Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#1

Post by googleme » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities
cityextremes.com

Re: Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#2

Post by googleme » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 3:23 PM UTC

How I built this: I pulled the population data from the UN statistics report on cities over 100k and then batch geocoded all of the cities (there was also a fair bit of data cleansing required). I then used a macro in excel to calculate the distance between every city pair (using Vincenty's formula) and uploaded the results to a database. Happy to share more if anyone is curious.

Re: Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#3

Post by qubex » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

This is quite fun actually. I live in Milan (Italy) and my cousin lives in Aukland (NZ). These cities are listed as being the furthest from each other at more than 18,000 km.

Incidentally as a kid I was quite obsessed with the idea of visiting the antipode of my home's exact geographic location, but sadly, when I finally got around to calculating it, I discovered it lay in a nondescript expanse of ocean.

Re: Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#4

Post by jim_d » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

This was definitely fun to try.

Re: Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#5

Post by mapster » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

Whats the tech stack may I ask? I like the simple design and interactions. easy to noodle around and learn.

Re: Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#6

Post by googleme » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 6:49 AM UTC

mapster wrote: post #5

Whats the tech stack may I ask? I like the simple design and interactions. easy to noodle around and learn.

Just some simple PHP / MySQL

Re: Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#7

Post by mapster » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

googleme wrote: post #6

mapster wrote: post #5

Whats the tech stack may I ask? I like the simple design and interactions. easy to noodle around and learn.

Just some simple PHP / MySQL

ok. was wondering if you used open source data tools etc.

Re: Show HN: For all cities over 100k, calculated the farthest and closest cities

#8

Post by googleme » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

mapster wrote: post #7

googleme wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just some simple PHP / MySQL

ok. was wondering if you used open source data tools etc.

I took the list of 4 thousand odd cities from the UN statistics report of cities over 100k and then ran it through the batch geocoding site: http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/ ... apart from that just old fashioned excel to calculate