The (Hole) World
This is another quick cheat entry, but I was so taken with this, I had to share it with you all. I'm currently brewing a proper entry as well, so you should get 2 for the price of 1 (BOGOF innit).
I stumbled across this marvellous use of a geeky person's talents while perusing Meriem's quite stupendous photographs of Yemen (there's a link over there on the right hand side of this page if your interested in seeing them). The map below represents the countries I have visited in the world. I found it really interesting, mainly because of how it can accurately represent and wildly misrepresent at the same time. For example, you will note the large swathes of red in the northern hemisphere. This is largely the result of my recent trip to North America, where I genuinely covered a lot of territory and saw many places, but also because I once went to Moscow for 6 days on a work trip and can now claim the whole of Russia! Similarly, my extensive travel in Europe (15 countries I believe) shows up as bugger all, while my Brazilian adventures entitle me to a large swathe of southern hemisphere landmass.
The craziest thing of all is the amount of white still left on the picture. I consider myself to be fairly widely travelled, yet I've only visited 8% of the world's countries (though strangely I've chosen 4 of the 5 largest). I've only visited one country in Africa, Asia & South America and haven't even got close to Australasia, Central America or the Middle East. Looks like the job's gonna have to wait for a while yet!
Have a go and do your own here. I'd be very interested in seeing other people's maps. I'm gonna put a small wager on Niko's being the reddest...
posted by Alan @ 4:22 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
had a go and was very embarrased by my poor showing only being able to tick countries in Europe, plus America and Canada - must try harder. Dave's is much more impressive and I can't have my husband outdoing me.
It's quite depressing when you realise how limited the travels you thought of as so impressive appear so puny when shown on a map like that & even worse when reduced to an incredibly small percentage score. Still it will be good trying to improve it. Keep travelling - that's what I say !!!
if anyone wants to email their maps i can do a gallery of them on the blog. i think it'd be cool to see where everyone's been.
i managed 26% of the world's countries, but without Russia, my map still looks quite white... on the other hand, my visit to Toronto gives me an immense swathe of red that is totally unjustified. i was hoping that having Denmark would also give me Greenland, but the creators have that loophole covered. bugger.
I've done 12%! Neither here nor there really. How can I send you my map? You are right about it being a little unfair that a trip to Toronto, Moscow, or Beijing gives you a whole load of red. I've been to denmark too - we should campaign for that to turn greenland red.
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