h a l f b a k e r yThe best idea since raw toast.
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Yes! A fantastic idea. An alternative would be to have each of the above ground components of each tube station mounted on large compass, such that when London rotates on its axis, commuters are not left heading north when they mean to go south and so on. |
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Ahh boring. In Japan they can't even be arsed to have North being the top of any the maps in the stations. Now that make it interesting. |
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Not even mentioning Osaka's Cosmo Square station, where the exit map on the platform level gives the exits and all attractions nearby, but then doesn't say which exit leads to which attraction.... |
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Yes, I'd support compass roses be mandatorially placed outside locations wherever people find themselves deposited - be it air, rail, underground or other terminals. Ideally, at street corners too. |
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You might have a point, but by dint of actually looking at the A-Z it gives the house/building numbers for that street, so all you have to do is find 2 numbers then you know |
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1) which side of the road you are on and |
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2) which direction to go anyway.... |
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I always just carry a small piece of tree-trunk, with some moss on it. |
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Oh and once you've got the A-Z you can then play A-Z Tarot. simply look up your own surname, find the street, then examine the surrounding streets. Worked for me. |
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I'd like to have compass points set into the pavement at
every street corner in every metropolis, and street signs
that indicate the closest eight-point bearing. In the
wilderness, I have an innate sense of direction, but I am
stripped of it entirely in a big city. I've gotten turned
around and hopelessly lost in Boston so many times that we
now plan ahead for it. |
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Here's most of a bun for making an excellent start. |
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If the compass roses were appropriately bumpy, it
would be a real help to the blind/partially sighted
too, they tend to rely on cardinal directions, with
road names and other signage being very optical
things. |
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Hippo-san, it worked for me. Had one friend called Sabine, really not a common name. Looked up Morrison Street and Sabine Rd was the next to it. |
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The A-Z sees all, knows all... |
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To be fair, [Alter], the only purpose of Boston is to
get people as lost as humanly possible. |
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This is a disappointingly excellent idea, making it
exceedingly difficult to make a humorously cutting
remark in an annotation. |
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Are we sure the plural of compass rose is compass roses? |
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This is easy. Every direction is south. |
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You're obviously not trying hard enough, MB.
hippo, this is an excellent idea. Especially for someone of your limited talent. |
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Quite true, [Mech]. I mean, whodafuk has three different
subway stations with the same name? Sadly, however, this
affliction seems to strike me in any dense urban
environment. I think it's all the steel messing with my
ethmoidal magnetite. |
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I like this. I have a strong sense of direction, but it occasionally gets crossed up, and then it is confusing as hell. |
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I'd also like to see a compass rose overhead, inside the buildings, where it is easier to see. |
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I'm also wanting directional posts, like what are under weather vanes, scattered around outside. |
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This is brilliant. Shopping malls in particular could do with them as well (unless it's like the way shopping malls don't have clocks - they WANT you to get lost and keep shopping...).
[baconbrain], putting a rose on the ceiling will confuse some people, as it will show East and West "back to front" (relative to North and South). Star maps have the same effect; "if North is at the top, why is East on the left?" It can take a bit to realise that it's viewed from underneath. |
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This is a good idea for any subway system. Many
phones have compasses built in, but this would be
even easier. |
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When I was in New York for a couple of months, I
mentioned to a friend that I would always get
disoriented when leaving the subway. She explained to
me that the trick was to memorize which direction
each of the avenues runs (i.e. uptown or downtown). I
didn't quite get the hang of it by the time I left, but it
was a pretty effective way of navigating, and it had
the bonus of distinguishing the locals from the
tourists, which is apparently a very big deal to New
Yorkers. |
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Somewhat baked, perhaps? Look on the floor of many of the map boards in London... Some of them have a North indicator (I haven't studied a lot of them, but I did notice one here (Linky)) |
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{I did get a photo of it, when I was there, but I'll have to look for the shot} |
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Not just London: here one or more of the stations' exits are often on unrelated side-streets a block away from the main intersection, clearly marked as say "Rumpleford Ave", but with no indication as to where the hell Rumpleford Avenue actually is in the grand scheme of things. |
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the council could do this pretty easily with the
stencil-jetwash system where they clean a graphic
into the pavement. |
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Not such a good idea, especially if the Germans invade. |
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there's no chance of that: they'd be so poor after
bailing us out, after we'd spent a whole lot of money
on anti-German invasion defences, that they
wouldn't be able to afford the invasion they just paid
to prevent. |
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//My good friends, for the second time in our history, a
British Prime Minister has returned from Germany
bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our
time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go
home and get a nice quiet sleep.// |
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//Not such a good idea, especially if the Germans invade.// |
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Ah ha! That is why the compass roses would be on turntables which, in the event of invasion, would all swivel to some new, random direction. I call this tactic the "Compass Ruse". |
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Just do what we do in New York, and navigate by the sun. Oh, yeah, it's London... |
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//Just do what we do in New York, and navigate by the sun |
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That's a good point, I need to splice in that luminescence gene into the moss on my piece of tree trunk, then it'll work equally well in poor light. |
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Sun in New York? There might be one spot in Central
Park that gets at an hour of sun per day from
between the skyscrapers... |
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I'm working under the theory that he only goes out
for (a slightly late) lunch, when the sun lines up with
the avenues, and you might actually get directions
from it. |
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In case I hadn't made this clear, this idea is pure
genius in a "why hasn't anyone thought of it before"
way, and needs to be implemented immediately,
world wide. |
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Agreed. Especially in Boston. The idea is solid gold if taken
beyond the subway (certainly sterling in present form). My
only gripe is that my ethmoidal magnetite remark did not
kick off
a fiery debate. |
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On further reflection, I think that a plain old compass rose is a bit of a cop-out. What is needed is an actual magnetised compass, set into the pavement beneath a lucite shield, an example in its fixity, in its real but very limited utility, to every commuter who finds themselves restricted by circumstances within or outwith their control. A moral lesson and a directional aid together. |
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Thinking no one's actually done a moral compass on here yet, but I'm sure there's an app for it. |
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you could finance them.... simply have the compass
set with the 4 cardinal directions and one extra a
kind of "that way is North, but that way is Starbucks,
about 400m" |
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[not_m_rm] I like that - you could make money out
of that sort of pseudo-psychic stuff. |
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