I’m not really the romantic type but every now and again I feel it is nice to show the lady I love that she is special to me. Unfortunately, this is not always the easiest task and planning for a special night out can be frustrating. After working at FortiusOne for over a year it dawned on me that Finder! and Maker! can be used easily in making plans for my special lady.

So far my plan looks like this. On my way home from work I want to stop and get flowers, arrive home with flowers in hand, hop with my lady onto the metro, find a very nice restaurant in DC, and go to a show of some sort. My big concern is that I want places that are relatively close to one another and along the metro line. Let’s see how I do.

First I’ll start with flowers. Since I take the Metro to work, I need to find a florist that is somewhere along my commute home. My first task is to map florists in DC and compare those locations with my metro ride home. I found a website called www.locateaflowershop.com, located all the florists that they had listed in Washington DC, and mapped them using a geocoder at www.gpsvisualizer.com. I then created a map of all the DC Metro Stations that are on my daily Metro Commute. The map below shows my metro ride with the orange dots being all the flower shop locations in DC and the black squares as metro stations.

I found a shop right next to the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan station. By combining the two sets of data, I am easily able to find the ideal place to get flowers.

Now I must decide on dinner and a show. My first decision will be the show. I came across the website for the Washington Performing Arts Society, which gives a listing of venue sites. I went ahead and mapped these locations using the geocoder at gpsvisualizer (dark squares). I then paired this with a listing of the Washingtonian Top 100 Restaurants of 2008, which I again mapped by lat/lon through gpsvisualizer (yellow dots). Along with this, I mapped out the metro ride I would take from my place at Grosvenor-Strathmore to Union Station on the Red Line (white dots) and a dinner and a show in Washington DC.

From observing what I have mapped, it appears my best bet would be to see a show at the Harman Center for the Arts because of the vast amount of top restaurants in its surrounding area. Also the Gallery Place – Chinatown stop is about two blocks away and will be a short walk from the metro stop to the show.

Many other elements could be added or taken away from this situation to best find the ideal night out for you. All you need are locations of events and/or venues that you want to go to. Then you load this data onto Finder!, map all of these spots together onto Maker!, and then visually view the data to make decisions for your perfect night out.

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