Day 303 – Goodbye productivity (part 2)

I first tried Geoguessr back in 2013, but I’ve decided to give it another go now.

Here it is: Geoguessr

Yes, things have changed and you have to pay for it (due to Google charging Geoguessr for using their API, apparently), but it’s still good value with a free trial option and a month to month membership plan.

And in turn, they’ve added some extra games and options, including a Battle Royale, in which you compete against 9 other players from all over the world to see who can identify a country simply from a single Google StreetView shot.

It’s good, harmless, educational fun. And you get to see ice cream tricycles like this one, close to the border in Bangladesh*.

Yeah – you’re not going to miss his arrival, are you?

I now know much more about road markings, signage, internet suffixes, latitude-specific flora, international dialling codes and vehicle number-plates than I have have before (or ever will ever need to again).

And I still mix up Canada and Finland. Always.

 

 

* This is a bit of a bittersweet one for me, as I guessed that it was in India. 20 damn km out. Grr.

Map fact of the day

Chaotic day in the lab today, so thank goodness that my first Brilliant Maps newsletter of 2018 dropped into my inbox this morning, filled with potential blog fodder.

And yes, in there amongst 14 other gems, was this fact:

Greenland is farther east, west, north, and south than Iceland.

Wait. You what? But… how?

Well, like this:

Wow. I’d have used thinner lines. But still: wow.

Pub quiz nerds [it me!] will automatically be thinking of the American states question now:

Which American states are furthest North, South, East and West?

Hawaii is clearly the furthest south, but I can never remember which the other ones are.
My wife has a great memory though, so maybe Alaska.

(And if you didn’t get that, go here.)

Of course, if you leave out the non-contiguous states, that question suddenly becomes a whole lot less interesting
(Minnesota, Florida, Maine, Washington).

Hits

I’m not one of those bloggers who desperately chases hits. Of course, it’s nice to have people read my stuff and I have a daily number that I like to get to (and which is a very modest number, so I usually do), but should I fall short, it’s really not the end of the world.
If I was one of those bloggers who chased hits, I would have given up years ago. It’s simply not working.

I am one of those bloggers who like stats though, and so when I stumbled upon a plugin which offered me my all-time stats, I was never going to say no. So I said yes.

I’m not really sure what “all-time” entails. I know for a fact that it can’t include the early years of ballacorkish.net and 6000 miles… because I wasn’t even using that software back then (also, the numbers really don’t match up). So there’s no indication of how long this is over, which would be helpful. But let’s not get antsy over what is, after all, a free bit of software.

What was most interesting for me was the map. How cool is it that people all over the world have read my blog? Well, I say “all over the world”, but I haven’t reached everyone yet. Because, despite there being absolutely loads of visits to the blog, I am apparently yet to have a documented hit from any of these ten nations, listed in order of population:

North Korea – 25.537m (well, ok)
Niger – 20.671m (infamously mentioned here)
Chad – 14.450m (disappointing from my African brothers)
Turkmenistan – 5.662m (flag with a carpet on; amazing.)
Guinea Bissau – 1.821m (see Chad)
Solomon Islands –0.599m (hey! 600,000 readers can’t be wrong, guys)
Western Sahara – 0.513m (excuse: political upheaval/no internet)
Greenland – 0.056m (2.166 million km² of potential readership)
Falkland Islands – 0.003m (I’m actually surprised at this)
Svalbard – 0.003m (despite constant mentions of Norway on here)

The first visitor from each of these countries/territories will add their homeland to this list of places who have visited 6000 miles… just once:

Iran
Sierra Leone
French Polynesia
Martinique
American Samoa
Tajikistan
Djibouti
Togo
Bhutan
San Marino
Tonga
Benin
St. Martin
Cape Verde

Some impressive French overseas territory representation there. Bonsoir, Rodney. Bonsoir! 

I’m not really sure why I’m sharing this, save to ask that if you are going to any of these places in the near future (North Korea – lol), a quick visit to 6000.co.za would be much appreciated. I’ll also be doing my bit to lever few mentions of outstanding counties into my posts over the next few weeks in a shameless attempt to dominate the globe.

GeoGuessr will ruin your day (but in a nice way)

It wasn’t so long ago that we told you about Pointless Pointing. And yes, that kept us amused for a short while, but it was ultimately pointless, as the name suggested, and we here at 6000 Towers wanted a bit more of a challenge.

Step forward GeoGuessr.

Armed only with a random Google Streetview shot (and some are far more useful than others), you are tasked with choosing where on the planet the image is from and you score points based on how close your guess is.
On occasion, you might get lucky by spotting a flag or a roadsign; others you may have to work out using clues from architecture, vegetation or road markings.

ggs

I guessed at Oklahoma for this one, but it was “just down the road” in Texas. Good effort though.

So far, I’ve been as far afield as Alaska, Hawaii, Australia, Brazil and Finland (in just 2 tries) and my current best score is 11,318 – now 14,781.

So go and have a Geoguess: because you probably had no plans for the rest of the day anyway.

EDIT: This:

from xkcd hits the mark perfectly.