Why do I only document and share routes and places when doing something unusual?

I went to pick up my stolen bike that had been found by the police. This trip can be interesting for bliin, I thought, and therefore shared it. For those who are not familiar with bliin; you can share your position and geo-tagged photos with other bliin users. The necessary technology is a mobile phone with camera, GPS receiver and mobile internet. I used to document lots of places, events and trips. But today I realized that it had been quite some time.

What has happened? I live and work in the same city, and therefore go to my work and back by bike. Most evenings pass by sitting on the cough, so the number of places to be shared with other bliiners is on average no more than two. That’s why I probably only bliin when leaving my usual daily pathways.

Like the participants of Amsterdam Realtime I also became aware of my routes through my city. One participant of Amsterdam Realtime was a subway driver. His routes created a beautiful GPS-drawing on the map of Amsterdam. When reading about Amsterdam Realtime in 2004, the confrontation with someone’s geographical behavior fascinated me and I immediately imagined my own city map.

Nowadays I am able to create my own GPS city map with bliin. This map contains pictures and texts of places I went to relax, party, work, see friends, buy groceries etc. Over the past few months the frequently used routes and visited places got limited when summer turned to winter and because my work absorbs most of my energy and time. Embarrassed by the few non-exciting places I visit, I didn’t use bliin much.

But why should it be about quality when I want to share places or routes with other users? Quantity can be interesting as well, especially when you can visualize it on a digital map..A route can become very thick by all the GPS-drawings layered over one another and will give you an idea of the frequency with which I visit certain places. In 2008 I will document my daily routes as much as I can. The result can be seen on bliin (user ‘Assia’)