Samuel's Blog

Google Earth

Recently I’ve found myself using Google Earth to see what various things look like from space. This can be quite intriguing, it is often interesting to see what certain walking paths look like from space, and things that are quite big from my grounded perspective often look much more insignificant from space.

For example, here is a picture of Telstra Tower taken from a Hot Air Balloon:

And here it is from space:

This is all quite fascinating, but it also has problems, I personally find it a bit disturbing that I am able to get a picture of a New York intersection like this:

That is about as far as I can zoom in before the picture becomes pixelated, and it is much closer than I can zoom in on cities outside of the US, in fact, here in Canberra, this picture of Dickson College is about as close as I can get without pixelation:

These pictures can be quite useful and interesting, but I think that, for the general public, satellite photos that can zoom in on an intersection with pretty good clarity are a bit over the top.

Samuel

23 comments September 20th, 2005 at 10:47pm

LCA Speakers Notified

Today is the first day of notifications for LCA 2006 speakers, this means that some time in the next week or so I will be informed whether or not one of my submissions has been accepted.

The emails that were sent out as confirmation of submission said that this would be a ten day process, whereas the LCA website says that the list of speakers will be published on the 25th of this month. I’ll keep you informed.

On a mildly related note, if you are after a laugh, have a look at the guidelines for passport photos. Why is this related? Well, if one of my submissions is accepted I’m going to need a passport. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with them, they are just entertaining.

Samuel

September 20th, 2005 at 06:02pm