WYRMLOG

Cartographic Madness

Tuesday July 15th 2008

You know, as far back as I can remember, I've always loved maps. I don't know exactly when or where my love affair with cartography began, but I rather suspect it had something to do with Arthur Ransome and his Swallows and Amazons books. Each one had a map right at the start, showing all the locations in the story. It's been years since I read any of them, but I reckon I could still draw a pretty good map of the lake just from memory.

More than just loving maps, I've always loved making maps. Again I think Arthur Ransome is the culprit, Secret Water was all about map making (and mastadons, and eels, and almost drowning when the tide comes in). As a kid the walls of my room were plastered with hand drawn maps of locations from just about every book I read, and even now I'll occasionally just grab a piece of paper and whip up a map of some kind, just for the heck of it.

All this may explain why I've spent a good four or five hours over the last few days doing my damn well best to figure out where Connor lives in Warren Ellis's FreakAngels.

Careful examination of the scenes outside Connor's place in episode two reveal a number of distinctive features...

• It's a narrow, two lane street
• There's a traffic light and a zebra crossing
• There are tall, detached buildings on both sides
• One building has two distinctive, urn-like details on top
• Across the road from the urn building is one with a truncated mansard roof
• There's a t-junction close by (seen when KK lands her 'bike')

Now, all of this means nothing because surely it's just a comic right? Well, possibly not. Paul Duffield has apparently made a few trips to Whitechapel to take reference images, and plenty of real places (the Ten Bells Pub, Christ Church, the Spitalfields Market) turn up. So there's a reasonable chance that Connor's street is a real one.

So, I've been driving myself to distraction examining Whitechapel street by street in Google Earth, and then looking at hundreds of images tagged 'whitechapel' on Flickr for clues.

No dice. I am rapidly reaching the conclusion that the scenes in episode 2 are at best heavily modified, and at worst a portmanteau of several different places (suggested perhaps by the fact that the torn, red awning switches building between frames, and the idea that a small, narrow street would have a zebra crossing ). So I guess I'll just have to take a punt on where to put Connor's place on the next version of the Google Earth file.

At least until someone makes a map of all the zebra crossings in Whitechapel :)

Sing and rejoice ye people of Televisionland!

Monday July 14th 2008

For the dark one is cast down! And his empire ended until picked up by another network!

Well I was going to write about having a particularly Kevin Smithesque day - on the basis that I went into work even though I wasn't supposed to, and I had to pick up a timetable for the number 37 bus (yeah I was stretching) - but this has been superseded by the wonderful news we were all hoping for.

Channel 10 has axed Big Brother!

To quote NASA - w00t!

Of course it will almost instantly be replaced by Gordon Ramsey's Etiquette School or 20 to 1 Most Embarrassing Chainsaw Accidents or something equally inane, and there's at least a 50/50 chance of it being picked up and reworked by another network - but for a little while we can rest in a state of blissful non-Big-Brotherness.

For tonight at least I shall sleep well!

I want my morphine!

Saturday July 12th 2008

FACT: Australia has no R rating for video games.

This is something I've known about for quite some time, and - apart from a vague sense of annoyance at the Government being so backwards - it's never really been something of much concern to me. In fact I have to admit I found myself quite amused a few months back by the frantic efforts of certain people to get hold of an uncensored copy of GTA 4. But all that's changed now, because the Government has launched a direct attack on the Wyrm fortress.

They're refused classification for Fallout 3.

Apparently the ratings board don't like the game's use of morphine injections to temporarily repair inured limbs, and don't feel that they can give the game a MA15+ rating with this feature included. Now, the sensible thing to do would be to give the game an R rating and make it... oh, but hang on, there isn't and R rating, so Fallout 3 will remain unrated, making it illegal to sell or rent the game within Australia.

Let's all say it together. Idiots!

Now it may be that a chopped down version of the game - without morphine and anything else the censors may object to - will be released here. But that's not the point. The point is that the Government is still stuck in the mindset that computer games are something played exclusively by children. I'm not going to carry on about how adults play games as well, and that responsible, sane adults can watch something on a screen without immediately rushing out to do it - that's all been more than covered in the debate about GTA - I'm just adding my voice to the chorus of disgust at our elected officials still living in the dark ages.

Happily it's not illegal to import, own or play the game, so I'll be looking overseas for a copy. God bless the internet!

Ummm, apart from that my life has been pretty boring of late. I thought I had some other things to blog about, but I can't remember a single one. I guess that's what three straight hours of Gilmore Girls on DVD will do to you :)

Oh yeah, FreakAngels Google Earth file updated. DON'T MESS WITH JACK!!

From the Gospel According To Lol - Chapter 19

Friday July 11th 2008

22: And Pilate posted a comment reading JESUS KING OF TEH JEWS FTW!!!1!!

23: And the High Priests posted an owl captioned O RLY?

24: And Pilate posted a response reading YA RLY

(not intended to cause offence, I'm just messing around with language here *g*)