

How far can you get from a McDonald's in the continental US? - timf
http://www.weathersealed.com/2009/09/22/where-the-buffalo-roamed/

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crsmith
The most interesting thing about this article to me is where the author got
the data -- <http://www.aggdata.com> .

I ran across aggdata some time ago while looking for a list that they happened
to provide for free. They provide niche data that they scraped from the
internet. Their data is cheap enough that it's not worth trying to scrape the
data yourself. I think the business model can be duplicated easily and there
is plenty of room on the long tail.

~~~
joshu
Yeah. Good stuff.

I once scraped the data for Starbucks in Manhattan and it was a bit of a pain:
<http://gawker.com/011483/gentrification-map> (2003? I feel old.)

~~~
wallflower
OT but first thing that I thought of (logistics were crazy):

Comedian/Filmmaker Mark Malkoff attempts to visit all 171 Starbucks stores in
Manhattan in one day.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYxuV2dVzw>

~~~
Retric
Traveling salesmen, with 171 locations, in Manhattan, ouch.

------
unalone
_I've actually been there. It was a surreal feeling, one that is hard to
explain in words. There was something about that place that made me feel
alive, free from constraints, for some reason I could think clearer, and hunt
for the answers._

 _There is also a really nice Arby's there._

src:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/9nbyc/on_a_recent_road...](http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/9nbyc/on_a_recent_road_trip_i_decided_to_compute_the/c0di3j4)

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davidw
I would have guessed that it was in Oregon's "empty quarter". There is a whole
lot of nothing in southeastern Oregon:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=oregon&sll=45.409568,11.876589&sspn=0.303691,0.891953&ie=UTF8&ll=43.025734,-118.523254&spn=0.632482,1.783905&t=h&z=10&layer=c&cbll=43.039014,-118.15899&panoid=qzgq5LvMGuBmm-
qp1wX0vg&cbp=12,307.75,,0,-4.77)

It's extremely desolate: it's very cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and
dry year round, so nothing much grows out there.

But it's a fascinating place to explore if you like big empty spaces (or at
least like them once in a while - I wouldn't want to live there).

~~~
mahmud
_It's extremely desolate: it's very cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and
dry year round, so nothing much grows out there._

Oh man, you have no idea; some _really_ good shit grows in that part of the
country.

~~~
davidw
I think most of the drug operations are in western Oregon, actually, which has
an extremely different climate.

~~~
jacquesm
Try underground containers in northern Ontario. I heard someone there joke
that Canada now grows the larger amount of its cash crops underground...

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asmosoinio
The answer, for those too lazy to read the article:

\--- Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the
McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow
flies, and 145 miles by car! \---

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aw3c2
If you like this kind of stuff, then OpenStreetMap is for you. Because it is
free and open you can use the data to create such visualisations easily.
Granted of course, that someone (how about you) added the information you want
to look at.

------
lupin_sansei
McDonalds restaurants (per capita) by country

[http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_mcd_res_percap-food-
mc...](http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_mcd_res_percap-food-mcdonalds-
restaurants-per-capita)

------
cschneid
Does anybody know how that map was generated? What software can easily
assemble geolocated data into a nice glowing map? I assume you could do it
manually via processing or similar, but there's gotta be something pre-
assembled.

~~~
DEinspanjer
If you are willing to pay money, tools like AmMaps and Tableau can fill the
"pre-assembled" requirement.

For free, you can use the Many Eyes project to do this kind of visualization
as long as you can transform your data source into the required format.

There was also a neat proof of concept that someone from the OpenLayers
community did a while back:

<http://crschmidt.net/mapping/choropleth.html>

I've used that code in my Mozilla Metrics to generate some nice choropleth
maps.

Finally, there is the code that I worked on as part of the Mozilla
downloadstats visualization. It reads a JSON feed of locations and puts
markers on a Canvas map. <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/stats/>

<https://svn.mozilla.org/metrics/downloadvis>

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blogimus
No its not in the CONUS, but many moons ago I was at Fort Greely, Alaska. When
I was done with my tour and if conversation turned to the topic of my past
travels, people would ask the whereabouts of Ft Greely. I say it was 100 miles
south of Fairbanks. I usually get a small nod. When I then followed up with
"and 90 miles from the nearest McDonalds" their eyes usually got bigger.

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marze
I would guess a map showing a dot for every 25k people would look very
similar.

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ojbyrne
And I suddenly regret taking I-90 on my last drive through SD. Damn!

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dotcoma
Vermont?

~~~
timmaah
Vermont is only 160 miles long and 80 miles wide and probably has a good 20-25
mcdonalds.

(Although it is the only state to not have one in the capital city, also the
only state to not have one in its largest city)

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fjabre
and that my friends is a lot of saturated fat...

