I ran the length of every street in Pittsburgh [video] | Hacker News Reader

I ran the length of every street in Pittsburgh [video]

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290 pointsAudiophilip66 comments

Fun video, I like his style and humor.

If you want to run all the streets in your city, there's loads of us using https://citystrides.com to track how many streets we've run (not affiliated, just a happy subscriber).

It's also a handy way of finding ways to contribute to OpenStreetMaps, you discover lots of little details that isn't mapped correctly on these runs.

I'm at a depressing 83 of 2655 streets (3.13%) in Copenhagen, Denmark. But at a whopping 86 of 446 streets (19.28%) in Malvern, England!

I made something similar for myself. I probably wouldn't have tried it had I known about CityStrides or other apps.

https://blog.dend.ro/mapping-my-walks-osrm-rust/

What kind of details have you found go not be mapped correctly? It seems a bit difficult to go from running around go looking at a map and seeing what doesn't match.

I like editing OSM after walking around and area but maybe I'll try running!

I usually plan my routes a bit before I run, so I'm aware of what streets I am supposed to be running.

I've discovered a street that wasn't mapped at all on OSM (Tanglewood Heights, Malvern), I've discovered a gated community with no public access that were marked as public (Danebury Park, Malvern), and there was another parking lot/street I couldn't access because it was behind gates.

I update the details on OSM, and then CityStrides updates their data sometime later.

As someone doing the same but for biking on https://wandrer.earth/

It supports downloading a "map" of everything I haven't done, and then on my Garmin unit I can use that as an overlay on the map. Thus when I'm out and around I can try all sideroads showing as un-biked. Then I often find streets that OSM think are bikeable, but really are not. Either behind gates, a highway etc. And fixing this makes it better for everyone.

Is there anything like citystrides but for biking?

https://wandrer.earth is similar

Thanks, I will check it out.

Wandrer.earth founder here! Happy to help you get lost :)

Can you get any taste of the supporter features before paying? I opened an account, got 60 activities imported from Strava, I can see them individually from citystrides, but clicking on one of the "Lifemap" buttons just zooms out, and shows nothing on the map.

Even if not quite the same, you can see all of your Strava activities mapped together for free at http://statshunters.com/

I think it takes a short while for the LifeMap to update.

Great YouTube channel. Here’s a fun video where he integrates a raspberry pi into a NES cartridge to do all kinds of crazy things using the NES’s native hardware. Spoiler alert: full-motion video of the rickroll video is not the craziest thing he manages to pull off.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0

Here's my favorite video of his, where he reinvents computing from scratch while eschewing inelegant 1s and 0s for elegant floating-point values: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TFDG-y-EHs

Pittsburgh is an awesome town. Very underrated. Lots of friendly people, great food, thriving business, and a lot more culture than you’d think.

And it has affordable housing! The population is about half of its peak, so there is more housing than needed, the opposite of many places in the U.S.

I used to live in Shadyside on Gettysburgh Street in Pittsburg when I worked at CMU in the early 90's. (Yay CMU Common Lisp!)

It really tweaked my OCD that Pittsburgh is spelled with an h, but Gettysburg isn't.

Half the time when writing my address I'd get them both wrong. I just did now, but googled and corrected it, but I didn't have google back then, so I just had to wing it.

There was a cute little bohemian cafe near a park in Shadyside with back yard garden seating.

Apparently whoever owned the cafe had inherited or otherwise come into a copious supply of used bowling balls.

So they used them to make tables, chairs, fences, and weird artwork and decorations, whole and cut apart, some with extra holes drilled, some metal rods through them.

Lots and lots of bowling balls, artistically arranged. The darnedest thing.

I'll never forget it, but I can't tell if I totally confabulated it or not.

(Like how I can vividly recall that episode of the Muppet Show guest staring Bob Dylan and the Band, where they played Too Much of Nothin' with all the hippie and monster muppets: as far as I can tell it never happened, but I still will never forget it.)

Has anybody else ever seen such a thing, around '92-93 or so?

Was there an old bowling ball factory nearby?

> Pittsburgh is spelled with an h, but Gettysburg isn't.

There's some interesting history behind this, which I learned on a tour. The US Board on Geographic Names standardized place names in 1891 by dropping the h from places ending in "burgh". However, residents of Pittsburgh didn't like this change and lobbied for the original spelling, which was restored in 1911. So that's why you have Pittsburg CA and Pittsburgh PA.

I never went to that bowling ball place but that sounds like 90s Pittsburgh to me.

It was a very odd place. I think because rent for apartments and business was so incredibly cheap after the 80s that it attracted quite a cast of characters and many strange businesses.

I still like visiting but the city doesn't feel as "artsy" as what I remember. Starbucks replacing the Beehive is the feel to me.

If people want to learn more about Pittsburgh, there is nothing better than the Rick Sebak documentaries:

https://www.wqed.org/watch/pittsburgh-history-series/flying-...

It also has what's arguably the best philosophy of science department in the world https://www.hps.pitt.edu/

And a great children's museum and science center.

Plugging https://arcane.city/ for the music scene

Rare treat. Probably my "most enjoyed : least amount of videos ratio" content creator on youtube. Here's to waiting another year.

Nah, this was an out of season April's fools joke. So just another four months. :-)

I believe the reason it tends to be one video a year is because he's a comp sci PhD and does a SIGBOVIK paper every year, and makes a video out of it. The rest of the year he does serious research I guess.

This running thing was a personal project of 16 years though, so likely we'll get another SIGBOVIK type video in spring of next year?

His Harder Drive paper was amazing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJSW7Rprio], most especially the ending that considered a surprisingly common configuration of utterly useless, inefficient mass data storage that solves a problem nobody actually has.

That's the one that led me to him; popped up in my recommendations one day.

My favourite was actually the first one. I had a lot of fun thinking about how to do this with different protocols + ECC in a way that would let you use this as a sort of secret storage that goes away unless you refresh it in n days or so.

Not saying I got anywhere, but it was fun to think about!

For more info on the city stairs that are mapped as streets, Laura Zurowski walked all 739+ and documented with Polaroids and wrote a vignette inspired by each. Lovely writing style and she did a great job of capturing pictures that you'd see if you're on foot, off the beaten path, and deliberately surveying your surroundings.

https://mis-steps.com/

Her Instagram I think is the best way to browse the project.

Thanks, that is a cool project.

Between this and the video I was reminded of Danny Chew and his dirty dozen ride up the 13 steepest hills in Pittsburgh. Somehow hills and bridges are the main associations I have with Pittsburgh. http://www.dannychew.com/ https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/danny...

Awesome video.

There's also https://wandrer.earth/ which tracks either cycling or running and your progress within various administrative districts. I'm not affiliated with it but I do know the creators - it started as an Atlanta only project but has been global for a few years now.

I wondered if Tom would include the streets that are long staircases, and, starting at the 10 minute point, he does.

I have tried a "Manhattan nondeterministic run" a couple of times. The rules are simple: do not cross streets except where and when permitted by the crosswalk signs, and then you must cross. In practice, strict adherence to the "don't start crossing on flashing signs" rule leads to there being many times when you go around the same block more than once, and I am not suggesting one should do otherwise.

Pittsburgh's street map is especially insane.

Knowing Pittsburgh, I had a feeling before I clicked that this would become a sort of philosophical exploration of what exactly constitutes a 'street' with not quite conclusive results. Glad to not be disappointed, what a delightful video.

I've done something similar - and less ambitious - on bike in NYC: I biked all Brooklyn and at this point 90% of Manhattan.

I bet Pittsburgh is next-level confusing. But I think the philosophical questions apply anywhere. I enjoyed that as much as the actual endurance, and I loved seeing him dedicate so much time to that. It's not obvious when you start how subtle these questions get.

Challenges I remember:

- what level of highway counts. Some surface road highways are clearly navigable. Interstates obviously aren't.

- on-ramps. When does a local road end and highway begin? What do you do when the ramp is a gradual transition from a local road?

- divided roads (i.e. parallel north/south roads separated by a median, highway service roads)

- roads that peter out into alleys, sort of go through peoples' property, may be fenced off, may be legal thoroughfares even if fenced off

- campus road networks with varying levels of gate access / accessibility

- access roads behind apartment complexes that only led to driveways

- housing project street grids

- park roads, bike paths, walking paths, trails

- intersections with distinct turn lanes, plazas in the middle, etc.

- highways / bridges only accessible once a year (i.e. dedicated bike tours)

Examples:

- old beach lanes: https://shorturl.at/fty07

- apartment road network: https://shorturl.at/cikrR

- waste management access road: https://shorturl.at/bjM17

- one conceptual road; three physical roads and median bike path: https://shorturl.at/eJS68

- center lanes become a bridge: https://shorturl.at/tvxLU

- complex intersections: https://shorturl.at/fxAC4

- apartment entrance loop: https://shorturl.at/bgDKU

- technically a road: https://shorturl.at/eJNYZ

- checkpoint for an entire neighborhood: https://shorturl.at/vzLP1

Yeah, I lived on a "street" called Shady Forbes Terrace, which was actually just a sidewalk.

I know that street! Small world.

Ricky Gates did a similar project in San Francisco in 45 days. http://www.rickeygates.com/everysinglestreet

During the start of covid I tried to walk every street within a distance of my house, since it started from home and it was more about seeing what was near me the range became more arbitrary over time. Cool to see he stuck with this.

He was the first I know of that did such thing.

His other videos are worth a watch too. Fantastic content.

I was interested in the "GoPro Knockoff" mentioned in the video. It's an Akaso 5000 series. Akaso now has a 7000 model for $70. I'm very curious about this product! Not much info about storage media compatibility. Can anyone comment?

https://www.akasotech.com/product/ek7000

why though? by all accounts the video quality was terrible

Depending on what you want to hack together, sometimes terrible video quality out of an incredibly cheap machine is acceptable.

At that price, you could afford to buy five of them and the micro computer to amalgamate the camera output into something better than bad.

If all you're looking for is cheap, you can find action cameras like that for around $20 on Amazon, probably even cheaper through AliBaba or similar.

Bought two of them for my kids. They work with the 32gb sandisk microsd cards I bought at the same time. Biggest gripe with them is the RTC looses power when you switch batteries, somewhat allieviated by automatic timesetting when connecting with the akaso app, but alas only somewhat, since the time is lost every time the kids replace the batteries, which means the photos are all in jumbled order on the memory card.

Aside from that, they came with a bunch off accessories, including a non-coded remote that allows "one button" picture or video taking, without caring about the mode of the camera (and the buttons on the remote are easier for kid hands to press, less force needed)

The non codedness comes in handy, since one remote will trigger both cameras, allowing synchronized videos to be created for front/rear or stereoscopic purposes.

btw, created an account to post this, hope it has value.

This is fantastic. Very impressive video. There is an web app I used a few years ago, https://citystrides.com, that links to your Strava/Garmin account and would give you a percentage of roads you traversed for a particular town. Haven't used it in a while but it seemed to work pretty well.

CityStrides is what I used, too. Once you've covered a lot of ground and need to drive to get to runs it got less fun for me. I think the trick to it is being able to move around as a renter and run new areas over time.

Great video!

What is sports onion?

That is part of his humor for the video. I laughed out loud.

It was a joke based on the fact that there were onions in the first shot where he mentioned what he brings with him.

It's interesting, it seems at first somewhat gratuitous to have such a complex gamified system for something like running along city streets, and you can find yourself wondering why humans find such joy from following self-invented rules like this...

But then I think to myself: Let's consider the physiological side effects of this project -- the exceptionally great physical (at least cardiovascular) shape that you would end up with from doing anything like this...

Tangentially related, a friend of mine planned a shaped run, ran it, then it got picked up by some local media (couple years ago).

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020...

There is some gamification like this at https://wandrer.earth/

I've been doing the same using Strava Heatmaps, cycling the Hollywood Hills. Lots of very steep dead-end streets. Cannot just wing it since you never know when there might be a street coming up, new streets need to be planned.

I did something like this during lockdown and created a tool in Golang to animate my runs. https://github.com/NathanBaulch/rainbow-roads#readme

I ran the circumference of an entire country once while on vacation:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/616188437

Wow. If he did that while handing out campaign flyers, he'd be the mayor.

Good one, Tom Murphy was mayor of Pittsburgh 1994-2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Murphy_Jr.

I found the uncovering of the "trap streets" amusing and how they would change once made public.

Absolutely love this. Great job Tom.

That's a half marathon on average for each run?

It'd be fair to say Tom is an expert runner. He does the Pittsburgh marathon consistently and tends to do it in costume or with props [http://radar.spacebar.org/f/a/weblog/comment/1/1031] to up the difficulty.

ETA: But as he notes in his video, the only thing he really did to be "expert" at running was stick with it for years and lots of trial-and-error.

He shows a histogram somewhere in the video and the numbers do line up, it is very impressive.

He also talks about the costume and props around the 24 minute mark: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1c8i5SABqwU&t=24m21s

He ran a 10k in ice skates!

Fantastic project and presentation. Best wishes.

good title for a springsteen song?

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