Locating Bloggers
When I wrote yesterday's post I was half expecting to hear from somebody in Jacksonville. Just didn't expect it to be somebody whose blog I read almost daily. And that brings me to what I think is a problem with blogs: a lot of bloggers are quite coy about their location. I had assumed Julian was Canadian. Not that it should matter of course, but it's nice to know at least the country being blogged from. All blogs should have a "Location: City, Country" string somewhere on the homepage, me thinks.
Looking at maps of Florida makes me think staying so far from Orlando probably wouldn't be a good idea anyway. If it's anything like the UK, getting anywhere at all can be a major hassle. The trouble with the UK is that there are just far too many people trying to get places all the time. Consider the following table:
| Country | Population | Area (sq km) | Heads per sq km |
| Great Britain | 59,778,002 | 244,820 | 244 |
| USA | 280,562,489 | 9,629,091 | 29 |
| Australia | 19,546,792 | 7,686,850 | 2 |
There are just too many people on one tiny island! Add to this the fact that our road and rail network is in a shambles and you can see how I might have arrived at my crazy decision to do something tonight I never thought I would do - make a domestic flight in England. From London to Newcastle; all 260 miles. Here's hoping she thinks I'm a flash git and is suitably impressed upon my arrival. See you on Monday...
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Jake, should you need somewhere to stay if and when you go to Lotussphere, let me know. I've got a place I rent out 10 mins from Disney.
I'm sure we could negotiate a good price.
I got a domestic flight quite recently London to Glasgow for £7.50 each way(inc tax). Ok so this was booked way in advance but the plane had wings & everything!.
Domestic flights are great! Little effort and really quite cheap.
Nice to see you getting political ;)
Jake - Check out geourl.org. You can register a blog or any other URL to a specific geographic location. See here for an amusing application of the concept: {Link}
Enjoy!
The URL in Adam's comment above somehow swallowed some punctuation. Try this: {Link}
Jake, you wouldn't want to stay in Jacksonville to go to YellowFest. It's a three-hour drive from Jax to downtown O-Town (where I live), and the The Swan & Dolphin Hotels (where LotusSphere is held) are another 20-40 minutes past that. Plus, you'd be driving on the wrong side of the road!
I wish I could offer you a place to stay, but our guest room has been recently and permanently occupied by our new arrival, Amanda.
...and for those of you who think that just because I'm a Florida native I get to go every year, think again! I've never once been to the whole thing! I've spent most of my career with small companies, and they usually have us peons 'share' a pass, so I might get a day or two at the most.
geoURl has been around for some time amongst bloggers - c'mon, get with the program man!
Keith, it only takes 3 hours to go from Jax to Disney if you're driving Miss Daisy. ;)
Jake, I'm 30 minutes from the park, and I've got plenty of space. Obviously, it won't matter 'til next year, but as long as I haven't moved, you're perfectly welcome to stay here. Not for a "good rate" but for "absolutely free."
The Netherlands consists of 33,883 square kilometers of land, with a population of 16,067,754 at last count.
That makes for an average of 474 people per square kilometer.
Amazingly, ther trains are efficient, comfortable, and affordable. Schipohl airport is one of the best, and the shipping capacity is second to none.
I'm not Dutch, but figured the statistics bore mention. They get a lot right!
Ah, but the Netherlands is almost completely flat, not hilly like Great Britain.
Also their rail system (like many on the continent) was planned by central government, not laid out in a haphazard manner by a combination of market forces and 'not near my stately home' landed gentry as was with the UK in the 19th century. Having the first railways in the world (overground and metro), didn't help, giving us the smallest trains and bendiest lines.
Having worked in Holland for six months, their roads are no less busy than ours, and Dutch drivers are just as bad, if not worse.
The grass often isn't greener on the continent, despite what lots of UK-based moaners would have you think.
It's not helped by the UK putting so much emphasis on London and the south east; for example, to use the (rail) channel tunnel, I have to travel through the great London bottleneck. When the tunnel was planned, we *were* going to have direct trains from provincial locations, such as Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow (where I'm from).
It's true that the railways in the 19th century were constructed by private enterprise, but a similar situation arose in France. The diference there is that a modern track network was funded by the government for the TGV programme in the last 20 years. (£400 million on new track and infrastructure at the time when Britain spent a total of £51 million on the *entire* APT scheme).
It would be interesting to get a regional breakdown of the population figures - for example, Scotland has almost half the land space in the UK, but only about a tenth of the population...
Ok, I didn't want to answer at first, but know I feel like I have to, because of something Poindexter pointed out.
"Amazingly, ther trains are efficient, comfortable, and affordable." If this represents your own opinion, you obviously haven't been in Holland for many years. Since I am Dutch, I can tell you that our trains are far from efficient and affordable! If only you knew how many trains are NOT running on schedule, you wouldn't be so positive. I do have to agree with you on Schiphol and the shipping capacity.
Jake,
You can geo-encoded your site.
{Link}
Jake-o,
best of luck in Newcastle.
Do you think about another consultancy/temping or could this be maybe like a permanent contract? ;=}