Spiderweb and Snail Trails

[gnimmel]

Heigh-ho, more photographs. I fear these ones are a little geeky (not in a 'wow, awesome, whizzo-cool' geek sort of way; I'm thinking of the sort of geek who traps you in the corner at a party and says 'I think you'll find...' a lot). Offered without much in the way of apology or explanation.

Comments

[emperor]

Mmm, freight is very networksy, which pleases the work-bit of my brain. Counting cows is easier, though, as the government does all the work for me already.

[gnimmel]

There's actually quite a lot of data on where freight goes out there (especially in the US) - the main problem is modelling which method it uses to go places (e.g. the amount of air freight from a city can depend quite strongly on exactly what sort of industries are in that city, whereas passenger numbers are typically more dependent on numbers which are more easily obtainable and well-defined). Plus freight switches modes at the drop of a hat, whereas passengers seem not to like being told "your flight to Edinburgh is very delayed, so you're going on a bus instead".

[caulkhead]

And if air freight is anything like sea freight, there's plenty of data out there, but trying to find out which bits of the data are accurate is a whole other story. Not to mention ports trying to fiddle the figures so they can get more funding for their pet projects (there was a scandal about this in Korea last year).

Um. I think I just turned into the geek in the corner. Sorry.

[gnimmel]

No, I think writing about freight is entirely appropriate for this post :)

The data we have for air freight is generally reasonably accurate, mainly because it's from the US and Europe and I've not looked into the rest of the world as much. Getting country, city and passenger data for the rest of the world was, um, interesting, though. Don't like several million of your country's inhabitants? Simple exclude them from the census! GDP too low in comparison with other countries? Alter the official exchange rates until you look like a rich country! Nyess.

[fluffymark]

Tokyo power lines

[gnimmel]

Ooh yay. They look a bit familiar, I think because of anime :)

[fluffymark]

Frog powerline in Matsumoto

[gnimmel]

It is important to give frogs electrical power. Otherwise their air conditioning breaks down and that makes them sad.

(the concertina-y thing at the top was also around in Savannah; I wonder what they do?)

[keirf]

What are Chinese toilets like then?

Most weird things on high voltage lines are either vibration dampeners, or insulators for preventing "animal phase-to-ground bridging problems". I don't know which of those the concertina-y thing is for, if either.

[gnimmel]

Typically squat ones. I can see why Western-style toilets might seem disgusting if you're used to squat toilets - there's no bodily contact involved in the latter.

[splodgenoodles]

OH me no, these are fabulous. Powerlines are great, and so are ports.

I can understand the reticence about western style toilets. I mean really, squat toilets are infinitely less ... intimate.

[keirf]

Ah that answers my question - the Chinese use "hole in the ground" toilets. I'd never thought about the "intimacy" issue. I guess if you're used to a squat toilet then using a Western style toilet would be the equivalent of me entering a cubicle and finding a big pair of rubber wading pants that I was supposed to pull on and use - even if they were rinsed and sterilized after each use I'm not sure I could bring myself to use them.

I seem to have gone off on a rather disturbing tangent, sort of, but I have also invented a new toilet...

[libellum]

Colours!! These are beautiful. :)

Denny showed me some photos of telecomms cables in Delhi recently. Like:

[gnimmel]

Mmm, those are serious cables. I wonder if, a few hundred years hence when having cables around has become an old thing (assuming cables and humans remain around that long) it'll all start being like trees growing over old walls; plants growing along them, and old wiring mixed in with new, and all the improvised uses to which people put things that have been around a few hundred years.