[HN Gopher] Grid World ___________________________________________________________________ Grid World Author : tobr Score : 246 points Date : 2023-04-05 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (alex.miller.garden) (TXT) w3m dump (alex.miller.garden) | 1attice wrote: | What stack was used to make this? I cracked devtools but couldn't | find any obvious fingerprints, and `bundle.js` is a only 12kb! | 0_0; | | This is a masterpiece. Good writing, good graphics, good coding. | Totalkunst in the wagnerian sense | astroalex wrote: | Thank you! I used plain javascript without any libraries -- | firstly to keep the file size low, and secondly as a fun | technical exercise. | d11z wrote: | It's amazing knowing that one can produce things of this | caliber without an internet connection at all. No | dependencies required! | shaunxcode wrote: | This is awesome! The other works on the main page are also | inspiring. Almost makes me believe in color again (I am a | monochromist). | IIAOPSW wrote: | On a related note, I've been obsessed recently with grid cities. | Queens, New York in particular flummoxes me. Locally every point | conforms to a grid, but globally they don't all conform to the | same grid. Brooklyn is comparatively easy as it consists of 4-6 | large grid areas stitched together (depending how much slight | bending you forgive). Big swaths of Queens like Astoria and | everywhere north of Queens Blvd are also simple enough. But that | region from the border with Brooklyn I just can't ever seem to | summarize succinctly. | | Any pattern that might form gets interrupted by either a | cemetery, a park, train tracks, and in some cases (I've found | out) former train tracks that were ripped out 100 years ago. I've | considered theories like the streets being radially biased | towards important junctions like Jamaica / Flushing. I've | considered outlining major obstructions to see if those are the | source of borders. I've looked around for the master plan on | street numbering in Queens to no avail. This should be easy, like | Manhattan Queens has numbered streets. It conforms to an | approximate grid, yet no one ever plots out exactly what this | grid is and where the defects in it occur. | | WTF IS QUEENS GRID?!?! | NoboruWataya wrote: | See also: Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian, one of his | several grid-like paintings, this one clearly inspired by | Manhattan: | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Piet_Mon... | jacquesm wrote: | You're looking at the remnants of what used to be a bunch of | unconnected Dutch settlements. New York (formerly New | Amsterdam), Brooklyn, Flushing and Harlem are all named after | their original Dutch counterparts, Amsterdam, Breukelen, | Vlissingen and Haarlem respectively. And there is Coney Island | (Konijnen eiland) and Staten Island (named after the Staten | Generaal, a Dutch government body). | | Once NYC expanded and engulfed all of those separate | settlements the grids ended up merging and some of the | connecting roads and railroads between the settlements were | incorporated into the city. | nerdponx wrote: | There's a bit of history between the current state and the | original Dutch settlements. | | Unlike Brooklyn, which was its own independent city for a | while before merging into New York City, Queens was a county | consisting of several distinct towns. So for example Flushing | and Long Island city were two separate municipalities. It's | not too surprising that they were developed differently. | | What I think is more fascinating is just how enormous Queens | actually is. I've always wanted to learn more about why it | seemed like a good idea to unify such a large area into one | physical city. Same goes for Staten Island. Would be really | interesting to read some primary sources from the time. | IIAOPSW wrote: | The major impetus for unification was the promise to build | the subway. Manhattan had the money but needed the land, | Brooklyn and Queens had land but not the wealth. | | Once upon a time Flushing was hyper religious Quakers. When | the NY & Flushing RR was built (today the Port Washington | branch of LIRR), one of the anecdotes in its history was | the moral outcry when they tried to run a single train per | day on Sunday. They appointed actual fun police to make | sure no rowdy drunkards would dare come to their town | hoping to have a good time. What do they think this is, | Brooklyn? LIC was literally built by and for the railroads. | Before the tunnels into Manhattan (1906 IIRC), you would | get off the LIRR (or other competing services which were | later bought out) and switch to a ferry to cross the East | river at Hunters Point. LIC was always de facto | colonization by Manhattanites. | jacquesm wrote: | > Once upon a time Flushing was hyper religious Quakers. | | That's not surprising given that the town of Vlissingen | that it is named after in NL is also in part of what is | called the Dutch Bible Belt. Zeeland has a very strong | religious tradition, even today. Likely those that came | to America and named their town Flushing (likely | phonetically much closer to Vlissingen in those days) | were from there. | IIAOPSW wrote: | Yeah I know the history. But believe it or not those grids | are easy. You can make all the grids of Brooklyn out of like | 6 Jigsaw pieces. There's a directly south portion that leads | to the lettered Ave's all the way to CI, a "Manhattan South" | portion that hugs the coast, a "Carnarsie South" portion that | hugs the coast East of Coney Island, Bushwick Cheese slice, | and Williamsburg offset from there. Easy Pz. The grids of | Queens north of the subway are also pretty easy to split into | a manageable number of jigsaw pieces, namely Astoria (follows | Manhattan convention), everywhere East of LGA up to and | including Flushing (true north). Its the border zone between | BK and Queens that just refuses to admit a nice, simple, | summary pattern. Pretty much everywhere due East of Newton | Creek and/or along the lower Montauk is a mess. | jacquesm wrote: | Most likely this is because that particular region either | had unfortunate geographical components or because the | settlements there were much smaller and therefore not | nicely aligned. You see a very similar thing if you look at | the map of Amsterdam. The bigger developments are all nice | and orderly and result in clearly recognizable patterns, | but whenever the 'new' butted into the old it becomes | messy. | | Quite a few small towns found themselves suddenly as | components of Amsterdam after being engulfed. New York in a | way is relatively orderly because all of that happened in a | short time. | | It's fascinating stuff. Good luck with your search, I'm | curious if you ever will find out what caused it. | IIAOPSW wrote: | I've looked at some really old maps. Like this one from | 1853 [1]. So for starters, the Long Island Railroad is | apparently eternal as its nearly impossible to find a map | which pre-dates it, the modern subway lines bare | remarkable resemblance to the former "plank roads", and | above all the regions that I'm finding most difficult to | reconcile are actually younger not older than the other | grids that have been stitched together. | | This helpful tool [2] highlights what I mean. Zoom out | and look around, its mostly consistent large jigsaw | pieces. There's just this one turbulent maelstrom in the | middle that ruins the idea of several grids glued. | | 1. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804n.la002117/?r=0.197, | 0.358,... 2. | http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/maps/enhanced- | stre... | jacquesm wrote: | Could it have been some large company that held the land | and put their own buildings on it? There are some regions | around here that are as large as the cities they border | but are private land, Hoogovens (now Tata Steel) in | IJmuiden is one of those and near Rotterdam there is | 'Pernis'. Inside those it is a huge jumble. Other | options: swamp land, native American settlements, army | installations. Bushwick loosely translated is 'Boswijk' | aka forest borough, so the area may have been heavily | forested. The roads there may then have been logging | roads rather than roads for regular traffic. | IIAOPSW wrote: | >Could it have been some large company that held the land | and put their own buildings on it? | | Coincidentally that describes an area a bit north of | where I'm focusing called "Rego park". Where does the | name Rego come from? Was it what the Native Americans | called it before the settlers arrived? Was it the name of | some important person in history? Nope. None of those. | The company that developed the area was called "Real Good | Realty". Rego is a contraction of REal GOod. Yep, its | that stupid. But Rego Park is still grid conforming. | | There's a bunch of strangely curving streets a bit East | of Rego Park in a crescent shape starting at 63rd St. | Those are bending around the (now abandon and overgrown) | tracks of the LIRR Far Rockaway branch. That line | continues straight South exactly tangent to the curve. | There's a few other places on the map where long gone | rail lines influenced streets, but those mostly form | minor exceptions to grid rules rather than full on | dissolution. | | You're right Bushwick was absolutely Forrest from what | I've read. But Bushwick itself is actually pretty grid | conforming. Its approximately rectangular and slightly | rotated relative to Bedstuy on its left side. The | difficult parts start just above Bushwick. Namely around | Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth and Middle village. | | Queens is unusual in the sense of having developed | incredibly recently. Like literally farm land as recently | as the 50s in some parts. Logically it should be the most | conforming to the overall street plans, yet it isn't. | Yeah there's natural borders like those cemeteries, but | if it had streets running along the edges of the | cemeteries the result would be a square layout leading | exactly to a grid! Its almost like someone went out of | their way to avoid making sense! | | BTW since you're interested there's quite a few place | names you missed in NYC where the influence of the Dutch | settlers can be seen. New Utrecht Ave, Dyker Heights, | Stupyen Duvil, Yonkers, Van Ness, Van Wyck...probably | more but those are the ones I can think of off hand. | There's also the flag of the city [1] which still has the | blue-white-orange banner of the Dutch crown (albeit | vertical rather than horizontal). I've been told in | recent times that particular tri-color pattern has an | unfortunate association with far right political | movements. Is it true? | | 1. https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/u/us-nyc15-l.gif | jacquesm wrote: | > New Utrecht Ave, Dyker Heights, Stupyen Duvil, Yonkers, | Van Ness, Van Wyck... | | I'm aware of them, just figured the point had been made. | There are indeed quite a lot more of them if you know how | to look for them. The degree to which they have been | bastardized sometimes makes it harder to spot them. | | > There's also the flag of the city [1] which still has | the blue-white-orange banner of the Dutch crown (albeit | vertical rather than horizontal). I've been told in | recent times that particular tri-color pattern has an | unfortunate association with far right political | movements. | | The 'Prinsenvlag' (the non rotated version) is indeed | associated with the NSB, the Dutch Nationalist Socialist | Movement which during World War II made nice with the | Nazis and whose name is pretty much synonymous with | 'traitor'. In more recent times it has been associated | with the PVV another right wing party with nationalist | tendencies. | squeaky-clean wrote: | If you zoom it it gets less neat. In the | Williamsburg/Greenpoint area you can see 5 different grids. | All of them historically from different settlements. | codazoda wrote: | In Utah we use blocks from Main Street and State Street (to | really over simplify). So, I live at 4475 W and 5500 S. Which | is to say that I'm about 45 blocks West of Main Street and 55 | blocks South of State street. | nesyt wrote: | State and Main run parallel to each other (in SLC at least). | The zero point for north/south in SLC is S Temple, not State. | galaxyLogic wrote: | On a related note, lots of businesses on Manhattan still don't | get it. They advertise their location as something like: 58th | St 369 | | instead of saying: 58th St 369 btw. 6th and 7th Av | | It would be so much easier for their customers to reach them if | they stated between which streets, or which avenues their | particular street-number is located. | | I don't get it why they don't get it. | WillAdams wrote: | "True" New Yorkers seem to have memorized which numbers are | between which numbered Avenues --- at least my son has done | this since moving there first for college, then a job. | IIAOPSW wrote: | This is one of those 90/10 rule things where just learning | a post-it note worth of trivia covers you for over 90% of | instances. I'm sure he's competent at navigating especially | in the ordinary places reachable by ordinary subway ride. | The corner that flummoxes me is that inexplicable void in | the map. The big empty part of the subway system sandwiched | between the EFMR and JMZ lines. That curious combination of | Newton Creek, Highland park, an archipelago of like a dozen | large cemeteries, more than a few heavy industrial zones, | and freight rail tracks. I've seen parts of the map in this | no mans land where numbered Ave's just straight up skip | over a half dozen other numbers which I know exist | elsewhere on the map. However the grid was zippered | together, there is a seam in it and this is it. | nerdponx wrote: | There is actually an official algorithm for estimating | the cross streets given any address within the Manhattan | grid. I don't know if it still is, but it used to be | published in fine print on bus system maps. It's a little | too complicated to memorize, but you could easily keep it | on a note card in your wallet and do the calculations in | your head or with your phone calculator. | IIAOPSW wrote: | Right. Manhattan grid. That's easy. I'm talking about the | grid in Queens. In particular the middle of Queens. It | becomes extremely non-grid conforming in a way a | calculator rule can't fix. | crazygringo wrote: | I'm with you 1,000%. | | Yes I know there are formulas you can memorize to figure out | cross streets but you're a business, you're supposed to be | trying to make this _easy_ for me. | | If you're located on a grid and you advertise an address | without giving cross streets, I guess you don't actually want | my business. | moret1979 wrote: | Aren't addresses in Manhattan mostly east or west of 5th Ave, | each avenue incrementing by 100? Meaning 369W is between 8th | and 9th, while 369E between 2nd and 1st? | IIAOPSW wrote: | Building numbers ascend in the same direction as streets / | avenues and usually the hundreds digit is incremented at the | corner so that building 369 is (ideally) between 3rd and 4th. | Something similar to that. Double check me on this. Its been | a while but the relation between building number and location | on the grid is def linear. | heleninboodler wrote: | I've always been very impressed with Seattle's relative rigor | when it comes to the grid. True, the grid has one very strange | aspect that's hard for newcomers to understand: it's actually | nine separate grids[1], eight of which have directional | qualifiers (NW, N, NE, etc) with the unqualified one covering | downtown as the origin of the whole system. But most of the | city and surrounding areas are pretty well committed to this | grid, to the point that entire other cities are built off this | "downtown seattle is the grid origin" concept (e.g. the city of | Shoreline to the north starts at 145th and goes up from there). | And further to the north, there's a repeat of this grid system | centered on the city of Everett and extending into its | surrounding cities. | | One other aspect I find fascinating about Seattle's system is | that there's some redundancy built into the address | specification: whether the street is oriented north-south or | east-west is not only indicated by whether it's an Ave (N-S) or | a Street (E-W), but whether the grid qualifier is specified as | a prefix or a suffix. So when you find a partial address on | some album art [2], for example, you can deduce that "4718 | 38NE" is talking about 4718 38th Ave NE and not 4718 NE 38th | St. | | [1] theoretically nine grids, anyway. As an example, I'm not | sure if there's actually an "E" grid. The central grid goes all | the way to the water on the east, and when continued on the | other side of the lake in Bellevue, the NE and SE grids touch | each other. | | [2] | https://musicbrainz.org/release/36fab830-fc17-48d7-9d7e-194f... | chasing wrote: | Much of NYC started off as small, independent towns and | villages with their own grids. Bushwick. Williamsburg. | Flushing. Their grid were determined by things like angle of | the coast, internal geographic features, or just random chance. | As they grew, they grew together and fused as best they could. | IIAOPSW wrote: | Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Flushing all conform to a | reasonably sized jigsaw piece of locally consistent grid. | Bushwick is a Cheese wedge between Fulton and Broadway. | Williamsburg is approximately several (smaller) pizza slices | with the crust along the coast line. Flushing is basically | true north/south grid. | | Large fractions of Brooklyn and Queens are consistent-enough | to approximate most of the landmass as perhaps a dozen jig | saw pieces. Nothing you said is news to me. But this border | area, primarily Ridgewood and Maspeth, it refuses to be | consistent enough to draw a jigsaw piece over it. | the_af wrote: | Very good article! I really like the animations, too. Monochrome | pixel art will always resonate with me. | | The writing in the article felt poetic to me, well done: | | > _" and I dreamed that the grid was the understructure to not | just my own memories but to the world"_ | | As an aside, and not at all to detract from the story: I find it | interesting that Myst wasn't universally loved. I remember in | some "gamer" circles it wasn't considered a real game but an | interactive slideshow. | tomcam wrote: | So beautiful and creative and human and touching. So perfect a | creation from the child of a "Myst" co-creator. Made me a little | envious of that upbringing tbh. | tyrust wrote: | HN needs spoiler tags, haha. I'm glad I went to the article | first because I feel like the "Myst" reveal at the end was a | little twist. | qup wrote: | <3 | | I love GRID WORLD. | | The next-to-last visual reminds me of these "brain mazes" a | childhood friend would make. If you read this, hello M. Coxson! | seltzered_ wrote: | "That place has a name, space, and it is measured, quantified, | and standardized by the grid, tamed by its regular meter. No nook | or cranny of nature is safe from this blanket of rationalization, | stretching to cover the entire Earth in a global-scale grid of | longitude and latitude. " | | Perhaps it may be worth mentioning there's another space of | thought that critiques the rationalization, such as books like | 'Descartes Error' and the whole systems-thinking space (e.g. | folks like Fritjof Capra) and possibly the Complexity Science | space. | astroalex wrote: | Hi there, author here. By telling the personal story of how I | inherited the rationality meme, I hoped to offer my own | critique of rationality. I intended for the sentences you | quoted to imply a subtle darkness to rationality, with phrases | like "tamed" and "no nook or cranny of nature is safe." Maybe | those aspects were too subtle. But just wanted to clarify! | yamtaddle wrote: | Nah, it came through just fine. Pretty sure just about no-one | would write those things that way any time halfway recently | without intending it to be a bit tongue-in-cheek or ironic. | loraxclient wrote: | Lovely story, well written and the artwork sparked joy. Beautiful | observations about grids - never thought about them in that way, | but so relatable. | | A great reminder of the fundamental pleasures of imagining and | creating. Easy to forget after following those affinities far | into a career. | | Thank you for sharing, really brightened up my day. | sublinear wrote: | Oh I see... so scroll hijacking on a webpage is only ok when it's | something nerds like /s | helloplanets wrote: | That was a breath of fresh air! Also, the notes page warmed my | heart. [0] Such a shame that digital gardening hasn't really | taken off that much. Scrolling through some of the posts there | feels in such a stark contrast with most of present day internet. | Just putting stuff up on a webpage for yourself, not an audience | you're trying to work. | | Bring back the nooks and crannies of the olden days! _old man | shakes fist_ | | [0] https://alex.miller.garden/notes/ | Min0taur wrote: | I'm with you about small pages/personal sites! It makes the | internet feel so much more lively and cozy to have these small, | quiet spaces. | adamredwoods wrote: | Nice exhibit at MOMA: | https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5453 | d11z wrote: | Wow, the visuals in this are truly extraordinary and unique. I | have never encountered anything quite like this before. I felt | compelled to list the things that struck me the most: | | - Beautiful, poetic prose on a subject that resonates deeply with | me | | - Just about as light on bandwidth as you can be, fully embracing | the default system font stack while maintaining an attractive | appearance | | - Seamless functionality on iOS Safari and Firefox on Windows | | - Highly engaging links (the Roman pictographs were particularly | fascinating!) | | - Exquisitely handcrafted _artisanal_ HTML /JS/CSS, reminiscent | of Bartosz Ciechanowski's work | | I can't say I would change even a single thing. One might argue | about the Google Tags import, but this minor "sin" is easily | forgiven due to the exceptional mastery of web design and | development displayed here, I can't blame you at all for wanting | analytics on visitors. This website meets every criterion of my | personal "gold standard" for websites, and I can be pretty fussy | having done a fair share of frontend stuff myself. | | Recently I've been working on a page for a personal project, | aiming to achieve a similar level of quality but it can sometimes | be challenging to perfect the visual design aspects especially. | This website serves as great inspiration! Thank you so much for | sharing this! | | I'm eating like an absolute king the past two days what with | Ciechanowski's post yesterday and now your fine specimen. The web | sometimes feels like wading through a sewer but on occasion you | strike gold and it makes everything feel OK. | hombre_fatal wrote: | I love those visuals. | phforms wrote: | What a beautiful(ly told/written) story/experience. Love how the | visuals interact artistically with the writing. Can totally | understand the fascination with grids, although it came to me | much later in life (as I child, grids felt too constraining to me | and school reinforced that impression unfortunately). | | > "I think we project grids outwards onto the world from within | ourselves, shining their structure from our minds. We radiate | grids." | | I don't know if the author is aware of this, but neuroscientists | discovered what they call "grid cells": "a type of neuron within | the entorhinal cortex that fires at regular intervals as an | animal navigates an open area, allowing it to understand its | position in space by storing and integrating information about | location, distance, and direction." [1] | | I believe grid cells, together with place cells [2] may explain a | lot about not only how we make use of diagrammatic tools but also | how we form and navigate our more abstract conceptual spaces. For | anyone interested, I recommend this great article on Quanta: | https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-brain-maps-out-ideas-and-... | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell [2] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_cell | astroalex wrote: | Author here. Thanks for the kind words and the note about grid | cells. That is fascinating. | uoaei wrote: | I used to run cellular automata manually on graph paper. There's | still a sheet on my dad's fridge, though the ink has faded from | UV exposure. | Tenal wrote: | [dead] | kroltan wrote: | In high school I got half of my class to procedurally generate | dungeon maps using simple rules and neighbouring cell | populations. | | Example ruleset: - Rooms are rectangles 3 to | 6 cells large in either direction. Place them randomly with a | gap of 1 cell until there are no more valid room locations. | - If a cell is between two rooms, and has a cell between the | same two rooms on either side of the cross axis between the | rooms, then it can be a door, but only if there is no door | connecting this pair of rooms yet. - If an empty cell | is in a corner, and there is a door 2 less than 2 cells away | from it, then it is a torch. - If an empty cell has 2 | cells distance to any walls, then it is a table(-like | decoration). - If an empty cell is directly adjacent to | a table-like decoration, it has a 50% chance of being a seat; | | This will generate a lot of dimly lit mess halls, but the | actual rulesets would be larger and evolve through time, we | would start anew once someone made too many mistakes. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-05 23:00 UTC)