# How do you picture the SDMB spatially?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [August 28, 2001, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566 "2001-08-28T18:27:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Beadalin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beadalin)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566/1 "2001-08-28T18:27:40Z")
I just realized that though I don’t imagine each forum as a literal room or anything, I have sort of a sitemap in my head of how the boards are laid out, and it’s something that’s present me brain whenever I move from one forum into another. Anyone else, on puropse or by happenstance, have a mental image of the boards?
For me, I enter through Cecil’s latest column. From there, the central room us General Questions. The rest of the forums are arrayed around it-- Great Debates directly above (at 12 o’clock), MPSIMS to the right, the BBQ Pit to the left (but about 8 o’clock), and IMHO below. I often forget about ATMB, but it’s up and to the right of GQ (GD at 12:00 and MPSIMS at 3:00). Comments on the columns doesn’t even exist.
I have no life.
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### Author:  [@Syzygy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syzygy)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566/2 "2001-08-28T19:06:15Z")
I concur. 😃
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### Author:  [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566/3 "2001-08-28T20:27:14Z")
I bet you really liked the virtual file system interface in _Jurassic Park_, the one with the little building metaphors for directories, etc.
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### Author:  [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566/4 "2001-08-28T20:39:42Z")
Hmm…Since I have a pretty good idea of how I’d design the underlying database, I tend to picture it that way. I know, I know, subsets of **R** [sup]_n_[/sup] don’t exactly count as spatial, but that is how I visualize it.
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### Author:  [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566/5 "2001-08-28T21:41:48Z")
It’s not very original, but I suppose I picture the SDMB is a bunch of nested lists; i.e. the list of posts for a thread within the list of threads for all the forums within the main list of forums.
P.S. ultrafilter, what’s **R** \*[sup]n[/sup]\* and why does it have subsets?
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### Author:  [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-picture-the-sdmb-spatially/78566/6 "2001-08-28T22:12:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Admiral Borg \*
> _P.S. ultrafilter, what’s **R** [sup]n[/sup]_ and why does it have subsets? \*\*
**R** \*[sup]n[/sup]\* is the set of all lists of _n_ real numbers. A subset of **R** \*[sup]n[/sup]\* is just a restricted set. The reason I mentioned that is because every database can be viewed as a subset of **R** \*[sup]n[/sup]\*, if you’re geeky enough. I am. 🙂