User:Pinecone

Pinecone is a Boston based conifer.

An Immodest Proposal

An issue: The typical hash is about 40 miles away from you.

Results of this:

• An hour's drive each way for those with car.
• For those without, somewhat more problematic.
• Usually sends you to the countryside. This usually means a park for urban graticules which is nice for frisbee but less handy for table games. Elsewhere it's probably just a hiking trip.
• It is ironic to be burning a lot of oil on behalf of going to see greenery.
• It is skewed to low population areas: you generally don't get to play with cities.
• When the hash is inaccessible, there is some confusion about what the the meet up point.
• On the social front, you meet a lot of nice people who live far away from you.
• Nobody is ever going to get the damn xx ribbon

I would like to go to countryside hashes some of the time, but I would like an option nearer at hand if:

• I am without transport
• Want a local group to socialize with
• Want to play with cities
• The regular hash is someplace god-awful
• I am feeling lazy

Obviously one could just divide up the graticules into smaller pieces, but this will scatter the children of XKCD far and wide. I have a solution that I think covers all the issues.

Decicules and Driving Directions

1. Divide graticules into tenths called Decicules. So, if today's offset is (.1357,2468) then decicules around here are (42.0357,-71.0468), (42.1357,-71.0468), (42.0357,-71.1468), (42.1357,-71.1468), (42.2357,-71.0468), etc.
2. Pick the urban center you are closest to, say Boston. Use Google Directions to find the decicule which has the shortest distance driving directions from "Boston".
3. That point is today's "Boston decicule meet up" location.

This will generally result in a location within 8 miles of the city center. It doesn't matter where Google Maps thinks "Boston" is, or that you won't be driving the route it finds. What matters is that it's consistent for everyone who checks it.

An Example

On 5-24-08 the meet up was at xxx,xxx: File:Example.jpg It's raining decicules!

Meanwhile, back in Boston: File:Example.jpg Player (42.3,-71.1) wins!

So in this case, those who can get out to the graticule go to (x,xx) and others can go to (xx,xx). Best to mention who has what plans on the graticule board ahead of time.

In a graticule with high population there might be several active decicules. Around here one would expect Boston, Worcester, and Nashua to have their own contingent. These locations being overridden if the hash itself was nearby.

A little complicated but an implementation will help and you only need this for urban graticules were population density makes submeet ups feasible.

naming: boston grat, bost dec you can use any location. the boston decicule will sometimes go to then same location as a Brookline decicule, sometimes not. only if a lot of people. decicule be used as a fallback for socializing if the graticule is going to suck. if the decicule is going to suck, you can pick the one with 2nd shortest driving distance, etc. Hence "today's Boston hash is in the middle of a swamp but decihash Boston3 is the xxx of sears. let's go there!" during weekdays i'm certainly not be able to road trip, but it would be great to meet people at Boston1 at, say, 8pm.

this is not meant to detract from the pre-eminance of the mighty graticule

pick up more people who generally don't go on road trips for any of the above reasons.

"dangerous areas" problem.