July 14-20, 2005

naked city

website of the week

Gmaps Pedometer

by Brian Howard

Mile Marker
Today I walked to work: covered exactly 1.1538742543588867 miles. In the past — way back in the rickety-bob past — I used to guess at these things all the time. I'd say stuff like, "Oh, it's about a mile," or "Oh, probably two miles two and a half maybe." Those were ridiculous times. But no more of that. Now, thanks to Gmaps Pedometer (www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer), I know this shit out to 16 decimal places. (That's as much certainty as you're ever gonna need.) Gmaps Pedometer basically hacks Google's so-excellent mapping function (don't worry, Internet coppers, the fine folks at Google built http://maps.google.com so that intrepid computer people could do this kinda stuff). The result allows you and me to doubleclick our way all over town and find out how far we went.

So now I know all kinds of shit I never knew before. Like it's 0.6270383148858655 miles to Stupid Fresh (1.2421122045089146 miles round-trip); 0.45088905003171587 miles to go pick up a Slurpee; 0.1702103529214662 miles each time I walk around my block muttering; and 0.06237426556835111 miles to pick up a slice of pizza from the corner.

The site's still a little rough around the edges (which the text butts up against) and not entirely user-friendly (it uses Hoboken as home base), but it's 100 percent free and, really, where else are you going to find out that a lap around Eakins Oval is 0.4446298118622592 miles, or that it's just 1.344307817540898 from the Grays Ferry McDonald's to the Graduate Hospital emergency room?

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