I've maybe found a reason to buy a gps unit.... from the newish BBC News magazine. An article on confluence mapping, which is an odd, but very intriguing idea. Essentially you use a GPS unit to get to the point were the latitude and longitude lines intersect and then take a picture of the gps unit screen to prove you got there and take pictures of the view. There are thousands of confluence points around the world and many have already been photographed. It creates a magical picture of the world, giving images of the countryside across the globe.
There are some rules that mean that every intersection does not count, but essentially there is one within 150 miles of you right now. Lots more information is at confluence.org and there is a country by country listing of possible nodes. Virtually every point in Western Europe has been done, but there are plenty left in South America
If you think that this is sounding a bit geeky and dull, the look at the pictures,
map of world, showing thumbnails of pictures taken at confluence points. It is also an interesting narrative reading the stories of people trying to get there and how they managed it.
So I just need a gps unit and then I'm heading back to Chile...
Building Social Web Applications by Gavin Bell.
that's a good project and an interesting collection of images of the world. gps's are fantastic little devices and i like the fact that people have invented fun new (geeky) things to do just so their gps isn't stuck in a drawer for the majority of the time. after all they're expensive little toys whose purchase needs to be justified.
i have a gps, in a drawer, that i keep meaning to take out geo-caching one day.
Geocaching and letterboxing are interesting gps based games too, I managed to forget to look for letterboxes when in Devon at the weekend...