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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.
Why?
How is this project any more interesting or useful than a confluence of any other human-specified arbitrary classification, e.g. visiting every peak who altitude in cubits is a prime number?
Some of these are going to be on private property and restricted access (e.g. military) sites. A local GeoCache was on a confluence, but pulled because it was on private property. Probably best to ask permission before tresspassing, lest the intrepid explorer find their butt full of rocksalt or buckshot.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Assuming the girls know about the extra relationships, and are ok with it, that's a lot of latitude!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, if you live in the area and are looking for some place to hike, a Confluence is as good a goal as many other hiking locations.
And it'll be off the beaten path.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Maybe they should ask the guy who's visiting each Starbucks in the country before leaving?
Random pictures at arbitrary points on the planet.
Sounds just like every other photo blog.
I found every single one of them. They're all right here on my globe.
I'd have more respect if they visited every White Castle or all of the Ikea stores.
Here's something close: Project Denny's
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?
Good luck, you'll need it!
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.
Never mind- it's been visited, along with every other non-ocean Oregon confluence.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
Hasn't another project already acheived this and begun interpolation?
And on top of that, we already have another project to visit all those locations, which have have been marked with a retail location by the previous project.
So while some redundancy may be a good thing, this sounds like overkill.
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!
.... with so many uber parochials as yourself.
You can take your camera to Iran and Tibet, no problems.
Even to North Korea, if you apply for the right permisions and follow the instructions of your guard.
Turkmenistan is tough but not impossible.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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!
I'll agree with North Korea. But Exactly what is th eproblem with Tibet? A lot of tourists are travelling there, there is no problems going there. How do you think all those souvernir salesmen in Lhasa make their living?
And Iran is, even though your president called it part of some fictious axes of evil, a very open and friendly place. In fact, it's probably the most "advanced" society in the middle east.
Stop watching Fox News and switch to Discovery or something instead. Or even better, try to travel outside your continent.
Even in places where you CAN go (politcally, legally) you still can't (logistically) like the whole north half of friggin Canada or Siberia.
You do know that Canada isn't bone-chilling cold year round, right? People live in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. People hunt there, people mine there. There are few places that would be nearly impossible to get to.
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'm posting from Mars, you insensitive clod!
The worst part is that it's almost impossible to get a first post from here...
Find free books.
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
It shows that, despite all the sprawl and overpopulation of the 20th century, most of the Earth is still not paved over with freeways, slums, or hamburger stands. Which is nice to know.
>;k
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.
This project would be a lot easier if they were working in the more natural units of radians rather than degrees. :)
I would hike there, but the path was already beaten, apparently into submission.
Thanks!
- Osama
When you get down to it, angle measure in integers refers to radians. At 2 * pi radians all the way around the earth, there aren't *that* many intersections of integers.
But do people living at an intersection even know that. It doesn't look like anyone makes a point of it.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Nope, still one degree.
Which also defines 60 nautical miles. A nautical mile (a minute of latitude) is usually accepted to be constant at 1852 metres (or meters). But due to the flattening at the poles, I am pretty sure this is not true. So the answer is yes, they get closer from the equator to the pole.
Doing the maths on a modern datum, I found 1854 m at the equator and 1850m at the poles.
Anyone concur?
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"
Your next project will be to shake hands of everybody in the world in alphabetic order. Start with your own town as a pilot study.
You don't need fancy math to answer the first question. There are 360 1-degree lines, therefore the distance between the lines at the equator is 1/360th of the circumference of the earth, i.e., 24900/360 = 69.16 miles.
"a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point" -- www.m-w.com (Merriam-Webster)
Nowhere does this definition appear to preclude the things which 'flow together', 'meet' or 'gather' from continuing separately. Nor is the square/normal nature of the meeting excluded by this definition.
Out of curiosity, what dictionary did you consult?
Eric Lincoln
Degree Confluence Project