I'm just a lonely geek...lonely in blue...

What's the percentage of MeFites who have no one nearby? I just moved away from Vancouver (in the interior, Quesnel, to operate my hosting/computer services biz where I actually WANT to live) and suddenly, after updating my long. and lat., I'm all alone!
posted by Kickstart70 to MetaFilter gatherings at 2:56 PM (148 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite

Actually, it's only you. Sorry.
posted by miss lynnster at 3:09 PM on March 14, 2007

No idea, but it's a neat area of the province. My brother is up there reasonably often doing diving work.

I still remember my grade six trip up to the to Quesnel area to visit Barkerville. We role played lawyers, juries, witnesses, and so on in a re-enactment of one of The Hanging Judge's trials. I believe I was a witness, and I'm almost certain my method acting ensured they strung up that weasel.
posted by The God Complex at 3:10 PM on March 14, 2007

Ynoxas is the only MetaFite that shows up were I live.
posted by nola at 3:13 PM on March 14, 2007

But I do live in the sticks ;)
posted by nola at 3:14 PM on March 14, 2007

Ynoxas is the only MetaFite that shows up were I live.

Does he call first?
posted by cortex at 3:25 PM on March 14, 2007 [2 favorites]

Note: I think your user page only tells you the number of MeFites nearby, not people. For example, my page shows two people nearby. But then I just looked out my window and clearly saw more than two people. I'm just saying. Before you panic or despair, you might want to look out your window. (No need to leave your house/apartment in these early stages of the investigation.)
posted by veggieboy at 3:26 PM on March 14, 2007 [9 favorites]

/rimshot
posted by The God Complex at 3:26 PM on March 14, 2007

TGC: Yeah, it's an awesome area for people who don't use/need all the city comforts :) We vacationed through here a few years back and bought a very (ridiculously) cheap 5 acres on the Barkerville highway. Now we're living right downtown Quesnel, until I have enough work and/or business clients to do otherwise.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:33 PM on March 14, 2007

I think it would kinda neat for the user profile code to display "n closest users" instead of "all users within x miles". As it is now, people that live in the middle of nowhere get hardly any hits, whereas if you live in a dense area you can have hundreds and hundreds of people listed. I removed the lat+long from my profile for this reason, as it generated pages and pages of users. I think it makes sense to display the 25 or 50 closest users, no matter the distance, rather than listing everyone within 50 miles.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:38 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm all alone too. I live in Lethbridge and the closest Mefites are in Calgary.
posted by arcticwoman at 3:41 PM on March 14, 2007

There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry.

It's ok, Matt. No need to apologize.
posted by arcticwoman at 3:42 PM on March 14, 2007

That's a good idea, Rhomboid, but I think a hybrid approach would be best. I like seeing all seventy billion users within x miles. If it was limited to n, they'd probably all be zero or one miles away. That's totally useless. It should be "within x miles" unless that ends up being fewer than n (something like 10). Then it should revert to "closest n".
posted by Plutor at 3:43 PM on March 14, 2007

Also, as long as he's there, Matt should add a Merican/Metric toggle.
posted by Plutor at 3:44 PM on March 14, 2007

Does he call first?
:)
Actually yes he does! I've know him for years and its his fault I even know what a computer is.
posted by nola at 3:45 PM on March 14, 2007

The two people listed near me are not active.. the one person who was moved away before I could meet him... but I'd say the lady who lives in the Falkland Islands (forget the username) has most of us beat
posted by edgeways at 3:54 PM on March 14, 2007

Kickstart70: "I just moved away from Vancouver (in the interior, Quesnel, to operate my hosting/computer services biz where I actually WANT to live) and suddenly, after updating my long. and lat., I'm all alone!"

Well, I can't really help you, as I've always had MeFites near me, but I'm glad you asked. Maybe you can answer a question I've been wondering about for a long, long time.

When you get far enough away from Metafilter, does that infernal hum ever go away?
posted by koeselitz at 4:00 PM on March 14, 2007

Man this Quesnel place sounds great.
posted by French Fry at 4:01 PM on March 14, 2007

koeselitz: Nope. The hum is an unassuageable urge constant within us all and hope for us there can be none. We denizens are tainted by our associations forever after once we've been here.
posted by cgc373 at 4:13 PM on March 14, 2007

I bought someone a gift membership so we could have meetups.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:26 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm all alone too. :'(
posted by Memo at 4:28 PM on March 14, 2007

Me too.

Could we have a mefite-without-mefites-nearby meetup?
But where?
posted by conch soup at 4:32 PM on March 14, 2007

But where?

How about online?!

Uhhh...wait...
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:36 PM on March 14, 2007

Quesnel has internet access now?

(I kid, I kid. Really. I'm from Bear Lake, which is 45 minutes North of Prince George and has about 275 people, so I'm in position to mock Quesnel.)
posted by jacquilynne at 4:37 PM on March 14, 2007

in *no* position, I mean.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:37 PM on March 14, 2007

Me too. It's worth noting that it only works with MeFites who have put their lat and long in the profile; I have another MeFite in the same house.
posted by Paragon at 4:49 PM on March 14, 2007

Yeah I'm all alone. Darwin Australia. Everyone here's too busy shooting boars and wrestling crocodiles to contribute to community weblogs.
posted by Jimbob at 5:03 PM on March 14, 2007

The thing says there is no one near me, but you know, what with the political confrontation between the two countries, I bet they are tons and tons of them around me, only they are undercover.
posted by micayetoca at 5:14 PM on March 14, 2007

micayetoca - long shot curiosity: surely there are no known Mefites in Netherlands Antilles or Aruba, are there?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:36 PM on March 14, 2007

Apparently not, just checked again and it says: "There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry."

But I'm not sure, goodnewsfortheinsane, you know, I could swear it smells like sulfur around here.
posted by micayetoca at 5:56 PM on March 14, 2007

Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain; And an island never cries.
posted by Dave Faris at 6:11 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

/points
/laughs
posted by blue_beetle at 6:40 PM on March 14, 2007

I always thought it was strange that only 5 MeFites live near me, considering that I live in Boston. I just double checked my latitude and longitude, and discovered I had left out a negative sign so it had me placed in Kazakstan.

Dur. Unfortunately, that probably isn't your problem.
posted by emd3737 at 6:42 PM on March 14, 2007

There are five Mefites in Kazakstan, then?
posted by micayetoca at 6:50 PM on March 14, 2007

I'm all alone
We're all alone. It's the human condition.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:50 PM on March 14, 2007

Either that, or five other Bostonians made the same mistake.

*fights the urge to make a lame Borat joke*
posted by emd3737 at 7:01 PM on March 14, 2007

Google Maps has bought into the same conspiracy started in Stalin era Soviet Union to keep Burhanistan off the map. I'd just confuse people if I posted coordinates.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:14 PM on March 14, 2007

Quesnel, eh? Ol' erstwhile murder capital of BC (or was it Canada? I forget which).
posted by five fresh fish at 7:16 PM on March 14, 2007

All alone, too. Damn Minnesotan barren wasteland frozen tundra. Sometimes, I miss the warmth of the south/
posted by jmd82 at 7:19 PM on March 14, 2007

Quesnel -- just south of Stoner.

Surely Stoner is at least the spiritual home of many Mefites.
posted by Rumple at 7:21 PM on March 14, 2007

You want to live in Quesnel? Yikes.

Ol' erstwhile murder capital of BC (or was it Canada? I forget which).

Nope, that was Fort Saint James, where I grew up and learned the ways of murderin'.

To answer your question, nobody 'near' me, but I know there are about 4 or 5 MeFites (or more?) here in Korea these days.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:22 PM on March 14, 2007

I'm faintly surprised there are so many people with intimate knowledge of that region. Hell, I probably drank with half of you during my riproaring (and murderin') days.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:30 PM on March 14, 2007

Jimbob moved to Darwin.

I didn't know they even had the interweb there.
posted by pompomtom at 7:36 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

I suppose this thread would be appropriate for me to whine about the display of lat/long coordinates on user pages. I think "Town, State/Province, Country" would be infinitely more useful to quickly ascertain a user's location. As it is, I have to click the link and see where the magic numbers take me on Google Maps, which is a waste of time unless I'm planning to do some serious stalkage.
posted by knave at 7:38 PM on March 14, 2007

Which netherlands antilles, only Aruba? I'm just a short ferry ride from Sint Maarten, NA.
posted by conch soup at 7:43 PM on March 14, 2007

Nope, that was Fort Saint James, where I grew up and learned the ways of murderin'.

Further, to set the record straight, FSJ, with it's population of around 3000, had the highest per capita murder rate in North America for 4 years during the '80s. I am inordinately proud of that.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:49 PM on March 14, 2007

And I'll second the request for something like '5 closest mefites are...'
Obviously not that worthwhile if you live in Manhattan, but nice for the more remote mefites.
posted by conch soup at 7:49 PM on March 14, 2007

Sure, you're proud, Stavros, but how many of those people did you kill yourself, really?

I've always figured the actual highest murder per capita stat every year probably belongs to some random town with 12 people where one of them just happens to off another one. Because statistics are fun that way.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:01 PM on March 14, 2007

All alone, too. Damn Minnesotan barren wasteland frozen tundra. Sometimes, I miss the warmth of the south/

lol. I'm showing that comment to my girlfriend when she gets off work. She is from Saint Paul and feels like an exile here in the south. She says it gets to hot here in TN in the summer. I think thats funny considering the winters in Minnesota. btw, were are you from originally?
posted by nola at 8:19 PM on March 14, 2007

You want to live in Quesnel? Yikes.

More accurately, I want to live in the rural area outside of Quesnel. Quesnel itself is ok...the people are nice, but I don't like the smell of pulp mills either. Out where our 5 acres are, the smell never appears. We're just living in Quesnel itself until we have other options.

A good chunk of it is raising our daughter someplace rural instead of in crappy Richmond. The other part is that I grew up even more rural than this (30km outside of Merritt), and my wife grew up in rural Alabama....this is a comfortable change for both of us.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:21 PM on March 14, 2007

I had the lat/long that was automatically generated by the geocoder thingie for "Tokyo" on my userpage, but someone pointed out to me during the one meetup I went to that it was the location of the Imperial Palace. I fixed it, but now I think I live in Tokyo Station.
posted by misozaki at 8:22 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

er, jmd82, I think you have the same trouble the above Bostonian has. Being in MN myself I was curious where you where, I checked the Lat/Long in your profile and it says you are roughly on the boarder of SW Mongolia and China. Incidentally I've long wanted to visit Mongolia, so perhaps it's synergy, or some other odd word like that.
posted by edgeways at 8:29 PM on March 14, 2007

I'm guessing you are actually S. of Mankato, which puts you close-ish to the Twinkies Mefi crowd
posted by edgeways at 8:32 PM on March 14, 2007

A good chunk of it is raising our daughter someplace rural instead of in crappy Richmond.

Good call. I attribute most of what's good (or what I like to think of as good) about my character to growing up in the outdoors up in the Narth.

And if you're out of the pulpmill pong, it's all good (until wintertime hits, at least)!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:36 PM on March 14, 2007

Calgary's got MeFites popping up all over the place however my in three weeks home is apparently as barren as Quesnel.

jacquilynne writes "I'm from Bear Lake, which is 45 minutes North of Prince George and has about 275 people, so I'm in position to mock Quesnel."

I once interviewed for a job whose location description in the posting was "one hour hour north of Vanderhoof" to which I thought "One hour north of someplace I've never heard of, that can't be a good sign".
posted by Mitheral at 9:04 PM on March 14, 2007

The idea of showing the n closest users does not work, unfortunately. Most of the people who live close to me live 0 miles away Like me, many people from Los Angeles put in the lat + long for LA, not for their exact location.
posted by KingoftheWhales at 9:04 PM on March 14, 2007

I once interviewed for a job whose location description in the posting was "one hour north of Vanderhoof" to which I thought "One hour north of someplace I've never heard of, that can't be a good sign".

That'd be my hometown, the legendary FSJ, although it's more like 45 minutes north of the 'hoof. There are no towns north of FSJ (although there are a couple of small reserves) in the northern interior.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:27 PM on March 14, 2007

Well, I know someone who knows you, so at least you're not completely alone in the world. :) We've been fed from the same trough, in fact.

I wouldn't be so concerned about Quesnel smelling as I would be about Richmond. I cannot ever forget the overgrowth of the sanitation system in Richmond c. 1997.
posted by acoutu at 9:38 PM on March 14, 2007

KingoftheWhales: The idea of showing the n closest users does not work, unfortunately.

Why would n closest mefites not work for this thread's stated problem? If there's no one near you there must be n closest users somewhere. Obviously that's no one's problem in LA! But the city dwellers clearly aren't the ones who will have their LAt/Lon entry greeted by a 'sorry...'
posted by conch soup at 9:42 PM on March 14, 2007

It was at some kind of mine. One of those places where you spend three weeks in living in company housing and one week out.
posted by Mitheral at 9:42 PM on March 14, 2007

I'm another MiFi loner in South Korea. So who are the four others on this peninsula that Starvos speaks of?
posted by vagabond at 9:44 PM on March 14, 2007

Well, I know someone who knows you

(I am suddenly terrified about my worlds colliding, Costanza-like, and wish this hadn't happened happened. Eek!)

It was at some kind of mine. One of those places where you spend three weeks in living in company housing and one week out.

Ah, OK, an hour or two north of the Fort, then, up where my folks used to have their fishing lodge. Cool. Maybe they meant an hour by chopper from Vanderhoof, which is often the only way to get in to those places.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:44 PM on March 14, 2007

So who are the four others on this peninsula that Starvos speaks of?

Brittanie, Joseph Gurl, Me, Meatbomb (although I think he's buggered off to Afghanistan now), and at least one or two others whose names I can't recall.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:46 PM on March 14, 2007

There's 11 users near me, but I rarely see them. I think they're hiding in the hoity-toity side of town.

Or in AskMe.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:53 PM on March 14, 2007

I'm just a short ferry ride from Sint Maarten — conch soup, above

Meet-up at conch soup's, everybody!
posted by rob511 at 9:54 PM on March 14, 2007

Sorry, stavrosthewonderchicken, I was talking to Kickstart, not you. :) No need to think I'm stalking you (or Kickstart, for that matter).
posted by acoutu at 10:57 PM on March 14, 2007

*whew*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:03 PM on March 14, 2007

Yeah, "nearby" is vague. Would be great if we could set a radius. "Nearby" outside of metropolitan areas should be further than whatever it's currently set at. I would consider Quesnel (a bit north, but not far) and Penticton (near the border) both to be nearby. Fifty km is really close, so the Kelowna mefites should be showing up for me and for five fresh fish (just a bike ride from me, apparently), for sure.
posted by Listener at 12:00 AM on March 15, 2007

A good chunk of it is raising our daughter someplace rural instead of in crappy Richmond.

Yeah, and Quesnel won't be sucked into the quaking, slurping, suddenly embracing sand flats when the overdue "big one" hits.
posted by Listener at 12:03 AM on March 15, 2007

Although if the pine-beetle die-off continues apace, it might be a desert before too long.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:13 AM on March 15, 2007

I live in rural Kansas... I put in my coordinates just to see, and there was no one nearby, so I took them out of my profile... Kind of spooky to be the only one in my area.
posted by amyms at 12:37 AM on March 15, 2007

OK, so who is the remotest MeFi user?

By which, I mean who's nearest other user is furthest away (at least, I think that's what I mean)...

How could one find this out? I think I'm in with a shot at being remotiest MeFite (though the Falklands MeFite will probably trounce me).
posted by davehat at 12:44 AM on March 15, 2007

There's a bunch of us in Japan, but only one (Greasepig) anywhere near me.

Yeah, Quesnel is out of the way, but growing up on the prairies, it's hard to consider anything in BC "remote", since it all seems habitable, at least.
posted by dreamsign at 1:09 AM on March 15, 2007

davehat, you could do some math on the Metafilter kml file (I have no idea how, but certainly there must be someone here who might) to find that out, I'll bet. The file used to be updated every morning -- as far as I know, it still is.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:11 AM on March 15, 2007 [2 favorites]

I've got another MeFite in my bedroom, but for a while I had the wrong coordinates, which didn't place me in Afghanistan, but rather in the post office.

My husband demanded I fix this so that no one would suspect that we have marital problems.

Or that I have ever been the post office.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:18 AM on March 15, 2007

From the kml file, continental Europe:

Germany: 8
France: 10
Spain: 4
Italy: 3
Norway: 6
Belgium: 4
Danmark: 7
Czech republic: 1
Austria: 2
The Netherlands: 20
being the mefi powerhouse that we are
posted by jouke at 2:31 AM on March 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

From the kml file, continental Europe:

Germany: 8

What?! There are at least seven in Berlin.

Hmm, and now I look around Munich and Frankfurt-a-M, davidr is the only other person who comes up. So I suppose it’s possible.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 2:55 AM on March 15, 2007

davehat, you could do some math on the Metafilter kml file (I have no idea how, but certainly there must be someone here who might)

If the KML file was, instead, something I could use, like an ArcGIS shapefile, or hell, even a database or csv file, I couldn't probably dedicate the rest of my evening to doing this.

Unfortunately, it looks instead that I'll have to dedicate the rest of my evening to figuring out how to parse KML to extract coordinates and usernames.

Any tips / helpers? A Python solution would be lovely.
posted by Jimbob at 2:59 AM on March 15, 2007

Actually, hang on, I'm onto it. Brute force, yo.
posted by Jimbob at 3:01 AM on March 15, 2007

emd3737: "I always thought it was strange that only 5 MeFites live near me, considering that I live in Boston."

You apparently live in a boat off City Point. Cool, I'm not too far from there myself. I actually live in a van down by the ~~river~~ harbor.
posted by Plutor at 3:57 AM on March 15, 2007

Processing.....
posted by Jimbob at 4:00 AM on March 15, 2007

Wow. Those numbers for continental Europe are way less than I would have imagined.

Just how US-centric is this place?
posted by dreamsign at 4:54 AM on March 15, 2007

Well, obviously not everybody enters their GPS position.
And as Aidan notices; the kml file shows less than half of the mefites in Berlin.
Maybe the KML file is quite old?
posted by jouke at 5:05 AM on March 15, 2007

My conclusions:

esquire, who lives here in American Samoa lives the furthest from anyone. The closest person to them is kamapuaa who's way over in Hawaii.

Caveats: I used a fairly rough distance calculator (that shouldn't make too much of a difference), I excluded people who had obviously wrong latitudes and longutides (ie. latitudes > 90 or < -90), but didn't do any checking beyond that. YMMV.
posted by Jimbob at 5:17 AM on March 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm all alone here.

On the upside, I can have a meetup at a mere moment's notice.
posted by konolia at 6:08 AM on March 15, 2007

Lonely here too, a little more than a hundred as-the-crow-flies miles from the nearest fellow-MeFite...
posted by misteraitch at 6:24 AM on March 15, 2007

Ooh, Karlskrona. It must be lovely down there this time of year, though.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 7:09 AM on March 15, 2007

Yes, it's a delightful spot, where, on a fine spring day one can almost forget that 'There are no other MetaFilter members nearby...'
posted by misteraitch at 7:44 AM on March 15, 2007

I'm one of the 4 in Spain, but I'm not in Continental Europe - I'm in the Canary Islands, which is geographically Africa. Come to think of it, I'm probably in the top 10 of remote mefites....

*waves from afar*
posted by sic at 7:48 AM on March 15, 2007

The KML file should be fresh every day now.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:48 AM on March 15, 2007

I can well imagine!

According to the long/lat, there are four MetaFilter users who live in Stockholm. Meet-up potential!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 7:51 AM on March 15, 2007

Quesnel (a bit north, but not far)

Dude, it's at least five hours drive from here. You can't pop over there for a few beer, and be back to work the next day.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:42 AM on March 15, 2007

The KML file should be fresh every day now.

This HTTP request:

HEAD /metafilter.kml HTTP/1.1

Host: www.metafilter.com

Gives:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:00:35 GMT

Server: Apache/2.0.59 (Win32) JRun/4.0

Last-Modified: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:00:02 GMT

ETag: "83aa-2723ef-a9e82ca4"

Accept-Ranges: bytes

I wouldn’t put money on it.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 9:04 AM on March 15, 2007

Mas lejos hombre! *waves* at sic desde otra isla española.
posted by adamvasco at 9:55 AM on March 15, 2007

stavros - Fort St. James? Cool. I just finished reading a book by a woman who lived with her husband on an island in Stuart Lake.
posted by deborah at 9:59 AM on March 15, 2007

I'm going to nth the request for the x closest members. I live in Kansas (amyms, where are you?) and there are mefites within an hour's drive of my house, but they're not on my list. It wouldn't break anything for you fancy city folk, especially if you used both metrics - all within X miles, X closest no matter the distance.
would it help if I name-dropped Jessamyn, and said that when she was here last month, I would have tried to make a meetup, but I didn't know who to invite? No? ok then.
posted by donnagirl at 10:09 AM on March 15, 2007

Southern Oregon is not particularly MeFi-dense. *sigh*
posted by everichon at 10:13 AM on March 15, 2007

The nearest person to me is 8 miles away (pouts). Does that count?
posted by Lynsey at 10:20 AM on March 15, 2007

Since the dutch meetup is always imminent, but never happening, we might just as well make it an imminent pan-european meetup in the mefi epicentre of continental europe; Amsterdam!
posted by jouke at 10:31 AM on March 15, 2007

Mas lejos hombre! *waves* at sic desde otra isla española.

¡Hasta luego!
posted by sic at 1:20 PM on March 15, 2007

stavrosthewonderchicken writes "Maybe they meant an hour by chopper from Vanderhoof, which is often the only way to get in to those places."

Or half an hour by 4X4 and the other half by barge or sled. Whatever the details I wasn't too disappointed when I didn't get the position. Two cycles in the spring or fall would have been great, after that I think I'd start going crazy. Though at least at the time you could still get a USENET feed by tape.

stavrosthewonderchicken writes "Although if the pine-beetle die-off continues apace, it might be a desert before too long."

Nah, just means we'll have a nice young heterogeneous forest for the next 100 years. The current pine monoculture is half the pine beetle problem.

Jimbob did you create a GIS of the info or just run the numbers. It's be cool to be able to pan around a global map and see how isolated or dense the MeFi population is.
posted by Mitheral at 2:20 PM on March 15, 2007

Mitheral, I just ran the numbers, but I may well visualise that stuff today at work.
posted by Jimbob at 2:43 PM on March 15, 2007

You guys know that you can just open the kml file in Google Earth, right?
All the panning and visualisation you need.
posted by jouke at 3:11 PM on March 15, 2007

FWIW, my profile shows the nearest person lives 1 mile away. I think this is highly unlikely. I think most people are using a default longitude/latitude for Vancouver.
posted by acoutu at 3:29 PM on March 15, 2007

The nearest person to me is 22 miles away. Is no one else out in the hinterlands of the Fraser Valley?
posted by deborah at 4:17 PM on March 15, 2007

stavros - Fort St. James? Cool.

Heh. That's got to be the first time in history that's been said.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:03 PM on March 15, 2007

I haven't used Google earth. What I'd like to do is place a circle around each user with a radius equal to the distance to the next nearest user. It's pretty easy in Arc, can one do that in Google earth? It looks like only the pay versions allow spreadsheet imports.
posted by Mitheral at 6:05 PM on March 15, 2007

I haven't used Google earth.

Try it! It's the best Google thing. Evar. (They bought it, of course, from Keyhole, thus the k in kml.)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:11 PM on March 15, 2007

I just finished reading a book by a woman who lived with her husband on an island in Stuart Lake.

It was sold a few months back, but for quite a while, American island (one of the islands in Stuart Lake, one I visited many times for fishin' and swimmin' and general Huck Finnin' when I was young) was for sale through vladi.de, for less than $80K.

I wanted to buy it, but my wife wasn't entirely keen on the idea, to put it mildly. Ah well.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:16 PM on March 15, 2007

Nah, just means we'll have a nice young heterogeneous forest for the next 100 years. The current pine monoculture is half the pine beetle problem.

That's what I've been thinking. The world is entering a cycle of profound change. We've currently got a CO2 problem, but it also looks like the environment is going to very quickly adapt to take advantage of it.

One of those adaptations is going to be a lot of new plants fixing all that wonderful carbon.

It's really quite neat: there's too much CO2, so the winters get too warm, which allows pine beetle to flourish, which kills mature boreal forest across Canada and Russia, which topples over, which allows new growth, which has a voracious appetite for carbon. Provided the toppled forest doesn't burn, that's a net reduction of atmospheric carbon.

Hell on the logging industry, but neat.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:16 PM on March 15, 2007

You guys are absolutely right, of course. My 'desert' comment was flippant.

I spent a lot of time on my recent once-every-four-years visit home last fall talking to people in the Fort and elsewhere about the problem. My mom was the mayor for more than a decade, and she stills knows everybody, and was able to give me a good impression of how people are feeling up there.

Towns like FSJ are going to die, or nearly so. At least FSJ has a fair bit of tourism as well, but less attractive places, one that like FSJ depend heavily on the forestry industry, are in for a world of hurt.

It was easier for me to take the long view, of course, and I had to be diplomatic about it, but a lot of people, even some people in the industry, are kind of thinking along the lines of what fff said. A lot folks are in denial, some are re-arranging their finances and long term plans, others are trying to figure out ways to transform their livelihoods under the new, bug-dictated regime.

It will force a massive reformation of forestry practices and a catastrophic belt-tightening for the industry, and because BC depends so heavily on it, for the entire region, but a couple of decades later, it all may result in a much deeper-rooted ethos of stewardship of the newly regrown forests. Once can hope.

The next couple of decades in BC are going to be hard for a lot of people, though.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:26 PM on March 15, 2007

Southern Oregon is not particularly MeFi-dense. *sigh*

Because we all had the good sense to move!

seriously. i know that of which i speak.
posted by spiderwire at 6:26 PM on March 15, 2007

Metafilter member density (Kernel method, 6-degree search radius). Note our legion of fans in central ~~chicago~~ asia.
posted by Jimbob at 7:08 PM on March 15, 2007 [3 favorites]

Cool stuff, Jimbob. Thanks!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:18 PM on March 15, 2007

Hey! I can see my house in that graphic!!! BTW, who is that in Bolivia?
posted by micayetoca at 8:08 PM on March 15, 2007

Ooooo. A map. Purty.
posted by typewriter at 8:09 PM on March 15, 2007

Greenland and _three_ in Antartica. No one in Eureka but it looks like we might have someone hanging at Santa's place.
posted by Mitheral at 8:17 PM on March 15, 2007

In bolivia? Someone called jlbartosa.
posted by Jimbob at 8:20 PM on March 15, 2007

Here's a version of the map with some of the more outlying folks labelled.
posted by Jimbob at 8:33 PM on March 15, 2007 [2 favorites]

That's a pretty neat map. But unfortunately I think it demonstrates how few people have entered their coordinates in their profile.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:10 PM on March 15, 2007

True.
posted by Jimbob at 9:24 PM on March 15, 2007

Wolfdog's really in Greenland? Three people are really in Antarctica (or just offshore)? We have people in Micronesia and the balmy isles of the Caribbean? And so many in North Central Asia?

I want stories, damn it!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:25 PM on March 15, 2007

I'm pretty sure most of those in north central asia are people in the United States who left the "-" sign off their longitude.

I'm surprised by the lack of people in Russia / Moscow.
posted by Jimbob at 9:29 PM on March 15, 2007

I'm pretty sure most of those in north central asia are people in the United States who left the "-" sign off their longitude.

Ah, right. Good call. I seem to remember that when Matt added the feature, the same thing had a lot of people showing up in China.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:31 PM on March 15, 2007

I never thought I'd be able to say I saw PenguinBukkake in Antarctica.
Thanks for the maps. I see I'm a remote Mefite, but not nearly the mostest remotest. It would be neat to get this feature spiffed up. I want to see who's in the Virgin islands (is that St. Croix, I see?).
posted by conch soup at 10:19 PM on March 15, 2007

conch soup, all you need to do is download the kml file I linked about, and open it in the Google Earth application (which is free). You can see everyone in all their glory!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:24 PM on March 15, 2007

Er, linked above. Christ, I'm dyslexic today.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:24 PM on March 15, 2007

Oh, never mind.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:25 PM on March 15, 2007

Here's a version of the map with some of the more outlying folks labelled.

Apparently Poland forgot MeFi.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:41 PM on March 15, 2007

STWC- sweet, thanks!
posted by conch soup at 10:53 PM on March 15, 2007

I never thought I'd be able to say I saw PenguinBukkake in Antarctica.

obviously you're new to the internet.
posted by spiderwire at 11:01 PM on March 15, 2007

Apparently Poland forgot MeFi.

I'm pretty sure pracowity is (or was, last time I heard) in Poland, and I see that he doesn't have coords in his profile.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:11 PM on March 15, 2007

I'm sorry, I've had to much coffee today, and it's Friday afternoon, so I'm giddy as a coked-up schoolgirl.

Other data I'd be interested in from kml file parsing (Jimbob?):

usercounts for all countries

which countries have no MeFites

you know, other useless stuff

Fiddling around with the file in Excel, it looks like 5375 people have entered coordinates so far. Pretty good data set.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:24 PM on March 15, 2007

Even though I posted it, I'm feeling like this may be one of my favourite threads ever on this site. Thanks everyone!

And please, if you do come to Quesnel, plan for a MeFi gathering?
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:41 PM on March 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

No sooner said...

Country Name       Count
United States           4290
Canada                  241
United Kingdom          214
Australia               74
China                   44
Netherlands             22
New Zealand             18
Japan                   14
France                  11
Kazakhstan              9
Kyrgyzstan              9
Germany                 9
Spain                   9
South Korea             7
Mexico                  7
Ireland                 7
Norway                  6
Singapore               5
Belgium                 5
Brazil                  5
Italy                   4
Switzerland             4
Nepal                   3
Uzbekistan              3
Puerto Rico             3
Austria                 3
Denmark                 3
Sweden                  3
India                   2
Mongolia                2
Philippines             2
Thailand                2
Finland                 2
Iceland                 2
Slovenia                2
Argentina               2
Portugal                2
South Africa            2
Indonesia               1
Iraq                    1
Israel                  1
Jordan                  1
Malaysia                1
Pakistan                1
Turkey                  1
Anguilla                1
Costa Rica              1
Greenland               1
Guatemala               1
Croatia                 1
Czech Republic          1
Estonia                 1
Greece                  1
Hungary                 1
Romania                 1
Benin                   1
Kenya                   1
Nigeria                 1
Bolivia                 1
Venezuela               1
Antarctica              1
Chile                   1

posted by Jimbob at 11:46 PM on March 15, 2007 [2 favorites]

Cool!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:56 PM on March 15, 2007

Jimbob, your numbers does not jive with jouke's ? Maybe the file's been updated? But the Denmark number has shrunk?
posted by Catfry at 12:51 AM on March 16, 2007

Nine people in Kyrgyzstan? And that isn't including me, as I didn't enter coordinates.

Inconceivable. Jimbob, would you please provide details on that?
posted by Meatbomb at 1:01 AM on March 16, 2007

Well, it was a quick effort. I just spatially-joined the user point data to the default ArcGIS "World Map" template. If points don't fall exactly within the defined coastal boundaries (quite common, since people tend to live along coasts) then they won't be assigned to a given country. For example, looking at my maps it looks like we've got three people in Antarctica. But the statistics show only one. YMMV.
posted by Jimbob at 1:03 AM on March 16, 2007

Inconceivable. Jimbob, would you please provide details on that?

See upthread. It's user error.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:22 AM on March 16, 2007

Wow Jimbob - this is great stuff - thanks!

Looks like I'm not quite the remotiest then, just pretty remote. I notice some of some of my nearest neighbors appear to be floating in the ocean off the West coast of Africa*. Should I send a search and rescue?

*Europeans who messed up +/- longitude or an island group I can't remember?
posted by davehat at 2:52 AM on March 16, 2007

I live on St. Helena. Just me and Napoleon's ghost.
posted by Dave Faris at 5:17 AM on March 16, 2007

Nice work, Jimbob.

Regarding the +/- user error thing, how much credence can we lend to the China number? I've always prided myself on the Netherlands being the best represented country after the anglosphere (even above NZ in this list, heh) and the China tally makes me pout.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:15 AM on March 16, 2007

The pride is on behalf of all Dutch Mefites by proxy, of course.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:15 AM on March 16, 2007

Hey, maybe if you sidebar this, people that haven't entered their coordinates will, and those in the western hemisphere that forgot the "-" on their longitude will correct it. Hint, hint!
posted by Rhomboid at 12:28 PM on March 16, 2007

Geekily interested in how jimbob calculated which x&y pairs resolve to which country. I could only find myself when ctrl-F'ing for Irish values (like '-8.' with corresponding values above 52).
posted by genghis at 5:33 PM on March 16, 2007

Needless to say, there's nobody 'near' me either.
posted by genghis at 5:34 PM on March 16, 2007

Geekily interested in how jimbob calculated which x&y pairs resolve to which country.

The power of decent software. I used ArcGIS - loaded a layer containing shapes of all the countries, loaded the layer of points, and basically told it to count the number of points that fell inside each country's shape.

The other, probably more accurate way of doing it would be to do the reverse operation - tell it to assign each point with the country it falls within or nearest to, then summarize all the points by country. But the would have taken about 2 minutes longer, and I had to head to the pub...
posted by Jimbob at 5:47 PM on March 16, 2007

I'm just a lonely geek...lonely in blue... March 14, 2007 2:56 PM Subscribe

I'm just a lonely geek...lonely in blue...
March 14, 2007 2:56 PM Subscribe