March 06, 2010

I don't know if this really counts as a link, but I've added a twist. Yeah, it's just a link to Google Maps. But wait, there's more...I've sort of invented a game.

Well, I came up with it, and my brother tweaked it and made it better, and this may be against the posting rules, but it was too cool not to share. Feel free to Eek it, though. Go to Google Maps, then zoom out until you can see the whole world at once, and can't see country borderlines. Then grab the little orange man (the street-view guy) and pull him all the way over to the right of the screen. This causes the map to scroll quickly to the left. Then wiggle the guy up and down for a bit and then randomly let go. Where ever he lands - explore! I've found some incredible stuff.* This was my first result. and this was my second. I think this would be a great way to pick a vacation spot - wherever orange guy lands, that's where you go. (Of course, you want to enlarge these to full-screen view to get the best effect.) Although I'm sure I'm not the first person to have done this, I'm still taking the liberty of naming it "Spin the Street View Dude". And it's probably far more entertaining to us geographically-challenged Americans than to the rest of the Monkeys. But I've found myself learning things as a result of researching the places I've landed on. For instance: did you know that Bryan Adams, Britney Spears, and Justine and Jason Bateman are all of Maltese descent? * and I have wasted far too much time on this. It's completely addictive.

posted by fairywench 14 years ago
  • That was fun. I washed up in Taiwan, on a bridge on the XiBin Exresssway, in the Guanyin Township. Maybe not the greatest vacation spot. But it is home to the Tiger Steel Works who make leaf and coil springs. Guanyin has more men than women. I reckon that 70% of the time this will give you a costal result - because being dropped in the ocean will find the nearest road on land, at the coast. Also you will only go places where the google camera cars have been.
  • Yeah, it does give a lot of coastal results, but you can get away from that by being a little less random - drop it over a specific continent or something. Also, while on your link, I zoomed out a bunch and then picked him up and dropped him right back down on the same spot - or what looked like the same spot from that distance - and got this, which is awfully pretty. So I think slight do-overs are allowed.
  • On my second try I ended up here, in Byron Bay on the road to the Cape Byron lighthouse.
  • OK. First try, landed on the beach in Hawaii. So do I win a ticket to Maui or something? Please tell me I win a ticket.
  • Yes! You win a ticket! No you don't. Ticket winning not valid where prohibited by law, for members of the Monkey Filter, their families of genotypes. Tickets may not be resold. Tickets have no actual value. Hawaiian photos are totally 'shopped. We accept no liability, expressed, implied of even thought about. There are no tickets. Quit calling us with the "where are our tickets" and "why are these tickets worthless". It was a scam, you hear me, a scam, that's all. Oh God, we didn't mean to upset anyone, it was all just a game. What's that noise? It's the S.E.C. banging on our door. Then comes CNN with a deeply probing investigative report into our lack of any actual tickets and personal lives. Dragged into the gutter. The very same gutter, ironically, that you can see on Google Maps in Hawaii. Where you won't be going. Because there are no frickin' tickets! OK? (/Starts to weep and blows nose loudly).
  • Oh, yuck!!!! My tickets have snot all over them. *boards plane for the tropics*
  • Tickets? We don't need no stinkin' tickets!
  • Opossum Bay, Tasmania. Who's been there?
  • Does close count? I was lucky enough to make it to Hobart but I can't remember Opossum Bay specifically. (it was a lot of years ago and there was alcohol involved) I really liked Hobart. It had that really far away from everything feeling that my city has.
  • Does not very close count? I've been to Slickpoo, Idaho
  • Slickpoo! Home of the guy who took the picture of the pie on Jones Key Lime Pie soda. I hope with a moniker like Slickpoo you at least got a pic by the roadsign, Blue Horse. My last sign pic was from Gore, Nova Scotia. Home of Gorefest! Bloodiest bike race around!
  • OOOOh this is fun! Gunn Point Road, NT, Australia. Turns out to be a dayum long road, finishing in dead end. Awesome.