James Avery’s blog

Where are you on the world chess board map?

I have been working on a new version of Flightmapping for a while, and let’s just say that some of our maps are going to be a little bit different to the norm.  However, I can’t keep everything under wraps forever, and I need to get some feedback from potential users, so here is a quick taster.

Imagine the whole world as a chessboard, with the most important cities represented at the intersection of each square.  Our chessboard map does feature cities from A-Z, but in terms of reaching the corners of the earth, we tried to do A,B, C and D, but we found that only A and D worked.  So we’re giving you Anchorage in Alaska (a1) and Dunedin in New Zealand (i9), for starters. 

Of course, any map like this is going to be contentious — why have we included x, but excluded y or z? All I can say is that the process has been part scientific and part random, but I hope that I can stimulate some good old-fashioned debate before bringing this map to life on Flightmapping.com — something we plan to do early next year.

This map is also something of a teaser — if anyone wants to have a go, I’ll e-mail over the first letter, or the IATA airport code for each city, but as it is my dad’s 75th birthday today, I hope that he’ll be able to complete it without any help.  He might still be teaching medical students and running triathlons on sunny Nevis, but he has always been a passionate yachtsman and Geographer as well.  As well as having a distinguished medical career, dad is also a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, so I have every faith that he will be able to e-mail his version of the map by the end of the weekend.

Why a chessboard?

Well, I’ve never been a sporting type, but I was captain of the school chess team, and if you’ll excuse my being corny, the notion of “check” hails back to the Czech Republic, and my granny was born in Prague.  Chess might be a game of war, but I hope this map is much more of a peaceful exercise. Most of the places on the map are attractive to visit for one reason or another, but there are one or two on their which have historical significance for less than pleasant reasons.

Around the World in 80 Dots

A chessboard has 8 x 8 squares, which gives 64; and 9 x 9 lines, which would give 81 cities.  I have decided to leave the centre point blank, as this roughly corresponds to the Holy land, or the great Pyramid at Giza in Cairo, which is the only ancient wonder of the world to have survived to the present day.  I think this map should be provocative enough as it is without starting any religious wars!  Phileas Fogg might have gone around the world in 80 days, so you are now invited to go around the chessboard in 80 dots.

The reasons for inclusion of each city vary across the world, but 8 factors include:

• Prominent architectural or natural landmarks.
• Tourist attractions.
• Transport hubs, including major international airports, rail hubs, and ports.
• Prominent sporting teams or venues.
• Cultural activities, including concert venues, birthplaces of composers or hotbeds of musical talent, artists etc.
• High standards of living.
• Major financial centres, including corporate headquarters, banks and stock markets.
• Large centres of population.
 

[Blank world chess board map]

Based on an original idea and Copyright (C) 2008 James Avery

Letters to the editor
Coventry Evening Telegraph
Monday 11 October 2008
by hand
Dear Sir,
What is the point in spending billions of pounds regenerating the centre of Coventry, if we can’t even attract a single tourist to visit the city through our own airport?  Meanwhile, local visitors will continue to be put off, as long as shabby Coventry station is run by the tremendously arrogant, incompetent and rude staff employed by Virgin Trains.  And with the current state of the credit crunch, wouldn’t it be much better to just apply a new lick of paint to the much loved market, rather than opting for an all-out blitzkrieg?
We’ve seen enough damage to Coventry done by the Nazis, and then by the well-meaning, but well past its sell-by date Gibson plan, so why should we now place any trust in some dodgy Californian architect who is much more accustomed to helping casinos empty their patrons’ wallets, rather than building genuinely liveable urban spaces?
The so-called concrete collar which goes round Coventry might well be monumentally ugly, but it does at least keep traffic moving.  So, rather than turning over more roads to under-used busways and expensive tram systems, can’t we just learn a little bit from some of our twin cities about how to make Coventry much more accessible for pedestrians and cyclists?  I’ve had a good look around all the glossy images that the Jerde partnership have drawn, and I have yet to see a single bicycle in any of them.  If there are 9 million bicycles in Jinan*, then surely it isn’t too Batty^ to propose working towards having one million in Coventry?

Notes:

*9 million bicycles in Beijing was written by Mike Batt for Katie Melia.  Coventry is twinned with Jinan, China - approx 300 miles south of Beijing.

Well, mainly due to my own lack of planning, I have a couple of hours to spend here on some worn out keyboard in a corner internet cafe in Granada, before trying to get into Alhambra for an evening visit (all day tickets were sold out). For any pedants reading this, I am talking about Granada´s Alhambra fort ‘ yes, “the” Alhambra, except that this is technically a misnomer, as Alhambra means “The Red One”, and I´m not going to visit “The The Red One”. Anyway, I digress - what was I saying about needing to kill some time?

Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia doesn´t have much to say on the matter. That great bastion of PC speak is probably quite happy with the concept of killing time, as so much of said activity is done on their own website! Well, at least you should learn something from each visit to Wikipedia, although if your name is Vernon Kay, then perhaps Wikipedia is one website you could do without!

A quick scan of Google for the phrase “killing time” (well, this is Spanish Google, so there might be better results in the UK) comes up with a hardcore band from New York, “Murder Consultants” (of the gaming variety, not hitmen - Dixon Jones of Receptional can sort anyone out in the UK looking for this kind of event in & around London), a Youtube spinoff and a book about Death Row in the USA.

No-one out there is giving much by way of definition or origin of the phrase (although according to Wikipedia, it has been used in the New York Times as far back as 1893), beyond the obvious. So in our 21st century society of re-branding and doublespeak, how should the phrase “killing time” be re-packaged to suggest a more productive use of such temporal luxuries?

Or would the PC brigade baulk at the suggestion that all time should be used constructively? After all, if exam failure in schools, sorry, learning communities, is now called “deferred success”, then sitting idle for a couple of hours is surely just “deferred activity”? Next time I´m sitting on the sofa watching another pointless squabble on Fox, I´ll think of that as my “deferred gym session” - but at least there are supposed to be a few feel good benefits from having a bit of a chuckle at some of the morons they get on that programme - everything in moderation as they say!

Well, that´s about 30 minutes so far of doing stuff which is mildly productive, and which has certainly managed to keep my attention going - so I certainly don´t think I need to go and turn myself in to the Time Police just yet! And if it means I´ve made my first non-political blog post in over 3 months, that can´t be too bad either.

But I´m still no closer to that definition. Answers on a PC please (that´s postcard, or comment sent from your Personal Computer - not reporting me to the Politically Correct Brigade or the local Police Constable).