Friday, August 15, 2008

The Main Page Is Up!

Holy crap! I think I need my eyes checked. How convenient my optometrist appointment is tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I may have to call everything I see into question, like the main page actually working and the furry spherical cow having tea with a pink platypus and an anthropomorphic eggplant in the corner of my bedroom.

Even if it is indeed an illusion, I have to say it looks quite fabulous! Major props to Tommy for finally pulling off our lovely Google Maps mashup so we can see exactly where Lizzie is in the U.S.

To get everyone up to speed, Lizzie is not following any particular road or highway. We had originally been considering having her run along I-80, but decided it would be more fun instead for her to cut across and visit famous parks, cities and landmarks. After all, she's a hamster, so she should be able to handle some off-roading to avoid the pesky nuisance of traffic jams, pot holes and angry drivers. Lakes and rivers pose a problem because getting hamsters wet can make them susceptible to wet tail and pneumonia, but let's assume for the purposes of her virtual tour that her wheel is buoyant and water-tight with its own recycling air supply (Oh a hamster submarine! That could be a fun project to work on....). ;)


Looks like at the moment she's finished swimming/sailing across Lake Meade after visiting Las Vegas and is running as I type towards the Grand Canyon. Keep up the good work, Lizzie, and again a huge thanks to Tommy for making this site possible.

2 comments:

CatHater said...

Hey, could you put a little XML file out there with a daily total and a cumulative total? Maybe a webcam image somewhere? I'd love to do a desktop widget for this to easily monitor her progress.

Thomas said...

That's a great idea. Any particular schema you were thinking of? Would a text file be a good first step?

As for the webcam, probably won't be able to do that as the hamster is in Steph's bedroom. We can definitely get up some videos though, but that might not achieve the same effect.