Man Scrawls World’s Biggest Message with a GPS ‘Pen’

[otohara]

One man drove 12,238 miles and across 30 states in the U.S. to scrawl a message that could only be viewed using Google Earth. His big shoutout: "Read Ayn Rand."

Nick Newcomen did a road trip over 30 days that covered stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. First, he identified on a map the route he would need to drive to spell out the message. He put a GPS device in his car to trace the route he would follow. Then, he hit the road.

"The main reason I did it is because I am an Ayn Rand fan," he says. "In my opinion if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place - freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future."

Newcomen, unlike previous GPS artists, actually traveled the lines he traced on the map. He used a GPS logger (Qstarz BT-Q1000X) to "ink" the message. Starting his trip in Marshall, Texas, he turned on the device when he wanted to write a letter and turned off the device between letters. The recorded GPS data was loaded into Google Earth to produce the image above.http://gizmodo.com/5611713/man-scrawls-worlds-biggest-message-with-a-gps-pen

[dalaigh lllama]

1. Reminds me of my favorite quote re Ayn Rand

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[NoGOPZone]

2. I see that Randian had no problem using government owned satellites to create the message. nt

[Iterate]

3. And we thank him for the seven tons of magical market CO2,

which we all can now share with delight. How altruistic of him.