SGnTN Casey Fleser / Some Geek in TN

O’ Google how hard do you rock? Very hard indeed.

Maybe this is common knowledge but I just stumbled across this on Google Maps today. I knew about Google Maps of course, but I didn’t know about the measuring tool. To get to it, open Google Maps, then click on My Maps which will open a little sidebar on the left. Next click Distance Measurement Tool and follow the instructions to trace a path on the map and measure it in miles or kilometers. I made a line between my hometown of Detroit and Nashville and it tells the distance between them is 473.044 miles or 761.291 kilometers. Pretty cool, right? But wait, there’s more. Muwahaha.

Next to the Metric / English buttons, I noticed another link called “I’m feeling geeky” and seeing as I was feeling geeky I clicked it. Now I’m offered a whole smorgasbord of units to measure in. How did I go this long without knowing that it’s 15,225.8 Olympic swimming pools in length between here and Detroit? Or 3784.35 furlongs, 6937.98 football fields, 0.0000000000804685 light years, 447,292 smoots, or 1,534,470 cubits of Lagash! That’s Babylonian cubits. Not to be confused with Arabic nil-cubits, Egyptian royal cubits, Greek Kyrenaika cubits, Hashimi cubits, or a bunch of other cubit variations. There’s a whole bunch of other units to select from including cana, Gunter links, potrzebies, Ramsden’s chains, Russian verst, and so many more. Anyway, check it out. In the meantime I’ve got a 204,242,000,000,000 angstrom commute home tonight.