Contrary to the current mood (at least here in cold and Omicron-struck central Europe), I’d like to invite you for a short holiday trip; for a less cringy message, see below.

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Let’s start by grabbing something to eat at a newly opened breakfast-cafe in edgy Óram’uel. From there, we can walk into the old town and join the masses of less trendy tourists posing for selfies in front of the Opera and buying cheap plastic souvenirs around the Zoésora Temple.

After wandering around the Ballet Theatre and the Museum of the Oceans at the new, modernesque harbour front, we take take the Metro Line 2, which follows the course of the oldest railway in all of Kojo, to an exquisite beach-side neighbourhood named after the two things that make it and the city great: the sun and the coast. Here, we join the high (and less-so-high) society of the city in sunbathing and swimming for a little while. Afterwards, we can take an Express bus back to our Hostel in the studenty Ōnagara neighbourhood. Every street bustles with cafes and restaurants, with little Boutiques as well as chain pharmacies. After a quick shower and nap, we are ready to head back out again.

As we walk south, the quirky vibe is replaced by a more sophisticated atmosphere in posh Thurn et Sasó. The Fóskiman Chigai-Showugan, Kojo’s most renown art museum (unless you ask people from the capital), is impressive enough from the outside, so we disdain its treasures and instead go for a picnic in the green lung of the city. Although dedicated to the Revolutionists of 1834, nowadays it is a source of tranquillity and chill for the Finkyásenians, who sometimes, between work, study, loud traffic and long summer nights, need to force themselves for a brief pause.

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Hello fellow Geofictionians,

after almost two years without any international travel (due to some virus whose name I forgot) I was fortunate enough to be able to travel through Italy for the last two weeks; by train, of course. Now, usually I wouldn’t use this website to post some elaborate travel blog - and don’t worry, I won’t - but I saw something I just had to share with this community.

Many of you probably have heard of the Vatican Museums before, and that they are a must-do-item on any travel list for Rome, just after the Forum Romanum and just before posing in front of other selfie-stick swinging tourists at the Trevi Fountain. What I, ignorant me, didn’t know before going there, is that the massive museum (which somehow fits into this 0.44 km² souvereign state alongside St. Peter and the HQ of the Catholic Church) not only features endless corridors of statues, tapestry, paintings and any kind of collectible you could think of, but also the “Galleria delle carte geografiche”. For anyone who spent a good part of their childhood sketching fantasy maps on paper, this corridor is like a trip on drugs. I’ll let the pictures below speak for themselves. 5/5 stars, 100 % recommended for mapping-enthusiasts!

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Hello everyone,

I’ve spent some time the last couple of days on a rather intensive project, where I once again took on the task to crunch some numbers regarding inter-city train travel in Kojo. I’ve now officially opened my first Bliki to showcase the results, and would love to hear your thoughts as well as your advise on my follow-up question.

Cheers

Leo

Hey there,

I am looking for a way to automatically compute ridership numbers for my country’s intercity railway services. I did a first attempt at an excel sheet, which spits out numbers of travellers between one of 34 agglomerations in Kojo. The next step would be to allocate those numbers on route segments to visualise accurate cross sections of passenger flows on the system, but I’m not sure I know how to get their from a technical stand point. Advise is very welcome.

Here’s the link, and there’s a preview down below.

I just want to put these 5 notes here for everyone to read who wants to have a look at this or might fool around with it themselves:

1) “Spawn” and “destination” does not imply a trip from spawn A to destination B. Rather, cell J7 for example says: There are 1934 trips taking place per day between Kwaengdō and the Finkyáse agglomeration, where the trip maker is living in Kwaengdō and temporarily staying in Finkyáse. Combine that with the 1479 trips where a Finkyásenian is visiting their grandmother in Kwaengdō, and you get a total of 3143 trips per day between the two cities, or roughly 1570 per direction.

2) A number of riders “gets lost” in the formulars, as the attraction shares never add up to exactly 100%. For example journeys from Pyingshum to Pyingshum are obviously not taken into account; that means the number of trips per person and year should be set slightly higher than the actual value.

3) While the attraction share can kinda compensate for this, one should keep in mind that in the real world for example a young student city will spawn much more trips per inhabitant than let’s say a former industrial town with much poverty. This model assumes every city spawns the same amount of trips per inhabitant, and just their destinations are determined by the attractiveness of their destination city.

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Hey there,

I have a more or less quick question about, well; I guess the title says it all. I’m not even sure if it’s possible, but I think I’ve seen something like this on the wiki a couple of times, but I might be wrong. The closest thing I actually found was Luciano’s “old” RUTA-VC map, and I wonder whether similar things are possible without an external script. For my personal liking I wouldn’t need to click on the map and have extra info displayed; I’m looking for a way to have a osm-data-fed map that displays route relations for Kojo’s intercity railway services, so I don’t have to bother poor paint (rest in peace) every time I do a tiny change to the network.

Any suggestions welcome! Thanks a lot

leo

Hey there fellow mappers!

I have a love-hate relationship with mapping buildings. On one hand, I love the feeling of scale and detail they give to a map. They are the first step in creating a city that is more than just a network of roads and rails. So what’s to hate about them? Well, I’m no architect (surprise), and especially when it comes to representative buildings I continuously fail to produce anything that leaves me with a sense of satisfaction.

Currently I’m having trouble with the heart of the Kojolese government, the Gankakuchō so Hyosilwe. I redid that area recently, and now I’m struggeling to come up with a new building. To be fair, I’ve done everything to make the situation as complicated as possibly, and I wouldn’t want to swap roles with the architects in 1990’s Pyingshum.

I’ll try to summarise the basic idea in a few key points:

1. administration around the chancellor had been growing for decades, need for an adequate office space that could also be used for representative purposes became more and more urgent, however unfulfilled.

2. A fire in 1984 (read more) puts a large area in central Pyingshum to ashes, killing hundreds of people. The event is a major disaster for the government of that time conspiracy theories have their heyday.

3. The area is to be rebuilt, with a new Chancellery facing the Jōbun so Gúwan place. However, the building needs to be built in a way that it doesn’t evoke the impression that it outshines the adjacent memorial park dedicated to the victims; yet it still needs to serve for state receptions and other representative events, while also providing the executive with much needed office space. A somewhat, contemporary feel shall be used.

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A quick note regarding the current main page of the wiki; I’m aware I’ve fallen behind the update schedule again, but I can’t maintain it currently because I’m sick. Sorry for that, but I’m sure it will do for another two weeks, until it’s the much more reliable Paxtar’s turn again ;) Blurry greetings, Leo

Hey there,

I recently realized that the number of International Organisations in Pyingshum is rather low; or rather, more or less zero. Now, the last thing I want to promote is a “race” on who can win the most organisations for their respective countries, and I’m sure there are more than enough to come up with to make everyone happy. So I took some time and browsed the wiki (both on OGF and the real world Wikipedia) to look for some organisations that I would like to locate in my oh-so-glorious capital. However, I want to check with you guys if there are any objections or comments. It is very well possible that some organisations might already exist in OGF in one way or the other, or would make more sense to be located in the same city as a “mother-organisation” in some cases. So feel free to criticize my claims in all ways possible please! Or if you are particularly fond of one of them, I’m sure arrangements can be made ;)

In no particular order:

• International Organisation for Students Exchange (maybe affiliated with the ANESCO?)

-World Archive Organisation / World Library … Could be just an international body for cooperation between libraries world wide, but if Pyingshum was seen as a worthy city I would also be happy to map an actual “world archive”; maybe alike to the modern library of Alexandria. I also already have a spot in mind, next to the National library close to the Besoegawan Norikichezi Station.

-International Museum Cooperative; This office could promote the exchange of loan collections between museums world wide.

-International Council for Science; this organisation exists in the real world as well. As far as I’m aware it functions as an umbrella group for all national science organisations. Obviously, all major branches of science have parallel organisations on national and international level; I feel fond to also claim the

-International Mathematics Union (but again, don’t want to seem to grabby)

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