[HN Gopher] I cycled to all the villages in alphabetical order ___________________________________________________________________ I cycled to all the villages in alphabetical order Author : pabs3 Score : 93 points Date : 2023-08-25 07:11 UTC (15 hours ago) (HTM) web link (diziet.dreamwidth.org) (TXT) w3m dump (diziet.dreamwidth.org) | tpmx wrote: | That's certainly ... an approach to the travelling salesman | problem. | matsemann wrote: | If you like to do challenges like these, a couple of fun ones: | | - bike/walk/run every street in your city. Can use for instance | https://wandrer.earth/ with Strava to track it. It's quite nice, | discover all kinds of things in my own neighborhood I didn't know | of. By habit you always take the same routes. This makes me take | a new road on my way back home and see new stuff. | | - Draw art on the maps using gps. I've done multiple. Takes | planning and often a few attempts executing when you realize that | road is closed, that path was flooded or whatever. I've even | gotten in the news a few times from this. For instance when I ran | this pest doctor during lock downs https://imgur.com/a/qRkB5QN | | - Bike the longest distance using the smallest area. Basically | find a roundabout and see how long you can take it. Or the | opposite, the largest area in your city, basically bike its | border. | bdamm wrote: | What I really want is "nice" cycling routes, and then doing the | longest paths. Many times I've tried to find the longest path | that doesn't repeat from my house where I do not intersect with | automobile traffic, or taking low-traffic streets without any | major intersections. It's tough to get far this way, but | competing for space with cars is just so stressful, so it's why | I don't do things like ride the perimeter of my city. It's just | not very conducive to keeping my bones intact. | drivers99 wrote: | > competing for space with cars is just so stressful, so it's | why I don't do things like ride the perimeter of my city | | In my city (Denver) there's an independent group that keeps a | map of low-stress streets to ride on (which they share as a | google map plus phone apps), which is different than the | official bike routes map put out by the city. | | https://www.bikestreets.com/maps It includes some off-street | routes outside to the city limits but just looking at the | ones within the city, there might be a nice route to try out | for me. | angarg12 wrote: | Bit offtopic, but if live in a big city, you don't even need to | visit every street, just visiting every neighborhood might be | insighful. | | My wife and I are looking to move back to my home town possibly | next year after 10 years abroad, and we are checking all kind | of online resources about the city. | | Is wild to me that a random expat on Youtube is teaching me all | kind of things that I didn't know about my own city. I guess | the almost 30 years I spent there I really only frequented a | very small section of it, and entire sections of the city are | complete blind spots. | timfsu wrote: | Very impressive! Since it wasn't immediately clear, the author is | based in Cambridge, UK. | mperham wrote: | This fact should be in the first sentence. I had no idea where | they were talking about. | melx wrote: | Especially when they specified a radius in km(!). | NeoTar wrote: | There is a big tension in the UK between people who use | kilometres by default, and those who miles. | | Although road-signs are all in miles, it's not unknown for | other distance markers (e.g. on walking / cycling trails) | to be in kilometres. When I was studying in Birmingham in | 2006-2010 the signs on the canal network were in | kilometres. | | For me, my default unit is kilometeres (although I am one | of those awful Bremoaners | [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bremoaner] who even moved | to Berlin after the vote). | tialaramex wrote: | Right, the law mostly says to use metric units, _except_ | it has specific derogations for some of the road signs to | be in miles. So the canal and walking route signs should | - especially if put up by some authority rather than | informally - be metric, whereas road signs mustn 't be in | the same circumstances. | | Same for booze. It's illegal to sell most booze in | imperial units (e.g. a shot of whiskey _must_ be either | 25ml or 35ml, no other values, and the choice between | 25ml and 35ml shot size is for an entire bar, they can 't | be like house vodka is 35ml but this expensive Scotch is | 25ml), but, it's _mandatory_ to sell beer and cider by | the pint. | | It's a temporary fudge that then politicians are | reluctant to actually follow through and do the clean-up | later because that's only going to annoy the handful of | strong opponents and makes little real difference to | ordinary punters for whom this isn't a priority. | | Sometimes this works out OK in politics, e.g. in Britain | it was never strictly made illegal to sell leaded fuel | only new cars which need such fuel - but it soon made no | economic sense to make such fuel as a fuel refinery, so | the ban was unnecessary. Politicians could go from | telling the niche of pro-lead constituents they'll still | be able to buy the fuel they want to commiserating them | that it's no longer for sale, never having actually | banned it. | samwillis wrote: | I quite liked the fact they he didn't, it was fun to | construct a location in my head. But then I know the area | fairly well. | | It's a good location for this as it's quite flat, very few | hill, and those that exist are more like a hump. | tlholaday wrote: | Bowerick Wowbagger? | beardyw wrote: | Given the location I'm guessing there was very little change of | elevation. | ozim wrote: | Everyone is praising bikes and as example they give NL or | Amsterdam. | | It just never is Norway or Switzerland. | | If you have flat land and mild winters, mild summers, sure you | are going to get load of cycling, making infra is no brainer. | drivers99 wrote: | Ah the old "we're not Amsterdam" excuse. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIcwzqRlZ68 "Are Dutch Cities | Really that Different? Debunking Cycling Myths" | rez9x wrote: | The rides are cool and it sounds like a fun project. I was a bit | caught by surprise at the mention of being told not to go far | from your house during COVID. Different parts of the world | handled that very differently. | smokel wrote: | Back when I was into programming contests, I wrote a program to | find the smallest selection of cities, the letters of which would | cover the alphabet in correct order. | | I even felt a small urge to take pictures of the place name signs | of those cities and turn it into art. Soon after that stroke of | genius thought, I stumbled upon an exhibition by a Dutch artist | [1] who visited nearly every city in The Netherlands, took a | picture of himself, his car, and the place name sign, and I lost | interest. | | Obviously I got the inspiration in an Amsterdam metro line that | stops at ABCOUDE [2]. | | It might be interesting to retry this with the entire | OpenStreetMap database. | | [1] Forgot his name, can't find it on the internet, ChatGPT has | no clue. | | [2] https://www.abcoude.nl/ | Dunedan wrote: | related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34168284 | ella-hashir wrote: | why not share your full story? | acqbu wrote: | fully agree - I'd like to know all the details | kazinator wrote: | OK, next challenge: all villages in Japan in I, RO, HA, NI, HO, | HE, TO .... order. | aardvark179 wrote: | Happy to see Diziet has published this after our discussion in | the pub a couple of nights ago. The only thing that surprises me | is that it wasn't fanf2 who submitted it. :-) | ben_w wrote: | One thing I didn't appreciate until too late when moving out of | the UK post-Brexit was quite how unusually densely packed the | Cambridge geek circles are; seeing this username again, yours | as well I think, fanf of course, and honestly half the people | who used to go to The Carlton before the fire... | | I was expecting it to be _that_ easy to surround myself with | similar people here, but apparently not. | | Still, should be seeing Calamarain next weekend. | aardvark179 wrote: | There are definitely other circles of people round the world, | but they generally don't have that same element of, "you can | turn up at this place on this evening and probably meet | somebody you want to talk to." | | I think it's an intrinsic thing with British pub culture, the | same can be applied to various genres of literature, game | design, films, and so many other things. | adw wrote: | Me too. (I miss the Carlton.) | diziet wrote: | Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c8i5SABqwU | | (not same person as cyclist) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-25 23:00 UTC)