OtherSide

April 10, 2001 7:32 PM

OtherSide is a program written by Jordan of Digital Swirlee and powered by Audiodenst and MapQuest, that will show you the place on the earth opposite yourself. In other words, it will tell you where you'd end up if you dug a hole straight down and kept digging until you got to the other side. So, where exactly is your other side of the world?
posted by Firda (18 comments total)

Is there anywhere in the continental United States that won't plop you in the middle of the Indian Ocean? Anyone?
posted by thebigpoop at 7:36 PM on April 10, 2001

More to the point, is there anywhere in the contental United States where the script doesn't give you an error message?
posted by kindall at 7:56 PM on April 10, 2001

Like he says on the page, "I've been Metafiltered....". Traffic has blown up the script.
posted by jpoulos at 8:06 PM on April 10, 2001

Maybe Astrodenst (not Audiodenst, my bad) isn't too happy about Jordan stealing their search results. Hence the error message. If that was the reason, too bad. It was such a cool script...
posted by Firda at 8:07 PM on April 10, 2001

Er, tooting own horn here... I have had a thingdo up on my site that's been doing this for years now. It does lack that error "feature" but otherwise it's pretty much the same. Using this map you can pretty much answer kindall's question absolutely: nowhere. Antipode, antipode, how do I love thee, antipode?
posted by jessamyn at 8:10 PM on April 10, 2001

Warning: Bad arguments to implode() in /home/poetsmurf/public_html/otherside/otherside.php on line 19

I live in Atlanta. I never would have guessed that this bit of server spit-back would have been a geologic possibility of what lies opposite the land of "Sheriff Lobo." Ehm.
posted by Wizzle at 8:34 PM on April 10, 2001

Pacifically, SE of NZ.
posted by holgate at 8:47 PM on April 10, 2001

Awww. It's been "MetaFiltered," according to the author.

Dang. I'm in the middle of the ocean, between Australia and Antarctica. (From Chicago.) I guess that makes sense, seeing as though 2/3 of the world is water...
posted by gramcracker at 9:36 PM on April 10, 2001

Interesting that the only kids who could truly dig a hole to China live in Argentina and Chile. Although it looks like a hole dug from Paraguay could be used to snatch our kids off Hainan Island. Maybe that's what's taking so long?

And it's too bad that New Zealand is just not quite opposite old Zeeland.
posted by dhartung at 9:51 PM on April 10, 2001

A small Black Hole could...
posted by ParisParamus at 10:07 PM on April 10, 2001

In my own defense, I knew when I released OtherSide that if it got too many hits, it'd blow up. It was unavoidable at the time. However, I'm currently working on a permanent fix for this particular "feature", and thanks to some help from jessamyn, it should be working tomorrow evening. However, right now I need sleep.

For everybody who clicked on the link, thanks for the hits.. I promise if you come back in a day or two, you won't be disappointed.
posted by swirlee at 10:35 PM on April 10, 2001

you could dig a hole to anywhere if you don't go through the center of the earth...
posted by palegirl at 10:40 PM on April 10, 2001

funny, I was about to post the exact same thing.
posted by captain obvious at 10:43 PM on April 10, 2001

thank you captain obvious!
posted by palegirl at 10:44 PM on April 10, 2001

I'm reminded of an old physics problem...

You can did a tunnel from (say) New York to Los Angeles. If you make it perfectly straight, and line the tunnel with frictionless track, a train would roll downhill half the trip and slow to a stop as it climbs uphill the second half. With no friction (oh.. and no air resistance), the trip could be done with expending any energy whatsoever.

If the Ideal(tm) Corporation would ever start marketing the right equipment, it would revolutionize travel!
posted by ewagoner at 12:36 PM on April 11, 2001

Haven't you people ever seen a globe before?
posted by straight at 1:14 PM on April 11, 2001

Haven't you people ever seen a globe before?
posted by straight at 1:16 PM on April 11, 2001

As promised, I fixed it -- it works now. Hopefully permanently. Jessamyn's help was greatly appreciated. Now go check it out!
posted by swirlee at 9:10 PM on April 12, 2001