As computer scientists, we really should assume he took the shortest path between the final set of destinations rather than travel between them sequentially.
Johnny Cash spent much of the 1950s and 1960s addicted to alcohol, barbiturates and amphetamines. Whilst we should assume he was probably familiar with contemporary work on finding shortest paths in weighted graphs, and almost certainly read the papers etc, it is likely that his addiction kept him from paying the proper attention that he would otherwise surely have done. Who knows how different the landscape of theoretical computer science might have been, had Cash spent more energy on algorithms and less on setting fires inside camper vans?
One of the best trivia pieces I have is that he is likely the first American to know Stalin died while he was posted in Germany, decoding morse code traffic.
Yep. Seattle was an often missed point on the map for tours, until the punk/grunge evolved there. Then suddenly you couldn't stop people from driving that incredible distance from LA
That was delightful. Reminds me of a Google Maps hack from back in the day that tracked Sir Mix-a-Lot’s trip through the Seattle area as documented in the song Posse on Broadway.
There were a lot of places that didn't map--some that were transcribed correctly and exist as places in the US, and some that didn't map because they were transcribed incorrectly
It says "Tennesse Chicopee" in the data (which attempts to look up a "Chicopee Trail" in North Carolina) but Chicopee is actually a city near Springfield Massachusetts.
Chicopee being a Nipmuk word referring to the local river.
The Nipmuks were pushed out of the region by settlers in the late 17th century (despite their best efforts to stay... their numbers were dramatically reduced by disease brought by the Europeans).
Music Hackday was great (Infinite Gagnam Style anyone? [0]) and I especially remember Reykjavik 2012 as a personal transformative event! I made Horisfy [1] and and won best hack, very similar to Johnny Cash, but riding horses on Iceland.
This was the time before Echonest was bought by Spotify and Tomahawk (used in Johnny Cash hack) was sprawling.
Delightful! This small ideas bring joy to the internet.
Wondering what will happen if this where made with a song of a current mainstream popstar baked by a big label and go viral. Will be shut down or will be allowed as a marketing strategy?
As viewing this on my phone, will like to enlarge those buttons a bit and make it more mobile friendly. Send it to my father but not sure if he will be able tap on that small things on even understand what is about :(
If you're into The Hold Steady (and you should be) the lyrics have a lot of references and the fandom does a great job of explaining them. The Clicks and hisses web has them all mapped as well.
This is really cool. I thought it was Hank Snow, not Johnny Cash, who made this popular. Not that it matters.
(Looks like it was both, and a boatload of other people too.)
You can download map tiles or build them yourself at required zoom level. But what might be even more interesting, especially for historical project, to use an era appropriate map.
Placenames were all originally in Australia, adapted for the north american market.