Can't Get There From Here
I used to have a favorite "game".
It wasn't really a GAME - but where I worked had slow Interwebs and a lot of restrictions, and so flash/web-based games were usually right out. I played a lot of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy text game and found other ways online to amuse myself.
One of the biggest amusements I had was using Google Maps. How can a map be fun, my co-workers would grumble, and I would smile a small smile; maps are AWESOME, and Google Maps was AWESOME WITH AWESOME SAUCE. If you put in one location, and asked for directions to another location, it would tell you how to get there, simple as that; not much challenge there, a co-worker snarked. The directions weren't always 100% accurate, but occasionally, it was downright amazing. Not because telling you how to go from A to B was amazing, Mapquest did the same thing. It was all in *how* you got there.
I've always been fascinated by whimsy, and even more so when the whimsy shows up in places you don't expect it to be. Whoever the original programmers on GMaps were, they had whimsy out the wazoo. If you were trying to get directions from a place across a large body of water to your location, the directions would include steps like "Drive to XXXX Ferryport and catch a ferry to YYYY", and things like that. One of my personal favorites, and the one that other folks may remember the best, was the direction set from New York NY to London UK which included the step "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean".
Those direction sets always made me smile. Somewhere out there in the shadowy world of programming, there was a person(s) who thought like me: if they want to go there, it's our job to provide them with directions, no matter how silly, ridiculous, or non-viable they may be, so let's do it! I loved getting directions to Oahu HI, from Fairbanks AK, or Cairo to Delhi, and imagining how I'd achieve such a fantastic journey. No matter where I wanted to go, Google would tell me how to get there.
Sadly, like so many other things, the whimsy has gone. Lost in a sea of reality, GMaps seems have have forgotten the primary objective of the application - to tell you how to get from point A to point B no matter what. Recently, I was reminded of my old "game" and tried to play it again, only to discover that GMaps will no longer provide you directions to a destination that is technically unreachable from your stated location. No more can I clamber over the Himalayas on a mental hike from Dusseldorf to Mt. Everest, no longer can I navigate the South Seas on an imaginary voyage from Solnechnyy to Tuvalu. When you input A as Dublin, Ireland, and B as Sydney, Australia, you are told "we could not calculate directions between those two locations".
Today's a sad day for me - one of my greatest comforts/amusements has disappeared from the web. Sail on, original programmers; I hope you're employed somewhere that allows you your whimsy. I hope that someday, I once again find a mapping application that allows me to input A as Cleveland OH and B as Mars and be told "Drive to Cape Canaveral; Get on a spacefaring vehicle and leave Earth; Turn left at the 3:1 Kirkwood Gap and continue on to Mars (2.5 AU)."
It wasn't really a GAME - but where I worked had slow Interwebs and a lot of restrictions, and so flash/web-based games were usually right out. I played a lot of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy text game and found other ways online to amuse myself.
One of the biggest amusements I had was using Google Maps. How can a map be fun, my co-workers would grumble, and I would smile a small smile; maps are AWESOME, and Google Maps was AWESOME WITH AWESOME SAUCE. If you put in one location, and asked for directions to another location, it would tell you how to get there, simple as that; not much challenge there, a co-worker snarked. The directions weren't always 100% accurate, but occasionally, it was downright amazing. Not because telling you how to go from A to B was amazing, Mapquest did the same thing. It was all in *how* you got there.
I've always been fascinated by whimsy, and even more so when the whimsy shows up in places you don't expect it to be. Whoever the original programmers on GMaps were, they had whimsy out the wazoo. If you were trying to get directions from a place across a large body of water to your location, the directions would include steps like "Drive to XXXX Ferryport and catch a ferry to YYYY", and things like that. One of my personal favorites, and the one that other folks may remember the best, was the direction set from New York NY to London UK which included the step "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean".
Those direction sets always made me smile. Somewhere out there in the shadowy world of programming, there was a person(s) who thought like me: if they want to go there, it's our job to provide them with directions, no matter how silly, ridiculous, or non-viable they may be, so let's do it! I loved getting directions to Oahu HI, from Fairbanks AK, or Cairo to Delhi, and imagining how I'd achieve such a fantastic journey. No matter where I wanted to go, Google would tell me how to get there.
Sadly, like so many other things, the whimsy has gone. Lost in a sea of reality, GMaps seems have have forgotten the primary objective of the application - to tell you how to get from point A to point B no matter what. Recently, I was reminded of my old "game" and tried to play it again, only to discover that GMaps will no longer provide you directions to a destination that is technically unreachable from your stated location. No more can I clamber over the Himalayas on a mental hike from Dusseldorf to Mt. Everest, no longer can I navigate the South Seas on an imaginary voyage from Solnechnyy to Tuvalu. When you input A as Dublin, Ireland, and B as Sydney, Australia, you are told "we could not calculate directions between those two locations".
Today's a sad day for me - one of my greatest comforts/amusements has disappeared from the web. Sail on, original programmers; I hope you're employed somewhere that allows you your whimsy. I hope that someday, I once again find a mapping application that allows me to input A as Cleveland OH and B as Mars and be told "Drive to Cape Canaveral; Get on a spacefaring vehicle and leave Earth; Turn left at the 3:1 Kirkwood Gap and continue on to Mars (2.5 AU)."