That’s a great idea. Converting the latitudes and longitudes to the starting positions in this animation shouldn’t be too difficult. And we could have the names of the cities moving along with the dots too. Let’s do it...
First of all I wish you a good start into the new Year.
The short list of cities is just to test the concept. The longer list contains 48 major cities. The positive values indicate North or East and the negative values ar for South and West. If there is a need later on for more cities to make the globe round one could access openstreetmap.org.
If the data does not fit this textbox, I would need an emailadress of yours.
Ah, that’s something I could easily fix on the image snippets. The problem with larger fonts is that lines have to be shorter, which can be restrictive in some cases
Yeah, the joys of reading code on a phone when you need a large font. It's not particularly fun, but my phone is always on me and so my best source of reading anything
Thanks Logan! I have a view on the code blocks issue but didn’t want to bias people too much. But I may copy-paste a comment I made in the Tech Writers Discord server about this. Let me fetch it...
From a comment I made elsewhere: “The code blocks issue is one example for me, for example, and fits to some extent with the superficial style things you mention. I occasionally get people saying they'd prefer to be able to copy-paste code directly from the article. And yes, I agree. But in my view, the poor native option Substack offers makes the articles much harder to read and follow. Reading code is never easy. Reading code in a tutorial of a subject you're learning about is even harder. So the clear syntax highlighting and formatting of code blocks is really important for me in my articles.”
I'm in the same boat Stephen. The lack of syntax highlighting means I'm apologizing for how difficult the code is to read. I think I'm going to follow your approach with the linked gist. I had the exact same reservations where I wanted it to be easy for readers to copy, but making it easier to read is more important. Are you just using a snapshot of your GitHub gist or is there a nice way to output it as a png?
As suggested by Rodrigo (can't seem to tag in comments!), another option for choosing random starting points is to choose random angles for the azimuth and elevation which, for a fixed radius, goves a point on the sphere. This would give a uniform distribution of points on the sphere…
Spinning globe animation - very nice!
Instead of random dots what about the following:
cities = [
{"name": "Tokyo", "coordinates": (35.6895, 139.6917)},
{"name": "Delhi", "coordinates": (28.6139, 77.2090)},
{"name": "Shanghai", "coordinates": (31.
{"name": "Lahore", "coordinates": (31.5497, 74.3436)},
{"name": "London", "coordinates": (51.5074, -0.1278)},
{"name": "Lima", "coordinates": (-12.0464, -77.0428)},
{"name": "Bangkok", "coordinates": (13.7563, 100.5018)},
]
I am a beginner and not fit to adapt the code. But I can provide a longer list of cities.
Regards
Rolf
That’s a great idea. Converting the latitudes and longitudes to the starting positions in this animation shouldn’t be too difficult. And we could have the names of the cities moving along with the dots too. Let’s do it...
First of all I wish you a good start into the new Year.
The short list of cities is just to test the concept. The longer list contains 48 major cities. The positive values indicate North or East and the negative values ar for South and West. If there is a need later on for more cities to make the globe round one could access openstreetmap.org.
If the data does not fit this textbox, I would need an emailadress of yours.
Kind regards
Rolf
cities = [
{"name": "Tokyo", "coordinates": (35.6895, 139.6917)},
{"name": "Delhi", "coordinates": (28.6139, 77.2090)},
{"name": "Shanghai", "coordinates": (31.2304, 121.4737)},
{"name": "São Paulo", "coordinates": (-23.5505, -46.6333)},
{"name": "Mumbai", "coordinates": (19.0760, 72.8777)},
{"name": "Mexico City", "coordinates": (19.4326, -99.1332)},
{"name": "Osaka", "coordinates": (34.6937, 135.5023)},
{"name": "Cairo", "coordinates": (30.0444, 31.2357)},
{"name": "New York City", "coordinates": (40.7128, -74.0060)},
{"name": "Beijing", "coordinates": (39.9042, 116.4074)},
{"name": "Istanbul", "coordinates": (41.0082, 28.9784)},
{"name": "Lahore", "coordinates": (31.5497, 74.3436)},
{"name": "London", "coordinates": (51.5074, -0.1278)},
{"name": "Lima", "coordinates": (-12.0464, -77.0428)},
{"name": "Bangkok", "coordinates": (13.7563, 100.5018)},
{"name": "Paris", "coordinates": (48.8566, 2.3522)},
{"name": "Berlin", "coordinates": (52.5200, 13.4050)},
{"name": "Madrid", "coordinates": (40.4168, -3.7038)},
{"name": "Rome", "coordinates": (41.9028, 12.4964)},
{"name": "Moscow", "coordinates": (55.7558, 37.6176)},
{"name": "Sydney", "coordinates": (-33.8688, 151.2093)},
{"name": "Seoul", "coordinates": (37.5665, 126.9780)},
{"name": "Munich", "coordinates": (48.8566, 2.3522)},
{"name": "Toronto", "coordinates": (43.6532, -79.3832)},
{"name": "Cape Town", "coordinates": (-33.918861, 18.423300)},
{"name": "Singapore", "coordinates": (1.3521, 103.8198)},
{"name": "Dubai", "coordinates": (25.276987, 55.296249)},
{"name": "Los Angeles", "coordinates": (34.0522, -118.2437)},
{"name": "Chicago", "coordinates": (41.8781, -87.6298)},
{"name": "San Francisco", "coordinates": (37.7749, -122.4194)},
{"name": "Amsterdam", "coordinates": (52.3676, 4.9041)},
{"name": "Rio de Janeiro", "coordinates": (-22.9068, -43.1729)},
{"name": "Stockholm", "coordinates": (59.3293, 18.0686)},
{"name": "Athens", "coordinates": (37.9838, 23.7275)},
{"name": "Bangalore", "coordinates": (12.9716, 77.5946)},
{"name": "Montreal", "coordinates": (45.5017, -73.5673)},
{"name": "Vienna", "coordinates": (48.8566, 2.3522)},
{"name": "Hong Kong", "coordinates": (22.3193, 114.1694)},
{"name": "Istanbul", "coordinates": (41.0082, 28.9784)},
{"name": "Buenos Aires", "coordinates": (-34.6118, -58.4173)},
{"name": "Johannesburg", "coordinates": (-26.2041, 28.0473)},
{"name": "Toronto", "coordinates": (43.6532, -79.3832)},
{"name": "Vancouver", "coordinates": (49.2827, -123.1207)},
{"name": "Zurich", "coordinates": (47.3769, 8.5417)},
{"name": "Warsaw", "coordinates": (52.2297, 21.0122)},
{"name": "Oslo", "coordinates": (59.9139, 10.7522)},
{"name": "Copenhagen", "coordinates": (55.6761, 12.5683)},
{"name": "Marrakech", "coordinates": (31.6295, -7.9811)},
{"name": "Nairobi", "coordinates": (-1.286389, 36.817223)},
]
Well start with these. Thanks. I’ll have a go at making the changes over the coming days!
Hi Stephen,
did you make progress incorporating cities?
all the best
Rolf
Not yet. But it’s on to do list. It’s been a bit busy with the launch of two platforms! But I’ll get there!
I voted for the Substack version only because the text is larger
Ah, that’s something I could easily fix on the image snippets. The problem with larger fonts is that lines have to be shorter, which can be restrictive in some cases
Yeah, the joys of reading code on a phone when you need a large font. It's not particularly fun, but my phone is always on me and so my best source of reading anything
Why is Substack’s code block option so bad? 🤦♂️ Congrats on the incredible achievements this year, Stephen!
Thanks Logan! I have a view on the code blocks issue but didn’t want to bias people too much. But I may copy-paste a comment I made in the Tech Writers Discord server about this. Let me fetch it...
From a comment I made elsewhere: “The code blocks issue is one example for me, for example, and fits to some extent with the superficial style things you mention. I occasionally get people saying they'd prefer to be able to copy-paste code directly from the article. And yes, I agree. But in my view, the poor native option Substack offers makes the articles much harder to read and follow. Reading code is never easy. Reading code in a tutorial of a subject you're learning about is even harder. So the clear syntax highlighting and formatting of code blocks is really important for me in my articles.”
I'm in the same boat Stephen. The lack of syntax highlighting means I'm apologizing for how difficult the code is to read. I think I'm going to follow your approach with the linked gist. I had the exact same reservations where I wanted it to be easy for readers to copy, but making it easier to read is more important. Are you just using a snapshot of your GitHub gist or is there a nice way to output it as a png?
I use snappify.io which allows me to format it the way I want
You managed to produce a huge amount of work even when you were doing it in your spare time. Amazing!
Also, congratulations on the launch of your platforms.
Thanks Abhinav. Yes, almost all these articles were written late at night or during the weekends.
Hopefully, this will change in 2024 and they'll become one of the activities I do during my "normal working day", whatever that is!
How are you finding full-time content creation?
early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise 🙂
As suggested by Rodrigo (can't seem to tag in comments!), another option for choosing random starting points is to choose random angles for the azimuth and elevation which, for a fixed radius, goves a point on the sphere. This would give a uniform distribution of points on the sphere…