March 5th, 2008, 3 Comments »
We’re driving in the last foothills before the Sahara Desert starts in earnest. We were on this twisty stretch of asphalt only wide enough for one car. You had to pull onto the gravel shoulder to let the very occasional oncoming vehicle–mostly trucks and the old beige Mercedes that are the region’s taxis–pass you by.
We’d been listening to music on our stand-in car stereo, this little iPod-in-a-saucer-speaker thingie. “Night Windows” by the Weakerthans was playing.
As I sometimes do, I wondered if this was the first time that song had ever been played over this particular piece of terrain. Had anybody ever driven these 5.25 kilometres while John K. Samson sang:
Depluralize our casualties, drown the generals out in static
We turn and watch our city sprawl and send us signals in the glow
Of night windows
And then I thought about how most phones are also music players, and about the increasing appearance of GPS in mobile devices. And then I imagined a web service like Flickr’s maps.
Instead of recording where photos were taken, this service would capture where songs were played. And because songs happen in time, instead of captured moments, the site would display the paths that that music took over the Earth. Here’s how that might look:
You could build musical maps of trips, events or your entire life. This is a kind of a 21st variation on the songlines of Australian aboriginals (see also Bruce Chatwin’s wonderful book).
This seems like a natural add-on for Last.fm or a similar music social network. Maybe somebody has already done this?
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February 26th, 2008, 4 Comments »
I keep saying that because, frankly, it sounds cool.
Tomorrow we’re taking six days and heading all the way across Morocco to the edge of apparent nothingness in the Sahara Desert. We’ve hired a driver to take us most of the way, and then we’re hiring a car for the last stretch.
In the hopes of not becoming a page A16 news item about ignorant, lost tourists, I figured I’d post our itinerary here:
- Our driver takes us from Essaouira across the Atlas Mountains to Ouarzazate. That’s going to be about eight hours but trust me, it’s less heinous than the flight options.
- We stay over night in Ouarzazate at the Hotel Mercure Ouarzazate.
- The next morning we rent a car from the local Budget Rent-a-Car (a little odd? Yes) from and drive southeast about 200 km to M’hamid.
- We stay three nights at M’hamid at a kasbah called Dar Azawad. The second night we ride camels out into the desert to stay at a camp. Yes, sort of a CamelCamp. I’ve explained to Julie that camels are hateful, smelly, spitting beasts, but she’s insistent that we give it a try.
- We have one free night. We’ll probably drive back through Ouarzazate, head through Skoura to Kelaa El Megouna. We’ll stay over night somewhere before returning to Ouarzazate to get picked up for the long drive back to the coast.
Not to worry any parents–I’m sure it’s very safe. Here’s the route:
View Larger Map
As a matter of interest, this will be the longest time I’ll be without internet access since, well, since I can remember. Of course, who am I kidding? I’m sure all our hotels will have public terminals, or there will be internet cafes a-plenty. I may really try not to check email.
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