Back in 2020, my fiancée and I converted a van into a camper, packed up all our belongings and drove across the border to France just before the UK left the EU. We spent the first two years of our adventure travelling around Europe in the van, while also looking for somewhere to call home.
We eventually settled in a tiny 25 m² apartment in an Alpine town, but we still head off on adventures in the van whenever we can.
During those years of travelling, I took a lot of photos. Far too many, in fact, to sort and organise without spending hours filtering through them. So instead, I built this web app.
The idea came from a very simple problem. When a place or story comes up in conversation, I often want to quickly share a photo from that trip. Countless times I've pulled out my phone and started frantically scrolling through thousands of photos trying to find the right one.
More often than not, I don't find it. I scroll past it, can't remember when I took it, or realise it's sitting on an old phone somewhere. By then the conversation has inevitably moved on, so I give up looking and put my phone away.
I'd thought about building something to solve this for a long time. I don't really need my travel photos indexed by date. I need them on a map, so I can go straight to a place and find the photos I took there.
Now that I've had some free time, I've finally turned the idea into something real and thought I'd share it with others.
Right now, this isn't a business, and it might never become one. First and foremost, it's a personal project and part of my portfolio.
I'm a Data Scientist and Web Developer, with experience spanning machine learning, data engineering and software development. Some might call that a "Data Science Unicorn", although I prefer Full Stack Data Science Engineer. The title might not formally exist, but it describes what I do quite well: working across the full stack, from data and modelling through to engineering and the applications people actually use.
And while "ML Engineer" probably covers some of that, I still prefer Data Science. There's a lot more to it than just machine learning.