The Friday Fillip

All right everyone, back to work! Holiday time is over. Now it’s down to looking out the window — you do have a window, don’t you? — with longing at whatever is moving freely where’er it listeth.

Or you can flit in a nanosecond (in a Flash, actually) to parts unplanned, thanks to MIT grad student, Joe McMichael‘s Globe Genie. For example, what you see below is a stretch of highway near San Pedro de Visma way in the upper left hand corner of Spain, and I got there thanks to Google Street View and Joe’s randomizer. (I’ve severely edited the images to make strips. The actual photos cover a much greater area — and can be expanded to full screen mode.)

click to enlarge

And, of course, because it’s Google’s Street View, you can head off on your own steam from wherever the Genie drops you. Click your way around that bend or to the left at that interesting corner.

If the whole world is too large a target for you, you can select one or more of her continents (except South America, sadly) for the Genie to focus on. Africa might get you a dusty road outside Pretoria:

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Asia finds us looking at some rather scrappy discarded blue drums in Taiwan:

And should you wish to play a guessing game, you can turn off the small map that appears beside the image until your bets are in.

Of course, the Genie is something more of a crap shoot than your last real vacation (or maybe not). It is surprising how many roads around the world resemble each other. But as I’ve pointed out, you can click your way along until you find yourself closer to where you want to be.

Bon clickage, then.