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Talking of maps, I was looking for a place in Washington this afternoon and noticed a VERY rude word in the URL.

http://www.mapblast.com/(fyfuckuzldzflgqx1qop0cbz) /map.aspx?L=USA&C=47.18924%2c-122.22320&A=7.16667& P=|47.18924%2c-122.22320|1|154th+Ave+Ct+E%2c+Sumne r%2c+WA+98390|L1|

You'll notice it actually says Fuck You (which is kind of appropriate seeing as MapBlast is owned my Microsoft).

Imagine the horror if the Pope or someone in the White House was to see this terrible terrible word in their address bar.

I wonder if anyone has seen others that are, gasp, worse??

Why is this impressive again?
http://www.mapblast.com/(twfo4ersjb5dnnzlt14305eq) /map.aspx?L=EUR&C=51.31331%2C-0.74519&A=7.16667&P= %7C51.31331%2C-0.74519%7C1%7C68+Frimley+High+St%2C +Frimley%2C+Camberley+GU16+7%7CL1%7C/

Oh thats right, its google, we should predend its new and/or unique.

I think they're talking about MSN'sMapblast. MS bought them a while back and made it part of their MSN services.

I don't know how much they paid, but here's an example of a formerly-good service being bought by Microsoft and replaced by crap: Mapblast.com.

It looks like a great service, except for one thing:

Just like yahoo (aka Yahoo Maps) and many other online services, google uses MapQuest to provide directions.

I wish more sites would instead start using the company formerly known as MapBlast/Vicinity. Their Line Drive maps are much easier to use, and their directions are much better, at least based on extensive personal experience.

Granted, they got bought by the Beast, but the technology still works...

I wonder what Mapblast is doing wrong that the consistently inferior service gets consistently greater exposure and linkage?

Maybe one of these days I can figure out a way to turn a link like this into a link like this

Maybe a combination of a hosts file entry and a quickie PHP script on my personal Web server to parse and redirect... Or would that be considered a violation of the DMCA? *grin*

Okay, yes, I fully admit that it's cool to map the internet in one day. Regardless...I think I hear about some internet every other day.

There's John Quarterman who's been doing it for years, and then the CAIDA visualization tools, and Cybergeography and the Internet weather report and damn maps and more maps.

Note to everyone: please stop mapping the internet.

mapquest is one big mother fucking BITCH for canadians (and probably other international users as well). Even if you go to mapquest.ca and search for Montreal (a 3million person plus canadian city) it shows some shitty little town of montreal, idaho or something. What the fuck mapquest? You suck.

I've always liked Mapblast and its Line Drive directions.
Mapblast was recently acquired by Microsoft and renamed "MSN Maps and Directions", but it's still a good service. The Line Drive directions simply show you the turns with cross-streets, and mileages between each waypoint, without anything else cluttering up the map.

In the UK: My vote is for Line Drive on Mapblast for directions, and streetmap.co.uk for er, street-type maps.

Line Drive is surprisingly accurate (to 1/10 mile) if you reset your mileometer at every turning and reference point, and follow the distances. But who does that? (A: me, I'm a navigational klutz and need all the help I can get)... MapKlutz Hint: Do a return journey route too...

...Oh, and MS bought Mapblast, so it sucks now (sorry, forget where I was for a minute!)

>I'm in Ontario as well. I'm tempted to pay a visit to his offices..

Here's a map of his hometown (you can zoom in if you want). He lives in the middle of nowhere, Ontario.

This might be his home address and phone number (I can't be sure, so you make sure). Note that if it is, he's just a country bumpkin, and that houses in the country don't have buried lines (bring your pole climbing boots). :-)

Click the red X on this map... Map Egg

For some time I've been working on a contingency plan for the event that I might end up unemployed.
A major part of it is this trip - just under 6500 miles covering many places I've been before, or would love to go to.
I estimate it would take about 3 months to do properly, so that I could enjoy everything I could without having to rush through it.

I figure camping along the coast of Lake Superior by Wawa would be a great start.
I've spent many a week off in the summer camping there, and never run out of things to see. [Pictures/Writeup of a recent trip].

After that, it would be a westward run along highway 1 accross the canadian shield towards Clagary, Banff, and Jasper.

I probably would dip towards the south as I approached Calgary, to pass through Fort Macleod so that I could visit the Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump again, before I lingered for a couple of weeks around Banff and Jasper.
I have only been in this area twice, once about 9 years ago as part of the last long road trip I took with my parents, and last year with a friend [Pictures]. The Banff and Jasper parks are amazing. The Icefields Parkway is Breathtaking. I could probably spend every summer out here for the rest of my life, and never get bored or stop discovering new things.

When it was finally time to move on, I would push on to the west coast, and gradually wander southward along the coast from Vancouver, to Los Angeles.
I intend to try out a small chunk of this part of the run in July, taking a week to drive between Los Angeles and SanFrancisco (and back) with my brother.

After this, everything gets vague. I could swing south, and see Mesa Verde for the first time since middle school, take the central route and revisit Dinosaur National Monument, or swing to the north and rexperience the solitude of the badlands. I probably wouldn't decide until I reached LA.

Mapbast gives you the lat/lon of any address you give in the corner of the map. It even will make your directions into GPS routes with a little tweaking. Combine with a $90 eTrex for a cheap OnStar system.

Besides, it's line-drive directions are the coolest.

"These Micronians are completely ignorant of space-war tactics. Their population centers are far to close together to allow them to survive an orbital bombardment."

Heh, it's obvious you know nothing about Canada ;^). Canada is the country where this is the least true. In Toronto it probably feels like the population is dense, but come to London, England and you'll be roadkill in no time. Even 50 miles away from the city centre the population density and traffic is worse than Yonge St. at rush hour (trust me, I know).

If you want to survive orbital bombardment then go east on the 401 for 100 miles, turn left at Belleville onto Route 37, then right when the road ends onto Route 7. Continue for 80 miles to Kaladar, a town of 80 people, most of these are farmers that ended up in this count by accident. This town is 200 metres wide, has a gas station, a small convenience store and restaurant inside the gas station, and a hotel which is in fact a poorly disguised barn.

Remember, living in large cities is vulnerable to orbital bombardment, but living in a place like Kaladar makes you vulnerable to alien abduction. Now tell me honestly, which one is more dangerous?

"These Micronians are completely ignorant of space-war tactics. Their population centers are far to close together to allow them to survive an orbital bombardment."

Heh, it's obvious you know nothing about Canada ;^). Canada is the country where this is the least true. In Toronto it probably feels like the population is dense, but come to London, England and you'll be roadkill in no time. Even 50 miles away from the city centre the population density and traffic is worse than Yonge St. at rush hour (trust me, I know).

If you want to survive orbital bombardment then go east on the 401 for 100 miles, turn left at Belleville onto Route 37, then right when the road ends onto Route 7. Continue for 80 miles to Kaladar, a town of 80 people, most of these are farmers that ended up in this count by accident. This town is 200 metres wide, has a gas station, a small convenience store and restaurant inside the gas station, and a hotel which is in fact a poorly disguised barn.

Remember, living in large cities is vulnerable to orbital bombardment, but living in a place like Kaladar makes you vulnerable to alien abduction. Now tell me honestly, which one is more dangerous?

Or how about the nifty new route I found from Chico to Placerville?

Sorry.

--
Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.

It will also tell you where the nearest Starbucks is, which could be useful depending on how open their wireless lan access is (intentionally or not :-).

An overview map can be found here.

If anyone cares, I looked this up on Map Blast and Terra Server. What purpose this has, I don't know,but it was still kind of cool. I can't tell if the building is residential or commercial so who knows if it is a scam or running out of someone's bedroom.

If you dont like that much preperation, try the local asian food market for some import ramen. I reccomend KimChi Spicy Bowl Noodle.

I second this - that stuff rocks! I'm lucky enough to have an asian food market across the street from me so I get to experience a wide variety of dried noodle products!

One that I've been eating a lot lately is called "Super Bowl" ( picture ). It's pretty good - several chunks of noodles, several seasoning packets, and a plastic fork enclosed in a handy container. One of these will fill me up when I've forgotten to eat all day, and I need to eat something fast.

Basically everyone who was 514 is now 450 except for the island of Montreal.
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USGS page

6.6 preliminary mag at 02:46:45 PDT

Looks like it was just south of I-40 near Ludlow, CA.

Location via Mapbast