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.
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."
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.
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.
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
Yes, it's arbitrary, but you're missing the point. The project's objective is to photograph every area of the world. Why not use latitude and longitude confluence? It's a universally understood metric, it gives a pretty diverse snapshot of the world (not too specific, not too broad), and it gives them an easily quantified goal.
Heh - looks like someone has already taken that dare.
"Evenly sampled" is used loosely here. For example, the lucky stiff who gets assigned to one of the poles can take fill in 1/180 (360/64800) of all the data points without taking a step!
A tessellated icosahedron would be better from the standpoint of even sampling, but the coordinate transformations from the GPS-ready latitude and longitude numbers would be prohibitive for most recreational gee-whiz participants.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
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.
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.
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.