Planet Out Loud.

I wanted to check the air. Somehow, there’s a bus now.

When I got back to NUS in Week 1, after the summer programme at Exeter College, Oxford, one of the first things I messaged my cofounder and friend at RC4, Matthias, was:

“Hey, it’s quite hazy in Singapore this year, isn’t it?”

He said no, it was normal.

I wondered if the anthropology and climate change course I’d taken at Oxford was showing its effects. Maybe I was finally noticing something I’d barely thought about before.

Then I left it alone for a while. The semester had started.

Then I read the UN’s warning that we’re heading beyond 1.5°C of warming. Even if we manage to bring temperatures back down, some of the damage won’t undo itself. What we do now still matters.

That stayed with me. And on 14 September, quite a few people started mentioning the haze to me. By the evening, our residential college had sent a message saying the PSI was over 100.

So it wasn’t just me noticing it anymore.

I thought it might be worth building something around this. A map where you could check air-quality readings, see how they changed over time, and explore the place those numbers were describing. NUS felt like a good place to start.

Then I saw an interactive campus map you could drive around in.

You can probably see where this is going.

The map became 3D. It needed a shuttle. And once there was a shuttle, I wanted to race it.

Getting NUS to feel like NUS became a whole project of its own. Where’s YIH? Does CLB actually look like that? How am I supposed to drive from ERC to CREATE if there’s barely enough space between the buildings?

At one point, the bus was hitting invisible objects and some buildings were floating. I was also asking for a cuter bus. There were several priorities.

But the air-quality idea stayed. You can check the latest readings, look through their history, and see what nearby sensors are reporting. You can also forget what you came for and spend a while driving around UTown.

I wanted people outside NUS to have a little look around too. This is a place where we study, get lost, miss buses and find our own ways to have fun. Building a slightly unreasonable version of it felt like a very computer-engineering way to share that.

The course made me pay more attention. The haze gave me something to start with. Somewhere along the way, it became something people could play with.

I hope this little world helps more people understand climate change, one of the biggest challenges facing humanity, and what we can do to tackle it together.

For now, welcome to Planet Out Loud.

You can have the keys.

P.S. If you know a corner of campus well, you’ll probably spot something I’ve missed. Tell me! (ok yes I used AI but i kept it as less as i could :)) I’ve worked on keeping it light enough for older laptops too. Mostly, I hope you leave a little more curious about the air around you. Even if you came here entirely for the bus. :)