Three Hours and a Sunburn Later...

With my marathon only four weeks away, the amount of time required for training is peaking. You'll have to forgive me but because of the time spent training it ends up being pretty much the only thing I talk about. This past Saturday was a 19 miler. A little over three hours of straight running. About the time my runs passed ten miles, the straight line urban runs turned extremely monotonous. I had become too accustomed to my route, both for my sanity and for my ability to grow as a runner. I knew exactly the places I could cheat, knew how to time the traffic lights if I was feeling tired, and barely ever had to deal with a hill.

Someone at work tipped me off to the >8 mile loop at Kensington Metropark. Last week I did the loop twice. This week I did two loops plus a spur out on a horse track.

When you're out there, on your own for that long, running, it really shapes the experience of your weekend. So much so that, when the question is asked, what I did this weekend, the default answer is simply "I ran".

Comedy break---
As I said to myself "Iran". I realized I must share this MAD TV classic.

The point is, runs this long become an experience and get you in touch with a certain Place.

The Kensington run exposes me to hills, unknowns, extreme winds and a challenge I can't find in my own back yard. Google says that there is only about an 80ft vertical range to the run but with all the hills throughout the course, it really begins to add up.

It doesn't look like much as a Google track, but it sure takes some effort!

The Little University Down the Road

Last year I was fortunate enough to be elected to the Eastern Michigan University Alumni Association Board of Directors.   I'm required by law, well, a sheet that I signed, to state that my opinions are my own, and do not represent the Alumni board as a whole.  Of course, I won't be mentioning anything disparaging here. My involvement with the group has brought to light some little known facts about the university that often falls within the shadow of the University of Michigan, just s few miles down the road.

Eastern Michigan's roots are as a teaching college.  To this day it pumps out some of the best prepared elementary educators in the country.  Despite some terrible press over the last 10 years over a murder cover up, and an extremely controversial new President's house and one of the worst runs in NCAA football history, EMU has built itself an impressive alumni base that is spreading quite literally around the world. 

I took some data showing the location of the EMU alumni base and made a country map. I haven't included numbers because that's not really the point. I'm pleased to see that the near 150,000 living alumni seem to be making an impact all over the world.  So while it's Easy to think of EMU as U of M's little sibling, were making quite a splash internationally.

Two places jumped out as me as real surprises, Angola and Swaziland.  I never would have expected the amount of alumni in those areas.  Time to investigate!

Pure Michigan

If you don't like it, wait five minutes - so the Michigan weather adage goes.

It's easy to get jealous of those sporting latitudes nearer to zero than myself.  Most of us Michiganders (and most of us prefer that demonym), will point to the fact that we have four distinct seasons as a reason our state is so wonderful. We are the same people that ask "What happened to spring" when the weather jumps from 40 to the mid 80's in a few hours as it did Sunday. 

The temperature swing happened as I was on a 15 mile run through, interestingly enough 6 different cities.  Six different cities and 40 degrees in the course of a morning got me thinking about the extremes we see in Michigan, despite our moderate lat/long. 

Temperature swings are one thing, time is another. We're "blessed" to use a daylight savings "system" causing us to jump between -4 and -5GMT and causing daylights swings so dramatic that the first hint of morning can be seen just eight hours after that last light of day in June.  Winter, of course brings the depressing opposite, where 8 hours of real light causes many of us to wake up in the dark, drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark.  While light perks up any day, it's strange that work probably still isn't the "perkiest" time during a cold winter day. Fortunately, cabin fever is clearing up all over the state.

Now that we in the midwest are getting away from the penguin walk induced by long periods of cold air its almost nice to look back at all the extremes we in Michigan experience.  Although, as far as running is concerned, we can postpone the 80 degree days another five weeks or so.

And we have funding for our wonderful tourism campaign.

Speaking of running, I have to figure out a 17 mile route for this weekend.  I'm growing pretty tired of the area near my house and might actually have to drive-to-run, which I generally avoid, most often because of the short days we have in the winter and spring months!  At least I'll have an opportunity to see something new!

Putting a Capital "P" in Place or The Old Train Station Down Michigan Ave.

The Five Themes of Geography brought clarity to school teachers everywhere in an otherwise sprawling set of geographic concepts.  While I maintain that geography, in a broad sense, can include anything, I've concluded that the CONCEPT of place is not given adequate consideration in our geographic lexicon.

My field, Urban Planning takes consideration of Place to the next level.  I'd like to begin capitalizing Place in this sense. I've always wanted to create new conventions anyway.

We're taught that humans interact with the environment and that there are numerous cultural considerations that go with that, but what is rarely discussed is the emotional interaction with places.  The thoughts, the history, the sense of being one gets as they exist as PART of a Place.  It's also important to think of a Place over time and that ones existence in that Place is perpetually fleeting. The idea is that a Place is the sum of the parts of the people that create it.

So what the heck am I talking about?

The Michigan Central Train Station is one of the most beautiful structures around.  Its majestic art deco lines jump up at the sky leaving an indelible impression on those who sit in its shadow.  Paradoxically, the building is a shadow of its former self.  Gutted, rotting, broken and dilapidated, it sits with the threat of its demise and with that, the loss of it as the cornerstone of a true Place, existing as it did through the ups and downs of the City of Detroit.

For me the station is special.  It makes me think, yearn, learn and wonder. When I am near it and when I think of it I become connected to the Place. Not the location, the Place.

Here's to hoping this Place will see better days. I encourage you to look up more information on the station. It's quite the soap opera here in Southeast Michigan!

Window on the World

I'm certain I've mentioned this before, but my early fascination with political maps stemmed from an unquenchable curiosity about far away lands.  My early thoughts taught me many things.
 

I imagined that most of Africa looked like this:

I was certain all of Russia looked like this:

I was confident Brazil looked like this:

Although I think that was because of the song my dad sang "Way down among Brazilians Coffee beans grow by the billions".  Interestingly enough, I thought the word was "Brazilia".  There was also a time where I thought the word was "Vermilion", as in, Ohio.  

And due to a presentation in 4th grade, I learned that China, for the most part, looked like this:

This was my "Window on the World" version 0.5

Version 1.0 of the Window on the World, Google Earth, wouldn't come for another 15 years.

I must give credit where credit is due.  My dad was the one who coined (at least in my mind) the Window on the World concept.  He first mentioned it in this 15 year gap.  The original idea was live video feeds from all over the world which could be viewed like channels. While it has been implemented in several ways, I can't think of a good, inclusive site, app or anything that does what he described.

Google Earth was so great because it made it possible to actually see these places, through a shiny new digital lens.  Perhaps not the Window on the World my dad described but something that allowed me to replace my imaginary or outdated images with real imagery.  With the addition of the Control+alt+a flight simulator, I could fly anywhere in the world in an SR22 prop place.  That would be version 1.0.1

Street view brought us up to Window on the World version 2.0. Truth be told, what pushed me over the early-adopter-versus-buyers-remorse teeter-totter on the iPad was the ability to zoom around the street view images of far away lands (read select European cities).  Straight out of the ad to my local apple store, I'm pretty sure the first place I looked at was the Eiffel Tower - that doesn't make sense for me though, I must have seen the commercial too many times.  It's a good thing the iPad 2 commercials don't include some minor advancement in streetview functionality or I probably would have been waiting in line on March 11th.  My reality is becoming Apple commercials.  Also of note, I've looked up Apple's stock symbol (AAPL) so many times that it takes me a couple seconds to remember how to actually spell apple...the Newtonian spelling.  

With the iPad (version 1.0 for those who pay attention to such trivial things), I'm left with a good streetview portal that forces me to put up with this screen more often than I'd like.

For any iPad Google map users out there, you probably find the above image hilarious, and you should.  For those that don't, well, go get an iPad...or an iPad2.

The version upgrade to 2.0 made the earth more accessible than every before...well, half of it (the map below shows the coverage area). That is still an issue (another being that I told myself I wouldn't use parenthetical humor or sarcasm more than twice in this post).  Perhaps this is more like Window on the World 2.0 beta. Or version 1.9, the one that everyone is scared to download to their phone.

That brings us to the topic of today's post, something you've probably been wondering about since you started reading!  After feeling guilty (guilty isn't the right word but I can't think of anything better) about my mildly scathing review of National Geographic's World Atlas update, I think it's important I throw out an iPad app for you to enjoy, or at least one you can enjoy vicariously through your techy counterparts.  

Say hello to Geo Photo Explorer.

What this app can do dwarfs the fact that it is one of the most unintuitive things I've used on the iPad.  That, of course, can be remedied through practice.  I'm willing to take time and learn with an app that truly merges photography and geography. A few more minutes went a long way this evening.

The fact is, this app is not a new concept but a fantastic implementation.  Panoramio is a great website to go to and they actually have an iPhone app, but the fact that they DON'T have an iPad app tells you that it is much more about user contributions than searching the database.  While the ability to contribute is great, my focus is the window on the world version 3.0.

This app adds the flickr library to geo searches.  Its fluid, responsive, and not very buggy.  They really tried to Apple-up the concept and even have cover flow functionality to look through selected pictures.  While many have tried, no one, including this app has been able to really replicate the cover flow motion of the iPhone.

Being able to search the globe, and this quite literally is the ENTIRE globe, for pictures from other geo explorers is something that gets me excited about the next version of my Window on the World, whatever it may be.

World Atlas iPad App Video Review

Last June I wrote a post defending National Geographic's World Atlas app for iPad and iPhone. The reviews in the app store were abysmal, climbing to a high of three and a half stars (a number that wouldn't even impress Ed McMahon).

After nearly a year, the wait is over, World Atlas 2.0 is here. Too bad they didn't listen to any of our concerns, instead, opting for improvements that do little to improve its functionality. But, in the words of Levar Burton, you don't have to take MY word for it...actually you do, see my video review below.


Well National Geographic, thanks for trying...I guess.