Travel Globe

The globe on the front of my homepage is a visualization of travel routes that hold some personal significance to me. I've rendered it using globe.gl, a 3D globe UI that uses ThreeJS and WebGL.

The most significant routes are:

Johannesburg to Beijing
Beijing to Cape Town
Cape Town to Maastricht
Maastricht to Amsterdam
Amsterdam to Berlin
Amsterdam to New York

I like the idea of filling this virtual globe up as I go — like a personal travel pinboard, the kind you find at hostels and hotel lobbies in major cities.

Apart from the globe, I track places that have been meaningful in my life, an idea I saw from the great Michael Nielsen here. I think one of the most underrated aspects of travel is how visiting a new place gives you a kind of hook to hang experiences on. Until you've been there, a place can only exist as something nebulous in your mind. All the actual texture arrives once you've physically been there.

When traveling, I'm often reminded of this passage:

"In reality, movement doesn't exist. Like the turtle in Zeno's paradox, we're heading nowhere, if anything we're simply wandering into the interior of a moment, and there is no end, nor any destination."
— Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

Meaningful places

Have been: Alexanderplatz, Koh Tao, Pai, Rosebank, University of Cape Town Upper Campus, Haifa, Central Park, Golden Gate Bridge, TU Munich Garching Campus, Harare, Fenghuang Ancient Town, Zhangjiajie, Great Wall of China, The Met, Beijing, The Grey Dog pub in Chelsea NYC, Spanish Arch Galway, Alcântara, Berghain, The Smithsonian, Alhambra, Kalk Bay, Tsim Sha Tsui, Schlachtensee, Van Gogh Museum, Maastricht Stadspark, Friedrichshain, Ponta de Ouro, Williamsburg, Tankwa Town, Warsaw, Paris, London, Gellért Thermal Bath, Cape Point, Addis Ababa

Would like to go: San Francisco, Pyramids of Giza, Oxford, Chicago, MIT, The Great Barrier Reef, Shinjuku, Kyoto, Bergen, Geirangerfjord, Stockholm, Namib Desert, Grand Canyon, Victoria Falls, The Rockies, Very Large Array, Blackrock City, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Amritsar, Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Lake Tahoe, Budva, Accra

Travel continues to be a good example of an infinite game: every place I visit spawns five more I need to see. I am still not even close to the optimal margin.