Slashdot Mirror
Visiting Every Latitude and Longitude Intersection
Kevin A. Pieckiel writes "The Degree Confluence Project's goal is to visit every latitude and logitude degree integer intersection in the world and journal it on this web site. An excerpt: 'The project is an organized sampling of the world. There is a confluence within 49 miles (79 km) of you if you're on the surface of Earth. We've discounted confluences in the oceans and some near the poles, but there are still 12,889 to be found.' A neat project, indeed." As Timothy noted, I've posted before, and in Slashback form; a while back.
...take loads of photos at each one to make a 360 degree photo. would be a nice way of seeing what the world is like.
It would be interesting to see a summary listing spots that are the most extreme in any way.
Simpy
I don't mean to be overly-critical of this, but while I think this is a very interesting idea for a project, but I'm not sure the result is half as interesting as the idea. I think it would be a more interesting read if it were just one person or a small group of people visting all of these intersections.
Actually, that's a lot to read, I think somebody should do the same type of thing, but with intersections of lines that are multiples of ten. I mean, you would still get a reasonably complete view of the world and all of the places in it.
Another idea to make the product of this more interesting would be 360 degree panorama shots at each intersection. Again, this would be somehting more easily accomplished if it were just one person or a small group of people doing this.
I'd be curious about how many of these intersections lie inside of buildings or other private property. Has anyone found an intersection yet that could be unvisitable? You know, something like an intersection in the middle of a military complex or something?
The concept is to produce a photographic record of the world, where the photographed locations are sampled evenly across the surface of the globe. (approximately - they are closer at the poles, but in those cases use only every second or third confluence). This is different to other outdoor photographic collections, where the images have an "artificial" grouping density around points of interest such as mountains, lakes etc. The idea is to produce a set of images where the ratio of "boring" to "beautiful" images approximates how the world is actually like, in terms of area.
Wow, no one has a sense of wonder anymore.
It sounds to me like a great way to use both the internet's worldwide reach and its ease of publishing to do something extrordinary: enable anyone to see any part of this big blue ball of ours. You can read about countries and landmarks in encyclopedias, but you really can't get any idea of just how gigantic and diverse our world is without a project like this.
And how does this qualify as newsworthy on Slashdot?
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Finding Confluences is something that normally requires an understanding of maps, GPSs, or at least a desire to learn something about finding their location.
Sounds geeky to me. Since you are so bored of learning about confluences maybe you should start reading more Slashdot.
I once worked with a fellow who wrote software for ICBM's and he commented that one of the worst places to be in the event of a nuclear exchange was at Lat 0, Long 0 because there where several possible failure modes where the missiles would try to find their way here
People who cannot appreciate something like this cannot be real nerds!
As a member of the Loyal Order of Shellbacks, I can attest that I and the crew of the good ship T.S. Enterprise crossed the equator at 85 degrees West , and 0 degrees North/South. There are many a mariner whom have completed this right of passage across the seven seas, none of whom will forget, either.
I found the "Any" key.
I took two days off work this week to travel from 37.6284 -92.3288 to 37.7503 -923973, spending the night at 37.6950 -92.3067. It was great!
Why is it that when someone comes up with an idea/goal, the Slashdot crowd has to belittle the idea as insignificant? This reminds me of high school when anyone who acted a bit different was made fun of because they didn't go along with the status quo. Yawn.
People, you are hackers/nerds! You are supposed to encourage each other to set goals and follow through on them.
Yes, I am biased. I visited five confluences when I was in Australia. Because I had to change my travel plans for the first confulence visit, I ended up meeting a girl which I dated for a year.
Life is short, go do something with your lives, don't tear down anyone who chooses to follow through on an idea, rather than just sit around and watch reruns of Friends.
There's a confluence about 20 miles southeast of my house. One night I convinced a friend of mine to help me go look for it, so we broke out the GPS and hit the road. After whacking our way through some overgrown forest, the place turned out to be in the middle of some farmer's paddock - I got to within ninteen feet, then cut and ran when an enormous black horse woke up and started stamping its feet at me.
:)
My friend thought I was completely insane, but I know better
I've done one confluence (http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?lat=46&l on=-79) in Ontario now, and attempted a few more. My brother-in-law and I like them because they give us somewhere to go and a reason to go there.
... people are saying it's a waste of time, that this isn't a good project. Whos to say that programming whatever application you're working on isn't the same waste because who cares, theres already 15 other mail clients out there, or 27 other people who have already ported X to Y system .. thats not the point. Stop being so narrow minded.
In fact, I spent a week at the beginning of July trying to get some in Northern Ontario, but gave up. I never realized how swampy and densely tree'd the north is. It was really great to get out and see part of my country, as well as giving us a great appreciation for the people who first settled up there and the hardships they faced.
I highly reccomend everyone pick a confluence and go for it, even if it's done. It's a great excuse to get out and see your country and meet people. All you need is a GPS and some boots. For even more fun, pick somewhere where you get to canoe or kayak, or ski or mountain bike. It's great exercise and can mesh nicely with Geocaching.
Go, get some, and stop being so negative people
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
You do realize that there are, in fact, people already living in all those countries? And it's not all that strange to imagine that they might have cameras and an internet connection.
Have you stopped to think that maybe the point of the project isn't to collect every last damn picture of frozen tundra, but rather to expand their (already absolutely amazing) collection of places that are accessible?
The cynism boggles the mind - they've collected tens of thousnds of images from something like 150 countries, along with precise location and date information; giving you an instant overview of what THE ENTIRE FREAKING GLOBE looks like, and all you can come up with is "they won't be able to get all of Canada"?
sic transit gloria mundi
This is a sister site to this project. It takes a little while to load, but the global map allows you to move your mouse over tiny thumbnails and then a small pop-up of the location, well, pops up.
I liked your retort, and thought this would help answer previous parent's comment that had asked "how is this project any more interesting..."
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
It makes me sad to see all these negative comments about confluence.org. I've been watching the site since it was using all static html pages probably about 5 years ago, the exponential rate at which the US was lit up is absolutely amazing. I never expected the project to take off so fast.
Many contributors do this already. A few times they'll just submit all the individual images, and one of the coordinators will assemble them into a panorama.
I've posted panos from most of the confluences I've personally visited: http://www.confluence.org/visitor.php?id=157
Terje Mathisen
Scandinavian Coordinator The Degree Confluence Project
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
My thought has always been that there aren't enough points to be collected. Sure, it's a better sample of what we have now, but considering the confluences can be dozens of miles apart you can end up skipping entire interesting areas--either interesting for their beauty or for their boringness.
I personally think that they should at least have the option of submitting pictures for every tenth or twentieth of a degree. That way, with the exception of mountainous terrain, the picture from one confluence will include a distant view of surrounding confluences. You end up with a complete photo catalog of the world instead of a rather broken "representation" of the world.
IMHO.