route is a fair bit longer than the normal route. I knew it was longer, but hadn't appreciated how much until I saw this for myself. Normally it is about 2 minutes longer, but it's more enjoyable that way. The second thing that you will notice, particularly if you zoom in, is that I seem to go all over the place, and can't stick to one side of the road or another. Well, the GPS receiver I have is typically accurate to 15 meters. However, London does have a lot of tall building, which don't help the accuracy at all. Having studied the maps, there are some bits where the GPS seems to be within a few centimeters of where I actually was, although other bits are wildly out. For example, I actually took the sensible bike route on the left hand side of the road around the City Road/Old Street roundabout, rather then diving off to the north, and the route I took down Bishopsgate was fairly strait without any diversion in to Primrose Street. So, as you are looking at it, just use the coloured lines as a rough guide, but assume a sensible strait line most of the time.

At the moment I am still experimenting with what this can do. There are about a brazillian options of what to do with the data and how to display it, including colourised lines based on speed, altitude plots, waypoint markers, and all sorts of other goodies. I'm planning on getting some decent plots of my regular routes, and of special one off trips, so keep checking back for updates. And if there are any requests you have, just let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

If anyone is interested, I'm also thinking of putting together a more technical page on what I've done, and how you can do it yourself with minimum effort.

In the mean time, please take a moment or three to complete the attached survey. I'm interested to know your thoughts.