I mentioned here that, over the years, I’ve linked to 133 places on OpenStreetMap from the space.

I set out to find a way to see those all on a map together.

I started by pulled out the OpenStreetMap IDs from my blog posts, with a MySQL query:

SELECT DISTINCT
 REGEXP_SUBSTR(field_body_value, '(?<=openstreetmap\.org/node/)[0-9]+') AS node_id
FROM node__field_body
WHERE field_body_value LIKE '%openstreetmap.org/node/%';

I then took that list of IDs and fed it to to Overpass Turbo as a query:

[out:json][timeout:25];
// Query all specified OpenStreetMap node IDs
node(id:
 3635784842, 3685963653, 3993674129, 4035609636, 4219153895, 3964961857,
 4354449846, 4368123936, 4486042006, 4212707889, 4602261458, 3693372328,
 3968667591, 3958645088, 773014435, 3980190956, 4013819799, 5011996054,
 3969063933, 4038653569, 3158817668, 3964875104, 3969441406, 5169624992,
 3801233358, 4593194200, 3969441407, 3982594975, 4010401866, 5832876155,
 1708994432, 1309334554, 1036621453, 3969441408, 5838493293, 4426845996,
 1748034323, 6240463094, 3964847306, 6459062029, 4604411453, 6424079068,
 4944710421, 4782985721, 6573258632, 6568896351, 3933036111, 2147027795,
 2615087430, 6605643321, 6652045815, 2182448223, 2186517765, 6688182495,
 6605321137, 6764407623, 6605651269, 3980513109, 6835691382, 6685552004,
 10858023, 6927460722, 7033960414, 3980513108, 7049488908, 2186488338,
 7727257681, 6573258634, 7751869034, 7840152104, 7951258371, 8014027214,
 8032817159, 8040803229, 4038653574, 6918920793, 8873060974, 8934216741,
 8951491829, 8980628803, 9315988227, 3980228660, 3964958255, 284006122,
 5268968932, 10973805204, 11218571610, 3969063907, 2361760932, 5863968654,
 11954599648, 12007408941, 12073479082, 12302232891, 12606957600, 6388479600,
 8542055290, 12765929228, 10025847334, 292984586, 4059855982, 13131503728,
 13356191552, 6672707890, 13877687747, 13951901855, 2622719611, 2467594779,
 4267855005, 3283009692
);
// Output full feature metadata (coordinates & tags)
out body;
>;
out skel qt;

(You can copy and paste that query into Overpass Turbo yourself, or just click here to load it.)

I exported the result as a GPX file, which gives me the geolocation — the latitude and longitude — of every place I’ve linked to.

I then imported that into gpx.studio to let me see all the places on a map. Here are some screen shots at various zoom levels:

The next logical step would be to create a map interface for browsing my blog posts — a way to look through the other end of the telescope, so to speak.

I am a very linky blogger: if I can hyperlink a noun in something I’m writing, I generally will. As evidence: there are 32,250 links in the 11,096 posts here. I consider this not only a service to the reading public, but also a part of what being a blogger is about, helping to weave connections, pathways through the infinite ether.

The question on my mind, often, is what to link to. There are categories of nouns that I wish there was a more generally-accepted canonical destination for on the web.

Books

Books, for example. Whistler, by Ann Patchett, was just released (I’m 4/5 of the way through; it’s very good). If I want to link to it, do I link to:

• The book’s page on her website?
• The book’s page on her US publisher’s website?
• The book’s Wikipedia page?
• The book’s WorldCat page?
• The book’s Open Library page?
• The book’s page at ISBN.nu?
• The book’s page on Bookshop.org?
• The book’s page at Bookmark, my local bookstore?
• The book’s page in my local library catalogue?

Open Library has always been my preference, and it’s the clear emotional choice: it’s run by the Internet Archive, its mission is “one web page for every book ever published,” and it was founded by Aaron Swartz. But its software seems trapped in 1995 and it never seems to have gained traction on a Wikipedia-like way (it seldom shows up in web search results when looking for a book). I remain unsure.

I’ve linked to Open Library book pages 34 times.

Places

Places are perhaps the category of nouns that I link to most often, and I’ve settled on OpenStreetMap as my canonical destination for these links. The upside is that OpenStreetMap is open, so it can be enhanced and kept up to date by the commons, it’s free from advertising, and it’s the map service that’s increasingly my go-to for accurate routing. 

The downside is that linking to an OpenStreetMap page, like this one for the Weird Harbour coffee shop, for example, seems like linking to the source code for something, rather than a human-focused actually useful destination. I remain unsure.

I’ve linked to OpenStreetMap places 133 times.

People

It used to be that the way you linked to someone was to link to their blog. Easy. But of course not everyone has a blog, and not everyone’s blog will be around forever. 

People have Instagram pages and Facebook pages, but it always seems wrong to link to those, and I feel icky all over when I do.

Some people have Wikipedia pages, and some people have a Wikidata record (here’s mine), and I’ll generally link to those absent any other compelling destination, but that’s a small slice of people too. There’s ORCID for researchers (here’s mine), and VIAF for authors (here’s mine), but those are also a small slice.

At one point I solved this problem by maintaining the Rukapedia, which had a list of people in it that I tried, fruitlessly, to keep up to date and current. And then I gave up.

I remain unsure.

I have no idea how many people I’ve linked to, because I’ve never had a standard method.

The Semantic Web

Part of the reason I think about this to the (unusual?) extent that I do is that in addition to the 11,000+ posts I’ve written here over 26 years being a corpus, those posts also contain a treasure house of information books, people, places and other things. Because this treasure house remains just text, it lacks the structure that would allow me to treat it as a resource that I could explore by navigating its hidden network (“what books have I written about?”, “what are the places I’ve visited in Berlin?”, and so on).

There is a longstanding vision for this vision of a “semantic web,” a term coined by Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web itself:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A “Semantic Web”, which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The “intelligent agents” people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

That was written in 1999, when “intelligent agents” was still at the “people have touted for ages” point; now we are there, and I wonder how the utility of what Berners-Lee imagined back then might have evolved as a result.

What are your linkable nouns on the web?

Véronique wrote:

I love the aesthetic of Dandelion’s coffee shop website/blog.

Dandelion is a “speciality coffee bar in buxton, derbyshire,” Buxton being a town of about 20,000 people, southeast of Manchester, in England.

And the Dandelion website is just peachy; enough so that I emailed its designer, Elliott Cost, a fan letter:

I just wanted to echo her compliments for the site: it’s dreamy in a way that’s thoroughly modern and useful, yet artful and evocative of the minimalism of the early web. I wish more coffee shop websites would offer up things with such clarity. 

I love how the things anyone really wants to know — address, wifi password, opening hours — are right up front. I love the explorable menu. I love the blog. I want to immediately go to Buxton and have a Cherry Iced Coffee.

Eliott Cost, it turns out, has designed websites for other projects I’ve bumped up against, including Rebecca Toh, Internet Phone Book, The Creative Independent, and Uncommon Fruits. It’s a reminder that to find interesting things, find one interesting thing, and then follow its network.

From Protopia by Kevin Kelly:

Dystopia leans into problems; utopia leans into progress; protopia leans into problems and progress in unison. It acknowledges there is no progress without problems, and problems propel progress. Dystopia runs on fear, and utopia runs on faith. Protopia runs on facts: the fact of real problems, and the facts of real progress. Most people have no issue with facing up to the problems we are creating today, but they take issue with the idea of real progress. They can believe half of the world is rotten but have trouble seeing the 1% better difference. This is where a long view can help.

I was walking to the public library this morning, past Province House. Newly-elected Green Party member Tayte Willows walked by me, and for a moment, everything felt right in the world. 

According to Canada’s Historic Places, the Zoé Vallé Library, in Chester, Nova Scotia, has a live-in librarian:

Since 1978 the continuing support of the community has ensured the Zoé Vallé Library continues to operate as Chester’s sole library and it remains under the stewardship of a live-in librarian, making it a unique setting for a public library, while preserving its historical form. The historical associations related to the library’s origins as a gift from a summer resident, Zoé Vallé, continue to be preserved as her personal collection of books remain in the library, whose motto is inscribed on a commemorative plaque and reads “Here She Still Welcomes You.”

Recent updates from the library suggest this is no longer the case—“The Village Clerk/Treasurer’s office has been situated upstairs in the former caretakers’ residence.”—but it’s delightful to think this was once the case.

(via Katie).

From Seventy Flavours, Vanilla by Clark MacLeod:

The actual highlight of the day was a visit to Pictou, a town I’ve driven past many times and always wondered about. There isn’t much to see — an expensive leather goods shop, the usual tourist draws around old architecture, not unlike Charlottetown. What made the day was a stop at Thompson’s Dairy Bar, which boasts around seventy soft serve flavours. Despite the selection, I had vanilla.

Perhaps worth taking the ferry back home for!

From Locking Type by Carl Middleton:

Anyone who is lucky enough to own type and a printing press by default is a custodian of the heritage of letterpress printing, and in turn holds artefacts which have helped inform the evolution of communication. The newest elements housed in any letterpress workshop would have been manufactured around forty years ago and the oldest can be one, two or even three hundred years old! As time passes it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find replacement parts and even to cast new letters – therefore it is very important that what each of us own, is taken care of.

Wise words. I feel it.

We’re closing in on a month away from home, give or take, as our Summer of Nova Scotia, catalysed by L.’s need to be relieved from summer camp CIT duties on the weekends, continues. We were a week near Inverness, Cape Breton, a week in Port Wade, in the Annapolis Valley, and we’re midway through a rainy week here in Bedford.

This morning I came across this, by Maggie Martens, in How Much Work Will I Do On My Summer Vacation?:

It’s not awful, though, working on vacations. I know I’m not supposed to say that. I know we all need more rest. But I’m also a working parent. And a freelance working parent of young children. Which means, everything I do is taking time from something else. And the work I do is because I need to pay my credit card bill, yes, but also because I feel called to do it. I enjoy writing about women athletes, and doing interviews, and digging deep on book research that I don’t think anyone else will do. Le sigh. Also, sometimes I need a little vacation from family on these trips (remember, I did not grow up doing this) and having an excuse to hole up in a coffee shop early one morning by myself to send a few emails, or draft up a story, isn’t the worst thing ever. Is that healthy? Probably not. But I’ll take some time to reassess that next year  — maybe on my family vacation.

During my intense working life—which is to say, “while I was working”, which is to say “while I was working, and had built a system that was entirely dependent on my hyper-vigilance”—I was no stranger to working while on vacation. Summer vacation. Winter vacation. All the vacations.

Like Martens I turned this into a lifestyle rather than an inconvenient intrusion. I coded websites in the attic of an ancient house near Montpelier, I managed servers on a makeshift desk in a reimagined medieval village in Italy, I scratched my solo travel itch by building adventures into work trips to New England. With the exception of some almost-completely-work-free travel with Olivia during school breaks, when work would have simply been untenable, I took my work on the road with me.

Like Martens wrote, “It’s not awful, though, working on vacations.” 

Being able to climb down a flight of stone steps to the village café, in view of the mountains, beats going to the same old same old coffee shop yet again. 

An excuse to retreat from family caregiving duties and self-isolate in a work bunker (or, in the early days, stumbling around an ancient city looking for open wifi) was a needed and welcome pressure-release.

Taking my work on the road was a cornerstone of being able to maintain my lifestyle as a well-paid one-man operation responsible for the hardware and the software from underground to the surface.

The lifestyle, which I lived for more than 25 years, had great benefits. It also rendered me unused to the idea of a vacation with idle time: on the working road all the idle moments got swept up in escape to the work bunker, so the days were, in essence, fun family activity, work, eat, sleep. The idea of rest didn’t really enter into it. Neither did the idea of rest with a partner, in particular with a partner who herself is challenged by the very idea of deserving rest, let alone how to take it.

I’d like to say that, absent the pressures of day-to-day digital work, I’ve learned how to rest, but I’m still figuring it out. The idle still seems too idle. I feel the pressure to write something. Or make sure my webserver is up to date. Or to plan something. Or just to fidget and spin time away. Or to endlessly introspect. None of which is restful nor relaxing.

I do not begrudge the years I spent working-on-vacation, vacationing-while-working: I got to see some fascinating places, to live as a local, to imagine living otherwise, elsewhere. But I did rob myself of the opportunity to learn how to stop. I’m grateful for the chance to learn it now.