Friday 29 February 2008

How to map India

The freetards are wandering around barefoot being treated like Vishnu Himself:

We’re shown into an assembly room where 150 or so have gathered. Huge bouquets of flowers are presented to us to carry about 5 feet further and place on a table. And again applause as we enter. There are printed banners announcing our day of ‘Democratic Digital Mapping’. We’re sat facing the room along with the principal, H. S. Rai, and others from the computer engineering department. Everyone gets a chance to speak. Including an introduction of Schuyler and myself, featuring lengthy sections cribbed directly from our CVs. Schuyler gives another rousing speech of thanks. Overwhelmed, I have to start with “I’m from California, and we don’t really do ceremony very well there…”. Finally, we are presented with trophies commemorating our participation this day, and a couple mintues for photos, including photographers from the local media. Another round of applause as we move into the side room for tea.

Jesus fucking mother of Christ in Heaven! If you enter the freetard site there's not even any maps of India! This all reminds me of when Steve Jobs and I went trekking through the sub continent, popping pills all the way. Man, those were some trips. But I'm older now, and I have responsibilities.

Six months ago I personally saw to it that we paid some ex-call centre workers to run about mapping in India. It was just an amazing success, so much so THAT WE HAVE MAPS:


View Larger Map

The post continues:

We walk next door to the high fenced girls hostel, and pushed ahead down a corridor, where we are showered with flower petals and beaming smiles by five girls, and continue into the front of an open central yard of the complex, facing several hundred of the female students. Applause, hollars, flash bulbs. We are seated at couches placed in front, with a small table apon which clipboards are laid out. We quickly gather that this is a dance competition, we are the guests of honor, and are expected to judge the dances of a dozen young women. Numb horror.

Now, that's more like it. If only GSDI 10 was anythign like that! But, it's not hosted in Marin County now is it? I had wondered what ther freetards were doing while I was commanding my map empire. Now I know.

Sent from a BA lounge

1 comment:

TomH said...

That was quite a cunningly constructed OSM link - try zooming in a bit more and see if we don't have any data. Or you could just switch to osmarender, which shows primary and secondary roads at lower zoom:

http://openstreetmap.org/?lat=23.9&lon=79.4&zoom=5&layers=0BFT