Editing 201: Christmas GPS

Jump to: navigation, search

Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.

The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision Your text
Line 8: Line 8:
  
 
==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
βˆ’
In the comic, Cueball has gotten a {{w|GPS navigation device|GPS device}} and asks Megan what to do with it. She suggest that they take their current coordinates and modify the latitude and longitude with a simple function based on their birthdays, thereby pointing to an arbitrary, non-random location. For example, if Cueball was born on, let's say, April 1, 1986 and Megan on August 12, 1988 and they are somewhere in New York ([https://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=New%20York%20City&params=40.768062_N_-73.98468_E_type:landmark 40.768062,-73.98468]), the coordinate they type could make ([https://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?params=40.040186_N_-73.081288_E_type:landmark 40.040186, -73.081288]) (assuming US date format), or ([https://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?params=40.860401_N_-73.880812_E_type:landmark 40.860401, -73.880812]) (assuming following [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 ISO 8601]). The good thing about keeping the number before the decimal point is that the distance is still realistic to get to by car. Megan suggests to make out in this place. This procedure is somewhat of a precursor to [[Geohashing]].
+
In the comic, Cueball has gotten a GPS and asks Megan what to do with it. She suggest that they take their current coordinates and modify the latitude and longitude with a simple function based on their birthdays, thereby pointing to an arbitrary, non-random location. For example, if Cueball was born on, let's say, April 1, 1986 and Megan on August 12, 1988 and they are somewhere in New York ([https://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=New%20York%20City&params=40.768062_N_-73.98468_E_type:landmark 40.768062,-73.98468]), the coordinate they type could make ([https://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?params=40.040186_N_-73.081288_E_type:landmark 40.040186, -73.081288]) (assuming US date format), or ([https://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?params=40.860401_N_-73.880812_E_type:landmark 40.860401, -73.880812]) (assuming following [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 ISO 8601]). The good thing about keeping the number before the decimal point is that the distance is still realistic to get to by car. Megan suggests to make out in this place. This procedure is somewhat of a precursor to [[Geohashing]].
  
 
The title text suggests that if the location you make for yourselves is over water (which the example above happens to be), you either need to find a boat or find some rule that you can change to preserve the promise of making out, and if you can't do either, then there is no way you'd get to make out.
 
The title text suggests that if the location you make for yourselves is over water (which the example above happens to be), you either need to find a boat or find some rule that you can change to preserve the promise of making out, and if you can't do either, then there is no way you'd get to make out.

Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see explain xkcd:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel | Editing help (opens in new window)