> […] it’s a nice trick if you can do it, but it’s better when you can do it at any time, without an app. Which is what happened. > > First I got good at figuring out the ecliptic. That’s the flat disc of the Earth’s orbit (and the solar system). If you wave your arm along the path that the Sun makes across the sky, that’s the disc. > > Then I can’t remember how I would locate Sagittarius each day (it lies on the ecliptic) but I trained my intuition by checking the app each day. Over the weeks and months, I could follow how the position changed (at the same time each day as I caught the bus). First through the ground that way, then under the ground further that way, and so on. > > Eventually then I had this picture of myself, and the Earth, and the solar system, and the centre of the galaxy which had initially been whirling round me, and now it had flipped, I was turning around it.
Yes they also move in the sky but you get that too. You’ll think, oh it’s April and 11pm, I know where mars is instinctively.
It sounds more like cynicism and denial of others' internal lives
I've had a fantasy for a couple of years of building a physical device that would do this. I imagine a sphere that uses a pair of rings on axis supporting an inward arrow that can rotate in all directions within the sphere - similar to how a dual axis globe works.
Your software version is much simpler to execute :)
It was a super cool juxtaposition of screen / digital / real and very thought provoking. The counter intuitive nature always got me and my kids: pointing down through the floor to Jupiter or whatever when one’s intuition is always that everything in the sky is “above you”.
I wish I could find details of it on the web!
That game shows a physical device able to track planets by rotating on rings in real time (not a spoiler, it’s on the first moon).
Love the idea!
Someone hurry up and sell me one.
First, this is so simple and yet so original. I absolutely love it. It feels like a tiny little piece of Star Trek or of science fiction but that's real and lives on my phone. So creative. It puts such a smile on my face. Super kudos!
Second, why does it need the phone to be flat? Depending on where the arrow's pointing, that's not always ideal. Would be great if there were a way to get around that.
Third, for some reason I really want the distance to the galactic center to be something absurdly and therefore entertainingly precise. Not a hard-coded nice round number of 26,000 light years, but something actually calculated in real time. Maybe it hides the decimals unless you click on it, but then... it not only calculates the live distance of the earth right now, but uses your exact location. (And if you want to use the GPS/accelerometer to have it update in real-time, that would be *chef's kiss*.)
The reason for the phone being flat is perhaps a limitation in iOS or perhaps a limitation of mine — I don’t know which! Basically you can access deviceHeading which is a projection of the north vector onto the long axis of the device. When the phone is orthogonal to north, that becomes unreliable, so the floating arrow breaks. What I really need is the north vector, real-time updated, relative to the device itself, no projection. But it seems like that isn’t available.
However, I do see that the drawn arrow totally breaks down when the phone is held vertically. So I wonder if maybe it's a bug somewhere in the calculations or drawing?
But also interesting to see whether the number is increasing or decreasing at any given moment.
Of course, upon further reflection I realize that the rate of change is almost entirely determined by the position of the solar system in its elliptical orbit around the galaxy, and speed of the earth's elliptical orbit around the sun, and (at certain occasional points) your position in the rotational movement of the earth.
Anything using the accelerometer would be silly to include...
- select text — text highlights are shared in real-time - type “/“ — there’s built-in cursor chat!
Both ephemeral with no data recorded.
I like to hang out on pages if they have a moment of popularity and surprise people by talking to them
I haven’t written this up! I probably should.
But the code is open and it works even with entirely static sites:
Cross site scripting protection in the browsers put an end to it but it was a fun project.
I think there are ways to use the other sensors to more accurately estimate the phone's orientation even when it's not perfectly flat, but maybe this developer just didn't get around to it.
I love the web, it has been very good to me. The web of people making and sharing is out there and thriving! For whoever was lamenting the loss, the best way to find that scene is to start making and sharing yourself, you somehow get in touch.
The problem is the hype around AI which is supposed to be all-powerful. So people ask it to do too much, and then it gets lost and now you’re both confused. Instead people need to see, well, it’s about the same “intelligence” (ugh) as you, so here’s how to pair effectively.
Now, if you could make this again, but for Android, I might be able to hitch a ride home to Betelgeuse V!
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
("Check your galactic privilege!") ;)
