Dan Q

Category: Personal

Earth-Moon Fire Pole

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Earth-Moon Fire Pole (what-if.xkcd.com)

Earth-Moon Fire Pole My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman’s pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth? Ramon Schönborn, Germany First, let’s get a few things out of the way: In…

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How To Set Up an OSRM Server on Ubuntu 14.04

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

How To Set Up an OSRM Server on Ubuntu 14.04 | DigitalOcean (DigitalOcean)

The OpenStreetMap project consists of raw map data, collected and aggregated by thousands of users. This tutorial covers the configuration and maintenance of a web service using Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM), which is based on the OpenStreetMap d

The OpenStreetMap project consists of raw map data, collected and aggregated by thousands of users. However, its open access policy sparked a number of collateral projects, which collectively cover many of the features typically offered by commercial mapping services.

The most obvious advantage in using OpenStreetMap-based software over a commercial solution is economical convenience, because OpenStreetMap comes as free (both as in beer and as in speech) software. The downside is that it takes a little configuration in order to setup a working web service.

This tutorial covers the configuration and maintenance of a web service which can answer questions such as:

  • What is the closest street to a given pair of coordinates?
  • What’s the best way to get from point A to point B?
  • How long does it take to get from point A to point B with a car, or by foot?

The software that makes this possible is an open-source project called Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM), which is based on the OpenStreetMap data. Functionalities to embed OpenStreetMaps in Web pages are already provided out-of-the-box by APIs such as OpenLayers.

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While slightly dated, I found this guide to be really valuable in my effort to set up a server that could spit out fastest walking routes around Oxford to support a PWA-driven tour of places relevant to J. R. R. Tolkien’s life, at my “day job”.

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Maps Showing California as an Island – The Public Domain Review

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/maps-showing-california-as-an-island/ (publicdomainreview.org)

If California were a country its economy would be the fifth largest in the world (just ahead of the UK). Yet the tech boom is not the starkest way California has ever stood apart from its neighbours. That would surely be the maps depicting it as an island, entire of itself. Below we have featured our pick of these glorious seventeenth- and eighteenth-century aberrations, from a collection of hundreds held at Stanford.

The intriguing story of how the maps came to be deserves a little mapping itself. In the 1530s Spanish explorers led by Hernán Cortés encountered the strip of land we now know as the Baja Peninsula. They mistook it for an island and called it California.

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Dan Q found OK0372 Mandala

This checkin to OK0372 Mandala reflects an opencache.uk log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A moment of joy and serenity on my otherwise-uninspiring cycle to work. A wonder I’ve never been down this end of Plantation Road before, given that I’m a fan of the Gardner’s Arms further along it and there are certainly journeys I’ve taken to or from there that would have been just as easy to take via this end of the quaint street.

I tried looking at the mandala image in two different cardinal directions, and saw that it appeared in two different ways. Upright, it seems as though an infinity symbol divided (but you can divide infinity forever and still have an infinity), but rotated 90° it’s more like an hourglass suspended in a rotating frame (and so able to be flipped and started again). Either way, the metaphor to me is one of time.

Thanks for the cache; I hope more people get to find their way to this magical little corner.

Dan Q found OK0022 Copdock Hill

This checkin to OK0022 Copdock Hill reflects an opencache.uk log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A planned break from my journey from Oxford to Preston gave me the opportunity for a sunset hill climb in this beautiful setting. Almost as if to congratulate me, the second I returned the log to the cache container somebody far to the South West started setting off fireworks (barely audible from this distance, but definitely visible from this altitude!): I must be doing something right! TFTC.

Dan Q found GLVVQ0XX Copdock Hill

This checkin to GLVVQ0XX Copdock Hill reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A planned break from my journey from Oxford to Preston gave me the opportunity for a sunset hill climb in this beautiful setting. Almost as if to congratulate me, the second I returned the log to the cache container somebody far to the South West started setting off fireworks (barely audible from this distance, but definitely visible from this altitude!): I must be doing something right! TFTC.

Dan Q found GLVVQ1AY Not up or Down

This checkin to GLVVQ1AY Not up or Down reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

On my way back down after finding GC18RNH I thought I’d try my luck at this cache, too. The sun had set and I thought my luck would fail me, but the hint (though a little cryptic) pointed me in the right direction. With the help of my torch plus a little bit of feeling-my-way I was able to retrieve the cache and sign the log. TFTC!