The #BoingBoing Map

If you want to see a larger version of the map, you can do so here.

Pre-emptive Questions

What is this? It's a map showing the locations of everyone in the #BoingBoing IRC chat room, in (mostly) real time.

Mostly real time? If I'm not in the room (area), then it won't be updated. I'm not able to run an IRC client on the only server I have access to due to the ToS, so the data comes from a client on my laptop. And my laptop likes to rest every so often. When it is updating, it only does so every five minutes.

You're in the room, but there's not a dot where I am! What gives? If it has been at least five minutes since you joined, there should at least be a dot close to where you are. I'm using a free database to map IPs to locations. Because it's free, some IPs aren't quite right, and some are simply wrong. Ironically, even my dot is wrong. That said, if you're using a hostmask on the Freenode network, that'll likely throw your dot way off even if the database has your IP.

This is really creepy. How do you know where I am? Have you hacked me? No, all the information used is obtainable from a /whois on a username on the network.

What's the flow of data? How do you make the map? Every five minutes, I get the names and hostmasks of everyone in the room with a perl plugin for X-Chat Aqua, and dump them into a file. I then use the biggest series of pipes I've ever used to strip out the hostmasks, and then dig them into IPs and dump them into another file. That file is then uploaded to the webserver, and I use PHP to (inefficiently) generate the map.

That's a nice picture of the Earth. Where is it from? NASA's Visible Earth Catalog. I believe it's a Mercator Projection, for those who care. D Why the funky URL? I have a dedicated webserver, but not a domain name. Go figure.

Awesome. Have you done anything else as great as this? I'm somewhat affiliated with Dave Green Facts. It's pretty neat, but mostly only if you know the chap.