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My friends Robert (of Raincity Studios, who designed this site) and Kris are in China on a Web 2.0 field trip. The lucky bastards.
They're both talented photographers, and they're taking a ton of photographs from the far east. You can check out both Kris's and Robert's.
WARNING: X-Men: The Last Stand Spoilers Ahead. Abandon hope, all ye who enter and have not seen the movie.
In the third act of X-Men: The Last Stand, metal morphin' mutant Magneto moves the Golden Gate Bridge from its original location to a new spot, where it connects Alcatraz to the mainland.
It's a super-fancy special effect, but I immediately wondered: would the bridge actually span that distance? I'm no engineer, so let's leave structural integrity issues aside.
I decided to ask Gmaps Pedometer. Here's the original path of the bridge, which is apparently about 1.7 km:
And here, roughly, is where Magneto plants the bridge. I picked the shortest distance I could find. I also ensured that the end of bridge would sit on solid ground, which might not be a requirement.
As you can see, that distance is apparently slightly more than 2 km. I suppose if you didn't mind starting off your walk to Alcatraz on one of the piers, you might be okay.
The official line from Wikipedia is that the bridge is 2.7 km, 'including approach'. Surely much of the approach is concrete, and Magneto probably couldn't move those bits.
More importantly, the distance between the spans is only 1.2 km. If I recall correctly, the bad guys walk off the bridge just past one such span. They clearly didn't bring all 2.7 km of the bridge with them. I suppose Magneto could have stretched the bridge so that it was long enough.
I have precious little GPS experience. I guess I've never gone far enough off the beatn path to require it. Plus, my car rarely leaves the confines of Vancouver, so it's not like I need GPS to guide me through, say, downtown Los Angeles.
Brian Utley has written a short article explaining how GPS works, complete with nifty illustration:
The GPS systems consists of a constellation of 24 satellites circling the earth at an altitude of about 12,000 miles. Each satellite will orbit the earth twice a day, orbiting approximately the same position on each second orbit. This is important because it makes it possible to create a calendar of appearances for any given spot on earth.
Maybe I'll buy one of those badboys and set out to get seriously lost.
Travis points to World Hum's countdown of the top 30 travel books (meaning literature, as opposed to guides):
This month marks World Hum’s five-year anniversary. Whew. Even we can’t believe we’ve made it this far. To celebrate, we asked some of our favorite writers and contributors to help us come up with the top literary travel books of all time—the kind of books that transcend travelogues, that inspire distant wanderings, that change lives.
They're down to #9. Though I quite like travel literature, I've only read two of the 22 books they've listed so far. Maybe I should make it a project to read the whole list?
I'm currently listening to an audiobook of The Da Vinci Code. Yes, I'm ashamed. I, uh, obtained it for free–that's my only excuse. Yes, it's the worst written book I've read in a long, long time.
Via Gadling, Tara Dooley (Irish much?) took a trip in the steps of The Da Vinci Code protagonists:
After more than a week of travel, I can recommend three compelling reasons to follow The Da Vinci Code route: Paris, London and Edinburgh. It's a trip that, if taken in order, starts with the grandeur of Parisian boulevards, below a statue of Napoleon. It then moves to busy London, a modern, lived-in city with its imperial past etched into the landscape. The exploration ends with the bucolic mystery of Scotland.
The film opens tomorrow, but it's already getting extremely mixed reviews from the critics.
For the geeky angle, here's a layman's analysis of the science and technology behind the book.
Schmap offers nifty guidebook functionality on your desktop (Windows-only) PC. Basically, you install this little freeware app called the Schmap player, and then download guides for the cities you want to visit:
Every Schmap Guide comes with dynamic maps, useful links, playable tours, top picks, plus photos and reviews for 100s of sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants, bars, parks, theaters, galleries, museums…
The map functionality and controls are well-designed, and very intuitive to use. I like that you can easily measure distances, print and email maps, and overlay various businesses and landmarks from any view.
The rest of the UI could be simplified, and I found I got (ironically) a little lost in all the tabs, buttons and maps. The software is in beta, so I'm willing to forgive a certain degree of befuddlement.
Presumably, the Schmap folks' longterm goal is to get the player off the desktop and on to some mobile devices. That's when it would prove really useful. Still, it's innovation in a space–travel guidebooks–that's felt pretty static in recent years.
I first heard about Schmap when they contacted me about using a couple of my photos for their guides (I forget which ones now).
Via Waxy, I encountered this hilarious story of Matt, who got in trouble while dancing at the Parthenon:
I’ll admit that as the dancing video goes, standing in front of the ancient stuff is largely obligatory. There are places like Angkor Wat and Abu Simbel that leave me truly astonished. They have a magical quality. But the Taj Mahal? Pyramids? Parthenon? To me, it’s just a pile of rocks that doesn’t say anything worth saying.
In the comments that follow the story, there's some debate as to how much of an ignorant tourist Matt was or was not. I wasn't sure, but this is what I had to say:
I'm of two minds on this. Would you dance anywhere? Would you dance in Notre Dame? Would you dance at the Vietnam Memorial? Would you dance in Flanders Fields?
I'm not arguing for or against the law–clearly that was an overreaction by the Greeks.
I am arguing for being a respectful visitor. This is the question you should ask, and find an answer to before you indugle any, well, unorthodox behaviour:
"Would a majority of locals consider my actions disrespectful?"
If the answer is yes, and you proceed with your behaviour anyway, that doesn't reflect very well on you, does it? And I'm afraid that, like it or not (and particularly when you're American), when you travel, you're also a representative of your country.
I don't know what the answer is in this case. I've been to the Parthenon, and (despite being there when it was largely empty, on Christmas eve), I wasn't struck by the contemporary spirituality of the place. But, then, I'm not Greek, so I have no say in the matter.
You know, I link to Lee and Sachi's blog a lot, but that's because there doing such cool stuff on their round-the-world trip. Most recently, they travelled on a bullet train in Japan. Here's a little video that conveys the speed:
I'm very happy with the iSkin I bought for it. I don't care about whether my iPod gets scratches or dings (as this photo of my old device clearly indicates). I just wanted a belt clip to use while exercising, and this was the only Nano-compatible accessory the store had.
The iSkin is essentially a little condom for your iPod. It's a rubber sheath that you wedge your device into (heh). It comes complete with a little plastic window that covers your iPod screen.
The belt clip works very well, and the condom would certainly protect my iPod from anything short of a knife fight. However, I discovered one great side effect. One of my frustrations with my old iPod was that I was constantly turning the lock switch on and off, to stop myself from erroneously pressing buttons or the click wheel. The iSkin has the same effect, as you need to exert more pressure to operate the iPod's controls. Now the lock switch always stays in the 'unlocked' position.
The one downside of the iSkin is that my condomed iPod won't fit into its dock anymore.
Thanks to Tim for the photo.
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