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chronoskin

a group weblog of maps, kites and shortwave

Things we found and could not keep to ourselves

A dozen short entries a day about paper maps, home-made kites and voices on the radio.

Thursday, 9 June 2005

A county map drawn from bus timetables

Somebody in the hill villages has redrawn the whole county using nothing but the printed bus timetables: places sit as far apart as the ride takes, not as far as the road runs. The coast comes out twice as long as the atlas has it.

Distances are in minutes. Where no bus goes, there is no land.

Why it works

The valleys with one bus a day stretch out like taffy, and the market town shrinks to a dot.

  • Printed on one sheet, folded in eight.
  • Sunday services are drawn as dotted lines.
  • The legend is longer than the map.

Make your own

The author’s script reads a timetable as plain text: busmap --minutes routes.txt writes the outline.

Earlier this week

The shelves

Maps

312 entries. Open

Kites

148 entries. Open

Radio

205 entries. Open

Weather

96 entries. Open

  1. front page
  2. kites
  3. the newspaper kite

Kite made from one newspaper and no glue

Wednesday, 8 June 2005, by Tobias Renn. Three comments.

A retired printer has worked out how to fold a full broadsheet into a kite that needs no glue, no tape and no sticks. The spine is the paper itself, rolled tight along the fold.

Use yesterday’s paper. Today’s is still too damp to hold a crease.

I built one at lunch and it flew for nine minutes over the allotments before the sports pages gave way.

Follow it up

Three comments

  1. Works with a tabloid too, but it wants a longer tail.

    Solveig | 8 June, 2:12 pm

  2. A longer tail and a calmer day. Noted for the next one.

    Tobias Renn | 8 June, 2:40 pm

  3. Mine lasted until the crossword. Wonderful.

    Henrik Aune | 8 June, 5:31 pm

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What readers sent in this spring and what became of it.

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MonthMost talked aboutStatusSent in
June 2005The bus timetable mapwaiting27
May 2005Kite aerial photographsposted141
April 2005A radio in a biscuit tinposted118
March 2005The longest street namedeclined93
February 2005Snow gauge made of tinsposted76

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About the four of us

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Who writes this

Four friends who met on a kite field and never stopped sending each other links. 38 entries this week, mostly under maps radio. A suggested link is posted, waiting or declined, and we say which.

Our linking policy

We link to things one person made and to pages that will still be there next year. We do not link to shops, and we never take anything for a link.

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