For the past few years I work so damn much that I don't have time to tinker with things. Once in a while the school sends home a letter of a sex offender who has registered in the area. I always go online and check out their information, and see where they live. I always wanted to have a Google Map showing where all these dirtbags live, and tonight I finally had the chance to do it.

So, here is the start of my project. It's a simply Google Map with overlays from an XML file which I generate from a script I wrote to scrape the data from the NY Dept. of Criminal Justice. Currently, I'm only doing my county, but may make a few for surrounding counties.

Hopefully, I'll have more time to work on this, since I have some ideas (custom markers for risk levels, adding where they work, tabbed info windows to show more data, etc...). I'd like to make a good page where parents can visit on occasion to see who is where, and keep their kids safe.

I've always said that the work I generally do is meaningless, but maybe this side project isn't. At the very least, I'm having fun with it.