Tuesday 7 September 2010

The Whole Damn Alphabet...

Clicking the red letters will make Google Earth zoom in to the places.



A Thailand Supreme Court, Bangkok



B A lake near Letchworth in Hertfordshire, England.



C A building just a bit south of Cape Canaveral (I liked the allitteration!)



D A Swimming pool in Coronado, California



E Two Blocks down from C! Also Cape Canaveral, Florida



F A building in Hafnarfjörður, A town a few miles south of Rekjavik, Iceland.



G A building in Paris, France.



H A building in Ezhva, in the Republic of Komi, part of the Russian Federation.



I They dumped these rocks here to stop the shoreline at Sea Palling, Norfolk, England, being eroded so quickly. A common thing in that part of the world.



J Trees and bushes in Heswall, England. On the banks of the Dee Estuary.



K The sloping rooves of a building in Kew, a suburb of Invercargill, New Zealand.



L A building on an industrial estate a few miles south of Solihull, England.



M A track around a field in Lancashire, England. The nearest town is called St Cuthbert Without.



N A path up a steep bank near Plymouth, England.



O The Colliseum, in Rome.



P A building in central Liverpool, England.



Q The overflow pipe for a reservoir in Balderdale, Co. Durham, England.



R Upper case R's are rare on Google Earth. So I had to settle for something quite tenuous. This one is in Palmerstone North, in New Zealand, and the image has been updated since I captured the letter. Use the history bar to see it as it was.



S A computer and communication centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.



T A letter formed by removing vegetation. It's near Newton On Trent, South Yorkshire, England.



U A building in Copenhagen, Denmark.



V A field of rapeseed near Bording, Denmark.



W A building in San Fernando, Venezuela.



X A swiss flag, painted on the roof of a building in La Caroline, on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland.



Y A building in Corno, on the shore of Lake Garda, Italy.



Z Tracks made by ekranoplans and hovercraft in Kaspiysk, on the Caspian Sea.

Finding these letters has been a staple of this blog since it started a couple of years back. As the idea developed, I put together some loose rules.

First of all, I couldn't use real letters. It had to be something that looked like a letter, but which was not really intended to be a letter. I couldn't use the giant letters in the famous Hollywood sign, for example.

Secondly, each letter had to be self contained. So I couldn't use a winding road as a Z or an S, because the road would continue outside this. A couple of the letters don't fully comply with this rule. I am looking for replacements.

Thirdly, I've tried to make the letters come from a wide range of places and things. I once found a golf course where many of the bunkers looked like letters. If I use the course, I will only use one letter from it.

I could have made life a lot easier for myself by not using the rules above, but I've enjoyed the challenge. I want to find all the lower case letters now, and the numbers. I'm not going to go as far as umlauts and apostrophes.


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12 comments:

Vicky said...

Awesome! I clicked *I like it!* on stumble! xx

Alivia said...

I would like it waaay better if locations were given. I am tired of cool pix that don't tell me location.

Unknown said...

http://www.geogreeting.com/main.html

Anonymous said...

A better M
Made for Mussolini in Latina, Italy

http://maps.google.it/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=it&geocode=&q=latina&sll=41.442726,12.392578&sspn=24.726297,53.569336&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Latina,+Lazio&ll=41.463136,12.903881&spn=0.001512,0.00327&t=e&z=19&ecpose=41.46314903,12.90398298,175.93,-99.857,3.36,0

Paul said...

Thanks Vicky.

@ Queery, I agree and will edit this post shortly.

@ Renee, I know I'm not the first to do this, although I think I'm the first to make all the letters self contained. It was an idea that was original to me, and although I was disappointed when someone first pointed out sites like geogreeting, I wanted to complete it on my own terms anyway.

Paul said...

Thanks also to anonymous for the link to the M shaped building in Latina. I think I prefer my own, as there already lots of letter shaped buildings in my alphabet.

Unknown said...

This M also works, and is not a building. It is made out of rocks, near the Colorado School of Mines, in Golden, CO. At the beginning of every year, the entering freshman walk up the mountain carrying a rock to place on the M, and at the end of the year, the graduating seniors make the trek (again) to bring a rock home.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=golden,+co&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=39.86519,107.138672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Golden,+Jefferson,+Colorado&ll=39.745668,-105.239628&spn=0.001184,0.00327&t=h&z=19

Paul said...

And a fine M it is too, Matt. It would also make a perfectly good W at a pinch :)

Paul said...

Well, Vicky, adding it to stumbleupon has really made my stats jump! 20 times more visitors to this blog in the last day than in the entire month of August!

Hope they like what they've seen. I'm now looking for the numbers, and the lower case letters.

Peter said...

Congratulations.

I know you've been working on this for quite some time. I admire your dedication.

Anonymous said...

Pretty Amazing! Would love to tweet this! How can I do that?

Paul said...

Hi Anonymous. I'd never given much thought to that side of things. I've now changed my blog settings, so you should be able to share this post by using the buttons at the bottom of the text.