Google Maps: 15 million views

In 2017, I tried an experiment to see if I could post photos that got one million views on Google Maps (they referred to the photos as living on Google Local at the time). It quickly got very easy to reach the milestone, with tons of views of some frankly pretty boring photos.

Today, I got a notification that my photos had reached 15 million views, which is ridiculous. I still am suspicious of the accuracy of these metrics. Two photos have each exceeded two million views. There's this one of Tires Plus in Gambrills:

and this gem from the Bowie Walmart:

My most-viewed photo that is not of a chain is at #7 this view of the Center for the Arts at George Mason (265K views):

That's not actually bad.

I am less excited than ever to be provided free labor to Google, but I will sometimes upload a photo when prompted, particularly if I want to influence the perception of a place or if it just makes me laugh. I haven't really had any take off in the past couple of years.

Stay-At-Home Bowl Update through 2024 and Recap

One of this blog's long-running features (for over two decades!) has been something I invented called the Stay-At-Home Bowl Trophy, awarded to the team (or teams!) who have defeated both Super Bowl participants. It's been a couple of years since I've updated. Looking back, I also have the results scattered among a variety of blog posts, so after seeing what happened in both 2023 and 2024 (I award by the calendar year of the regular season, not by the Super Bowl), I'm going to give the all-time list of winners.

The 2023 season ended in a matchup between the Chiefs and 49ers. Both lost five or more games, but there was no overlap.

The 2024 season saw the Eagles defeat the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. The two teams combined for only five regular season losses, and there was again no overlap.

So your to-date list of teams which have defeated both Super Bowl entrants remains:

• 2021 49ers
• 2021 Packers
• 2017 Chiefs
• 2016 Seahawks
• 2014 Chiefs
• 2013 Colts
• 2010 Patriots
• 2008 Eagles
• 2008 Giants
• 2005 Jaguars
• 2004 Steelers
• 2000 Skins
  
• 2000 Titans
  
• 1996 Cowboys
  
• 1993 Dolphins
  
• 1986 Seahawks
  
• 1985 Dolphins
  
• 1981 Browns
  
• 1980 Cowboys
  
• 1980 Chargers
  
• 1979 Chargers
  
• 1978 Rams

Geocaching Update: 296 Connected Counties

 

As I'm reviving this blog, I'm updating some of the past posts. In 2023, I posted about having found geocaches in 183 counties connected on the map. Now I'm up to 296!

Previously, they encompassed 13 states and DC. I have since added Wisconsin, Kentucky, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine to bring the total to 21.

It's not going to be super easy to add more, though Vermont, Iowa, Georgia, and Alabama are all feasible with one good trip each. (Georgia and Alabama are already connected, so one trip between Greenville, SC and Athens, GA would add both.)

It will, however, be super easy to add more counties -- I'm hoping to get two more in Pennsylvania this weekend, and several more, mostly in Ohio, next month.

I have found all of the counties in Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Other states where I have more than half include Arizona, New Jersey, Maine, and Virginia.

World Heritage: Historic Centre of Rome

Still catching up...

Also, last year, I went to Rome and saw my 71st World Heritage Site. Technically, the complete name is "Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura." 

It was already going to be an extremely short trip, but it got even shorter when my inbound flight was a few hours late. I can't wait to go back when I have more time.

At the time, that gave me 71 out of 1223, for 5.81% of all sites worldwide. New ones were recently inducted, so I'm at 71 out of 1248, or 5.69%. I've been some neat places this year, but unfortunately no World Heritage Sites.

World Heritage: Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications

I have kind of abandoned this blog. It occurs to me, though, as the social media landscape gets more fragmented, I might want a place independent of any one corporate site to share my musings. So I'm starting with catching up on some long-running features.

Last year, on a cruise with Robyn, I visited my 70th World Heritage Site, the Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications in Bermuda.

World Heritage: Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks

 

UNESCO just finished inscribing new sites into the World Heritage List, bringing the total to 1199. Earlier this month, I visited the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, which was part of the Hopewell Culture Earthworks, which were just inducted.

The earthworks were constructed in what is now Ohio almost 2000 years ago. While not as visually impressive as some of the other sites, the earthworks offer an intriguing glimpse into a fascinating culture that influenced this continent long ago.

This is my 69th site, representing 5.75% of the total sites.

Geocaching Update: 183 Connected Counties

I last did a geocaching update on this site in December 2021. I stopped, frankly, because they became boring to write -- I can only imagine how boring they were to read.

But maps are cool to look at, right?

In that update, I had found geocaches in 75 counties that were connected on the map, as shown.

I've been really connecting things up since then, getting to 183!

That stretches to 13 states (IL, IN, MI, OH, PA, NJ, WV, VA, MD, NC, SC, DE, TN) and DC!

Nebula Update: Babel

I am continuing my project to read all of the Nebula Award winners for Best Novel. The latest winner was Babel, by R.F. Kuang. The actual full title is "Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution".

Babel takes place in an alternate history, where the Industrial Revolution is powered by silver magic, which depends on the talents of translators to perform the magic. By "translators" I mean actual translators; the magic depends on the subtle differences in meaning between words in different languages.

The book is exceedingly well written and a blistering indictment of colonialism. I think it is a bit of a letdown as an alternate history, though. I believe the availability of magic would have led to greater differences than just "the Industrial Revolution is powered by magic". I also did not come away from the novel with conclusions about 19th century England or the present day. Why was violence a "necessity"? Is it now? If not, what does it say that we got from there to here without it as a primary driver of change.

4 out of 5 stars.

As in 2019, that leaves me with:

1. 1966: Babel-17
2. 1968: Rite of Passage
3. 1978: Dreamsnake
4. 1981: The Claw of the Conciliator
5. 2018: The Stone Sky 

My current plan is to finish this off relatively soon by listening to these as audiobooks.

World Heritage: Giant's Causeway

In April, I visited Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, my 68th World Heritage site. That's out of 1157 total, with more due to be inscribed at next month's meeting in Saudi Arabia.

2020-2022 Stay-At-Home Bowl Update

I have been behind in awarding the Stay-At-Home Bowl trophy, which is given to a team who defeats both Super Bowl participants.

2020: No winner.

2021: 49ers and Packers

2022: No winner.

The 2021 season was the first one since 2008 to feature two winners.

World Heritage: Historic District of Panamá

 

Catching up on my World Heritage posting, last November I went to Panamá. The one World Heritage site I visited there was the Historic District of Panama City, part of the "Archaeological Site of Panamá Viejo and Historic District of Panamá" site. I took a bike tour of it. (I also took a pub crawl of it, but that's a different story.)

World Heritage: Belem Tower

 Last month, I visited my 65th World Heritage Site, Belem Tower in Lisbon, Portugal.

Above is not a picture of Belem Tower; it's what the Stable Diffusion AI drew when I gave it the prompt "Belem Tower".

Here's what Belem Tower actually looks like. It was built in the Lisbon Harbor both as a defensive fortification and to commemorate all the voyages of the Age of Discovery.

It was neat to climb the stairs and enjoy the views of the harbor.

The other part of the World Heritage Site is a monastery. I did not visit it, but here I am holding some pastries in front of it.

World Heritage Update

Since I'm re-invigorating the blog, I thought I would update some of my more interesting fixations. One of those is seeing how many World Heritage Sites I can visit.

Since my last update, more sites have been inscribed (though none I've visited), bringing the total to 1154.

I have visited one site in that time: Cahokia Mounds.

It's in Illinois, just a little bit east of St. Louis. It consists of a number of prehistoric earthworks. It is unusual in that it is a state park.

Honestly, that last fact was constantly on my mind. Illinois' senators have tried to get it named a national park. I could only imagine how much of a better job the NPS could do, both in terms of visitor experience and preservation. Still, neat to visit.

This brings my total sites visited to 64. My percentage of the total visited drops ever so slightly lower to 5.55%. I have plans to visit another in September -- stay tuned!

Nebula Update

I've been away from blogging for a while (yikes, only 5 posts last year...and pretty boring ones, frankly). I started this blog during a difficult time in my life. Twenty-two years later, I find myself in a surprisingly similar one, so it seemed appropriate to return to the blog to express myself.

At least for now, I'm going to talk about more cheerful things. 

In 2004, I declared a goal of reading all the books to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

My most recent update was in 2019. I only had 5 books left. Well, three more years have added three more novels to read. I have, however, read all three.

The 2019 winner was Song for a New Day. I mostly listened to it on my drive cross-country last year to visit my mother in Arizona. It largely concerns people not wanting to leave their houses because of a pandemic. Eerie. I gave it 4 stars.

The 2020 winner was Network Effect, book 5 in the Murderbot series. I gave it five stars; I have really enjoyed the whole series.

The 2021 winner was A Master of Djinn, another 5-star book. It is a mystery set in an alternate-history, steampunk 1910 Cairo. With lots of magic. It's great, and I hope to see more books in the series.

So it's back to 5 left. The good news is that I am back to flying again, and I do some of my best reading in the skies.

Geocaching: Fall 2021

After not geocaching in August and September, I found 12 caches in October and 24 in November, for a pretty busy fall.

On October 3, I found a single challenge cache. On the 8th, I found my first Adventure Lab (and a bonus cache) along with 6 challenge caches. I had avoided adventure labs for a while because they count as a "find" but not a "cache," which is confusing. But I might want to do one with the boys at some point, so I thought I'd see what was going on. Two of the challenge caches were new difficulty terrain combos (D/T #47 and #48). Another challenge cache was the first cache I found placed in October 2018 (Month 224).

On the 11th, I decided to push towards my long-standing goal of finding caches in all 24 Maryland counties. I headed for the lower Eastern Shore and found one cache in each of the counties there (Counties 159-162). Two of them were from new months, May 2005 and July 2009 (Months 225 and 226). That left three Maryland counties.

In early November, an excursion to Delaware allowed me to get the 22nd Maryland County, Dorchester (County 163), as well as New Castle County (County 164) in Delaware. I now have 2 out of 3 Delaware counties, which makes me regret the hole the missing one forms in my map. It's about 90 minutes each way from work to fill that in.

On the 7th, I headed out in Northern Virginia specifically looking for unfound months. I found six of them (Months 227-232) and a challenge cache.

I found one more cache on the 12th, and then on the 13th, I headed for West Virginia, mostly with the aim of finishing the 77 Degrees West challenge (I have now found one starting W77 00, one starting W77 01, etc.). That day, I also found my first cache in Berkeley County (County 165).

On the 20th and 21st, I went caching in Pennsylvania. Somehow, I was right near an unfound cache, so I grabbed FTF #25, and my first in Pennsylvania. All in all, I found caches in five new counties (Counties 166-170). The FTF was actually placed on October 31, so I got October 2021 as Month 233.

Finally, I found four caches on Thanksgiving, including one placed in September 2021 (Month 234).