[HN Gopher] Grid World
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Grid World
Author : tobr
Score : 246 points
Date : 2023-04-05 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alex.miller.garden)
(TXT) w3m dump (alex.miller.garden)
| 1attice wrote:
| What stack was used to make this? I cracked devtools but couldn't
| find any obvious fingerprints, and `bundle.js` is a only 12kb!
| 0_0;
|
| This is a masterpiece. Good writing, good graphics, good coding.
| Totalkunst in the wagnerian sense
| astroalex wrote:
| Thank you! I used plain javascript without any libraries --
| firstly to keep the file size low, and secondly as a fun
| technical exercise.
| d11z wrote:
| It's amazing knowing that one can produce things of this
| caliber without an internet connection at all. No
| dependencies required!
| shaunxcode wrote:
| This is awesome! The other works on the main page are also
| inspiring. Almost makes me believe in color again (I am a
| monochromist).
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| On a related note, I've been obsessed recently with grid cities.
| Queens, New York in particular flummoxes me. Locally every point
| conforms to a grid, but globally they don't all conform to the
| same grid. Brooklyn is comparatively easy as it consists of 4-6
| large grid areas stitched together (depending how much slight
| bending you forgive). Big swaths of Queens like Astoria and
| everywhere north of Queens Blvd are also simple enough. But that
| region from the border with Brooklyn I just can't ever seem to
| summarize succinctly.
|
| Any pattern that might form gets interrupted by either a
| cemetery, a park, train tracks, and in some cases (I've found
| out) former train tracks that were ripped out 100 years ago. I've
| considered theories like the streets being radially biased
| towards important junctions like Jamaica / Flushing. I've
| considered outlining major obstructions to see if those are the
| source of borders. I've looked around for the master plan on
| street numbering in Queens to no avail. This should be easy, like
| Manhattan Queens has numbered streets. It conforms to an
| approximate grid, yet no one ever plots out exactly what this
| grid is and where the defects in it occur.
|
| WTF IS QUEENS GRID?!?!
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| See also: Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian, one of his
| several grid-like paintings, this one clearly inspired by
| Manhattan:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Piet_Mon...
| jacquesm wrote:
| You're looking at the remnants of what used to be a bunch of
| unconnected Dutch settlements. New York (formerly New
| Amsterdam), Brooklyn, Flushing and Harlem are all named after
| their original Dutch counterparts, Amsterdam, Breukelen,
| Vlissingen and Haarlem respectively. And there is Coney Island
| (Konijnen eiland) and Staten Island (named after the Staten
| Generaal, a Dutch government body).
|
| Once NYC expanded and engulfed all of those separate
| settlements the grids ended up merging and some of the
| connecting roads and railroads between the settlements were
| incorporated into the city.
| nerdponx wrote:
| There's a bit of history between the current state and the
| original Dutch settlements.
|
| Unlike Brooklyn, which was its own independent city for a
| while before merging into New York City, Queens was a county
| consisting of several distinct towns. So for example Flushing
| and Long Island city were two separate municipalities. It's
| not too surprising that they were developed differently.
|
| What I think is more fascinating is just how enormous Queens
| actually is. I've always wanted to learn more about why it
| seemed like a good idea to unify such a large area into one
| physical city. Same goes for Staten Island. Would be really
| interesting to read some primary sources from the time.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| The major impetus for unification was the promise to build
| the subway. Manhattan had the money but needed the land,
| Brooklyn and Queens had land but not the wealth.
|
| Once upon a time Flushing was hyper religious Quakers. When
| the NY & Flushing RR was built (today the Port Washington
| branch of LIRR), one of the anecdotes in its history was
| the moral outcry when they tried to run a single train per
| day on Sunday. They appointed actual fun police to make
| sure no rowdy drunkards would dare come to their town
| hoping to have a good time. What do they think this is,
| Brooklyn? LIC was literally built by and for the railroads.
| Before the tunnels into Manhattan (1906 IIRC), you would
| get off the LIRR (or other competing services which were
| later bought out) and switch to a ferry to cross the East
| river at Hunters Point. LIC was always de facto
| colonization by Manhattanites.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Once upon a time Flushing was hyper religious Quakers.
|
| That's not surprising given that the town of Vlissingen
| that it is named after in NL is also in part of what is
| called the Dutch Bible Belt. Zeeland has a very strong
| religious tradition, even today. Likely those that came
| to America and named their town Flushing (likely
| phonetically much closer to Vlissingen in those days)
| were from there.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Yeah I know the history. But believe it or not those grids
| are easy. You can make all the grids of Brooklyn out of like
| 6 Jigsaw pieces. There's a directly south portion that leads
| to the lettered Ave's all the way to CI, a "Manhattan South"
| portion that hugs the coast, a "Carnarsie South" portion that
| hugs the coast East of Coney Island, Bushwick Cheese slice,
| and Williamsburg offset from there. Easy Pz. The grids of
| Queens north of the subway are also pretty easy to split into
| a manageable number of jigsaw pieces, namely Astoria (follows
| Manhattan convention), everywhere East of LGA up to and
| including Flushing (true north). Its the border zone between
| BK and Queens that just refuses to admit a nice, simple,
| summary pattern. Pretty much everywhere due East of Newton
| Creek and/or along the lower Montauk is a mess.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Most likely this is because that particular region either
| had unfortunate geographical components or because the
| settlements there were much smaller and therefore not
| nicely aligned. You see a very similar thing if you look at
| the map of Amsterdam. The bigger developments are all nice
| and orderly and result in clearly recognizable patterns,
| but whenever the 'new' butted into the old it becomes
| messy.
|
| Quite a few small towns found themselves suddenly as
| components of Amsterdam after being engulfed. New York in a
| way is relatively orderly because all of that happened in a
| short time.
|
| It's fascinating stuff. Good luck with your search, I'm
| curious if you ever will find out what caused it.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I've looked at some really old maps. Like this one from
| 1853 [1]. So for starters, the Long Island Railroad is
| apparently eternal as its nearly impossible to find a map
| which pre-dates it, the modern subway lines bare
| remarkable resemblance to the former "plank roads", and
| above all the regions that I'm finding most difficult to
| reconcile are actually younger not older than the other
| grids that have been stitched together.
|
| This helpful tool [2] highlights what I mean. Zoom out
| and look around, its mostly consistent large jigsaw
| pieces. There's just this one turbulent maelstrom in the
| middle that ruins the idea of several grids glued.
|
| 1. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804n.la002117/?r=0.197,
| 0.358,... 2.
| http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/maps/enhanced-
| stre...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Could it have been some large company that held the land
| and put their own buildings on it? There are some regions
| around here that are as large as the cities they border
| but are private land, Hoogovens (now Tata Steel) in
| IJmuiden is one of those and near Rotterdam there is
| 'Pernis'. Inside those it is a huge jumble. Other
| options: swamp land, native American settlements, army
| installations. Bushwick loosely translated is 'Boswijk'
| aka forest borough, so the area may have been heavily
| forested. The roads there may then have been logging
| roads rather than roads for regular traffic.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| >Could it have been some large company that held the land
| and put their own buildings on it?
|
| Coincidentally that describes an area a bit north of
| where I'm focusing called "Rego park". Where does the
| name Rego come from? Was it what the Native Americans
| called it before the settlers arrived? Was it the name of
| some important person in history? Nope. None of those.
| The company that developed the area was called "Real Good
| Realty". Rego is a contraction of REal GOod. Yep, its
| that stupid. But Rego Park is still grid conforming.
|
| There's a bunch of strangely curving streets a bit East
| of Rego Park in a crescent shape starting at 63rd St.
| Those are bending around the (now abandon and overgrown)
| tracks of the LIRR Far Rockaway branch. That line
| continues straight South exactly tangent to the curve.
| There's a few other places on the map where long gone
| rail lines influenced streets, but those mostly form
| minor exceptions to grid rules rather than full on
| dissolution.
|
| You're right Bushwick was absolutely Forrest from what
| I've read. But Bushwick itself is actually pretty grid
| conforming. Its approximately rectangular and slightly
| rotated relative to Bedstuy on its left side. The
| difficult parts start just above Bushwick. Namely around
| Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth and Middle village.
|
| Queens is unusual in the sense of having developed
| incredibly recently. Like literally farm land as recently
| as the 50s in some parts. Logically it should be the most
| conforming to the overall street plans, yet it isn't.
| Yeah there's natural borders like those cemeteries, but
| if it had streets running along the edges of the
| cemeteries the result would be a square layout leading
| exactly to a grid! Its almost like someone went out of
| their way to avoid making sense!
|
| BTW since you're interested there's quite a few place
| names you missed in NYC where the influence of the Dutch
| settlers can be seen. New Utrecht Ave, Dyker Heights,
| Stupyen Duvil, Yonkers, Van Ness, Van Wyck...probably
| more but those are the ones I can think of off hand.
| There's also the flag of the city [1] which still has the
| blue-white-orange banner of the Dutch crown (albeit
| vertical rather than horizontal). I've been told in
| recent times that particular tri-color pattern has an
| unfortunate association with far right political
| movements. Is it true?
|
| 1. https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/u/us-nyc15-l.gif
| jacquesm wrote:
| > New Utrecht Ave, Dyker Heights, Stupyen Duvil, Yonkers,
| Van Ness, Van Wyck...
|
| I'm aware of them, just figured the point had been made.
| There are indeed quite a lot more of them if you know how
| to look for them. The degree to which they have been
| bastardized sometimes makes it harder to spot them.
|
| > There's also the flag of the city [1] which still has
| the blue-white-orange banner of the Dutch crown (albeit
| vertical rather than horizontal). I've been told in
| recent times that particular tri-color pattern has an
| unfortunate association with far right political
| movements.
|
| The 'Prinsenvlag' (the non rotated version) is indeed
| associated with the NSB, the Dutch Nationalist Socialist
| Movement which during World War II made nice with the
| Nazis and whose name is pretty much synonymous with
| 'traitor'. In more recent times it has been associated
| with the PVV another right wing party with nationalist
| tendencies.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| If you zoom it it gets less neat. In the
| Williamsburg/Greenpoint area you can see 5 different grids.
| All of them historically from different settlements.
| codazoda wrote:
| In Utah we use blocks from Main Street and State Street (to
| really over simplify). So, I live at 4475 W and 5500 S. Which
| is to say that I'm about 45 blocks West of Main Street and 55
| blocks South of State street.
| nesyt wrote:
| State and Main run parallel to each other (in SLC at least).
| The zero point for north/south in SLC is S Temple, not State.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| On a related note, lots of businesses on Manhattan still don't
| get it. They advertise their location as something like: 58th
| St 369
|
| instead of saying: 58th St 369 btw. 6th and 7th Av
|
| It would be so much easier for their customers to reach them if
| they stated between which streets, or which avenues their
| particular street-number is located.
|
| I don't get it why they don't get it.
| WillAdams wrote:
| "True" New Yorkers seem to have memorized which numbers are
| between which numbered Avenues --- at least my son has done
| this since moving there first for college, then a job.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| This is one of those 90/10 rule things where just learning
| a post-it note worth of trivia covers you for over 90% of
| instances. I'm sure he's competent at navigating especially
| in the ordinary places reachable by ordinary subway ride.
| The corner that flummoxes me is that inexplicable void in
| the map. The big empty part of the subway system sandwiched
| between the EFMR and JMZ lines. That curious combination of
| Newton Creek, Highland park, an archipelago of like a dozen
| large cemeteries, more than a few heavy industrial zones,
| and freight rail tracks. I've seen parts of the map in this
| no mans land where numbered Ave's just straight up skip
| over a half dozen other numbers which I know exist
| elsewhere on the map. However the grid was zippered
| together, there is a seam in it and this is it.
| nerdponx wrote:
| There is actually an official algorithm for estimating
| the cross streets given any address within the Manhattan
| grid. I don't know if it still is, but it used to be
| published in fine print on bus system maps. It's a little
| too complicated to memorize, but you could easily keep it
| on a note card in your wallet and do the calculations in
| your head or with your phone calculator.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Right. Manhattan grid. That's easy. I'm talking about the
| grid in Queens. In particular the middle of Queens. It
| becomes extremely non-grid conforming in a way a
| calculator rule can't fix.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm with you 1,000%.
|
| Yes I know there are formulas you can memorize to figure out
| cross streets but you're a business, you're supposed to be
| trying to make this _easy_ for me.
|
| If you're located on a grid and you advertise an address
| without giving cross streets, I guess you don't actually want
| my business.
| moret1979 wrote:
| Aren't addresses in Manhattan mostly east or west of 5th Ave,
| each avenue incrementing by 100? Meaning 369W is between 8th
| and 9th, while 369E between 2nd and 1st?
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Building numbers ascend in the same direction as streets /
| avenues and usually the hundreds digit is incremented at the
| corner so that building 369 is (ideally) between 3rd and 4th.
| Something similar to that. Double check me on this. Its been
| a while but the relation between building number and location
| on the grid is def linear.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I've always been very impressed with Seattle's relative rigor
| when it comes to the grid. True, the grid has one very strange
| aspect that's hard for newcomers to understand: it's actually
| nine separate grids[1], eight of which have directional
| qualifiers (NW, N, NE, etc) with the unqualified one covering
| downtown as the origin of the whole system. But most of the
| city and surrounding areas are pretty well committed to this
| grid, to the point that entire other cities are built off this
| "downtown seattle is the grid origin" concept (e.g. the city of
| Shoreline to the north starts at 145th and goes up from there).
| And further to the north, there's a repeat of this grid system
| centered on the city of Everett and extending into its
| surrounding cities.
|
| One other aspect I find fascinating about Seattle's system is
| that there's some redundancy built into the address
| specification: whether the street is oriented north-south or
| east-west is not only indicated by whether it's an Ave (N-S) or
| a Street (E-W), but whether the grid qualifier is specified as
| a prefix or a suffix. So when you find a partial address on
| some album art [2], for example, you can deduce that "4718
| 38NE" is talking about 4718 38th Ave NE and not 4718 NE 38th
| St.
|
| [1] theoretically nine grids, anyway. As an example, I'm not
| sure if there's actually an "E" grid. The central grid goes all
| the way to the water on the east, and when continued on the
| other side of the lake in Bellevue, the NE and SE grids touch
| each other.
|
| [2]
| https://musicbrainz.org/release/36fab830-fc17-48d7-9d7e-194f...
| chasing wrote:
| Much of NYC started off as small, independent towns and
| villages with their own grids. Bushwick. Williamsburg.
| Flushing. Their grid were determined by things like angle of
| the coast, internal geographic features, or just random chance.
| As they grew, they grew together and fused as best they could.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Flushing all conform to a
| reasonably sized jigsaw piece of locally consistent grid.
| Bushwick is a Cheese wedge between Fulton and Broadway.
| Williamsburg is approximately several (smaller) pizza slices
| with the crust along the coast line. Flushing is basically
| true north/south grid.
|
| Large fractions of Brooklyn and Queens are consistent-enough
| to approximate most of the landmass as perhaps a dozen jig
| saw pieces. Nothing you said is news to me. But this border
| area, primarily Ridgewood and Maspeth, it refuses to be
| consistent enough to draw a jigsaw piece over it.
| the_af wrote:
| Very good article! I really like the animations, too. Monochrome
| pixel art will always resonate with me.
|
| The writing in the article felt poetic to me, well done:
|
| > _" and I dreamed that the grid was the understructure to not
| just my own memories but to the world"_
|
| As an aside, and not at all to detract from the story: I find it
| interesting that Myst wasn't universally loved. I remember in
| some "gamer" circles it wasn't considered a real game but an
| interactive slideshow.
| tomcam wrote:
| So beautiful and creative and human and touching. So perfect a
| creation from the child of a "Myst" co-creator. Made me a little
| envious of that upbringing tbh.
| tyrust wrote:
| HN needs spoiler tags, haha. I'm glad I went to the article
| first because I feel like the "Myst" reveal at the end was a
| little twist.
| qup wrote:
| <3
|
| I love GRID WORLD.
|
| The next-to-last visual reminds me of these "brain mazes" a
| childhood friend would make. If you read this, hello M. Coxson!
| seltzered_ wrote:
| "That place has a name, space, and it is measured, quantified,
| and standardized by the grid, tamed by its regular meter. No nook
| or cranny of nature is safe from this blanket of rationalization,
| stretching to cover the entire Earth in a global-scale grid of
| longitude and latitude. "
|
| Perhaps it may be worth mentioning there's another space of
| thought that critiques the rationalization, such as books like
| 'Descartes Error' and the whole systems-thinking space (e.g.
| folks like Fritjof Capra) and possibly the Complexity Science
| space.
| astroalex wrote:
| Hi there, author here. By telling the personal story of how I
| inherited the rationality meme, I hoped to offer my own
| critique of rationality. I intended for the sentences you
| quoted to imply a subtle darkness to rationality, with phrases
| like "tamed" and "no nook or cranny of nature is safe." Maybe
| those aspects were too subtle. But just wanted to clarify!
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Nah, it came through just fine. Pretty sure just about no-one
| would write those things that way any time halfway recently
| without intending it to be a bit tongue-in-cheek or ironic.
| loraxclient wrote:
| Lovely story, well written and the artwork sparked joy. Beautiful
| observations about grids - never thought about them in that way,
| but so relatable.
|
| A great reminder of the fundamental pleasures of imagining and
| creating. Easy to forget after following those affinities far
| into a career.
|
| Thank you for sharing, really brightened up my day.
| sublinear wrote:
| Oh I see... so scroll hijacking on a webpage is only ok when it's
| something nerds like /s
| helloplanets wrote:
| That was a breath of fresh air! Also, the notes page warmed my
| heart. [0] Such a shame that digital gardening hasn't really
| taken off that much. Scrolling through some of the posts there
| feels in such a stark contrast with most of present day internet.
| Just putting stuff up on a webpage for yourself, not an audience
| you're trying to work.
|
| Bring back the nooks and crannies of the olden days! _old man
| shakes fist_
|
| [0] https://alex.miller.garden/notes/
| Min0taur wrote:
| I'm with you about small pages/personal sites! It makes the
| internet feel so much more lively and cozy to have these small,
| quiet spaces.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Nice exhibit at MOMA:
| https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5453
| d11z wrote:
| Wow, the visuals in this are truly extraordinary and unique. I
| have never encountered anything quite like this before. I felt
| compelled to list the things that struck me the most:
|
| - Beautiful, poetic prose on a subject that resonates deeply with
| me
|
| - Just about as light on bandwidth as you can be, fully embracing
| the default system font stack while maintaining an attractive
| appearance
|
| - Seamless functionality on iOS Safari and Firefox on Windows
|
| - Highly engaging links (the Roman pictographs were particularly
| fascinating!)
|
| - Exquisitely handcrafted _artisanal_ HTML /JS/CSS, reminiscent
| of Bartosz Ciechanowski's work
|
| I can't say I would change even a single thing. One might argue
| about the Google Tags import, but this minor "sin" is easily
| forgiven due to the exceptional mastery of web design and
| development displayed here, I can't blame you at all for wanting
| analytics on visitors. This website meets every criterion of my
| personal "gold standard" for websites, and I can be pretty fussy
| having done a fair share of frontend stuff myself.
|
| Recently I've been working on a page for a personal project,
| aiming to achieve a similar level of quality but it can sometimes
| be challenging to perfect the visual design aspects especially.
| This website serves as great inspiration! Thank you so much for
| sharing this!
|
| I'm eating like an absolute king the past two days what with
| Ciechanowski's post yesterday and now your fine specimen. The web
| sometimes feels like wading through a sewer but on occasion you
| strike gold and it makes everything feel OK.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I love those visuals.
| phforms wrote:
| What a beautiful(ly told/written) story/experience. Love how the
| visuals interact artistically with the writing. Can totally
| understand the fascination with grids, although it came to me
| much later in life (as I child, grids felt too constraining to me
| and school reinforced that impression unfortunately).
|
| > "I think we project grids outwards onto the world from within
| ourselves, shining their structure from our minds. We radiate
| grids."
|
| I don't know if the author is aware of this, but neuroscientists
| discovered what they call "grid cells": "a type of neuron within
| the entorhinal cortex that fires at regular intervals as an
| animal navigates an open area, allowing it to understand its
| position in space by storing and integrating information about
| location, distance, and direction." [1]
|
| I believe grid cells, together with place cells [2] may explain a
| lot about not only how we make use of diagrammatic tools but also
| how we form and navigate our more abstract conceptual spaces. For
| anyone interested, I recommend this great article on Quanta:
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-brain-maps-out-ideas-and-...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_cell
| astroalex wrote:
| Author here. Thanks for the kind words and the note about grid
| cells. That is fascinating.
| uoaei wrote:
| I used to run cellular automata manually on graph paper. There's
| still a sheet on my dad's fridge, though the ink has faded from
| UV exposure.
| Tenal wrote:
| [dead]
| kroltan wrote:
| In high school I got half of my class to procedurally generate
| dungeon maps using simple rules and neighbouring cell
| populations.
|
| Example ruleset: - Rooms are rectangles 3 to
| 6 cells large in either direction. Place them randomly with a
| gap of 1 cell until there are no more valid room locations.
| - If a cell is between two rooms, and has a cell between the
| same two rooms on either side of the cross axis between the
| rooms, then it can be a door, but only if there is no door
| connecting this pair of rooms yet. - If an empty cell
| is in a corner, and there is a door 2 less than 2 cells away
| from it, then it is a torch. - If an empty cell has 2
| cells distance to any walls, then it is a table(-like
| decoration). - If an empty cell is directly adjacent to
| a table-like decoration, it has a 50% chance of being a seat;
|
| This will generate a lot of dimly lit mess halls, but the
| actual rulesets would be larger and evolve through time, we
| would start anew once someone made too many mistakes.
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(page generated 2023-04-05 23:00 UTC)