The island that isn't.

Now and again, Google Earth related stories occur in the mainstream  media. Sometimes, I'll take the time to post here about them.

Today, there's an article on the BBC's Website about an island that's listed on various maps and charts, and also on google maps/ google earth, but at that location, there is only salt water, to a depth of over a kilometre. The BBC even included a graphic that showed the wrong bit of ocean along with the caption,

"Sandy Island can be seen as the shaded area due west of New Caledonia"

So there's a nice irony there. In attempting to show where something isn't, they've shown the wrong place.

Sandy Island isn't over 200 miles to the west of where the picture above thinks it isn't.

And here it isn't.

According to GE, there's a big hole in the world at this point although I had my mouse hovering over the location when I took this snapshot, and it reckons that the ground is 2 feet above seal level, rather than 4,500 feet below sea level. So it looks like some hasty revisionism is going on here.

There is an earlier, historical image, dating from early in 2009.

And it's still not an island, sandy or otherwise. Just clouds and ocean.

driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Update: There's been some revising going on on the BBC's page too. They now have updated their photograph to show where the island actually isn't insead of where nobody thought it wasn't.

Felix Baumgartner's jump as seen on Google Earth

Felix was dragged to earth by the weight of his own testicles as one person memorably wrote.

Hw jumped from a height of 128,100 feet. That's 39,045 metres. That's about 24 miles straight down. It would take me half an hour to drive it horizontally, even if I was going quite quickly. He reached the ground 9 minutes later.

Anyway, here's what 39,045 metres above Roswell, New Mexico looks like on Google Earth when you look straight down.

 And here's what it looks like when you look northwards.

To put it another way, here's what 24 miles looks like on the ground.

It's like falling from Swindon to Oxford.

driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

George Michael got to number 3

This is Highpoint Prison, between Barnadiston, Cowlinge and Farley Green in Suffolk. George's predeliction for driving under the influence has led him there. Bad boys stick together.

Sorry.

Anyway, it's a geo-alphanumeric goldmine! You can see a plethora of significant shapes. Most of them already sorted, but it does have a nice 3




And a nice hash sign, just in case I want to do punctuation.



Anyway. 3.

Thanks George.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1234567890

David Alvand's back garden as seen by the media

Nightmare neighbour

David Alvand refuses

to chop trees which

can be seen from space

Screams Australian Newspaper, The Herald Sun.

Well, let's see, shall we?

First of all, what is space?

The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale has established the Kármán line at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) as a working definition for the boundary between aeronautics and astronautics.

The United States designates people who travel above an altitude of 50 miles (80 km) as astronauts.

NASA's mission control uses 76 miles (122 km) as their re-entry altitude, which roughly marks the boundary where atmospheric drag becomes noticeable, (depending on the ballistic coefficient of the vehicle), thus leading shuttles to switch from steering with thrusters to maneuvering with air surfaces.

9-11

Today is the aniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I suppose I should try to look at the event through the lens of Google Earth.

First of all, Google Earth's historical imagary for this point goes a long way back.

Right back to 1974 in fact, although what you get is just a blur.

By 1978, things are a little better. You'd probably decide you were looking at a city, rather than a mountain or forest.



Next time the image is updated is in 1994, and you can see the improvement quite clearly.



And then again in 1997...



Overlaying 3d buildings at this point, it's pretty obvious that things have changed radically. If you'd been in a coma, and had no other way of getting any information about the world than Google Earth, you could tell a lot from the next picture. It's dated September 12th, 2001. I'm surprised anyone was allowed to overfly the area, but perhaps police or military imagary found it's way onto Google Earth's database.



The time between then and now has been one of very slow reconstruction.

It's a measure of just how culturally important the attacks were that some of the most valuable real estate in the world has been pretty much undeveloped for the last 9 years. I think if the towers had been toppled due to some natural catastrophe, or an airliner had struck in a genuine accident, things would have moved on much quicker.



December 31st 2001. The clearance of the debris has been going on for several months, and Google Earth shows a clearer site, but with much work still to be done.



Six months later, and Ground Zero is staring to look more like a construction site, and less like a demolition site.










The above images show the development of the site since then. As the little red pushpins show, the image has been lifted from pretty much the same place each time. I suppose the pictures each represent a year, but they're not evenly spaced. Look in the bottom left corner for the image date. You can enlarge each image by clicking on it.

Should any truthers be reading this, I think you should know that going forward in Google Earth's historical imagary from 2009 yields a picture dated 2006. I do know why, but I'm sworn to secrecy.

Today's remembrance was overshadowed by the controversy concerning an Islamic Cultural Center a couple of blocks away from the WTC site.

From what I saw, I think many who'd lost loved ones just wished those on both sides that wanted to make political or theological capital would just go away.

So I'm not trying to make a point here, although I do have a definite and complicated opinion. I just wondered how the two places looked in Google Earth.

To keep the resolution the same, I moved the image and recaptured it, then stitched the two together to form a sort of panorama.



That's how it looked when the towers were still standing.



And this is the same image, taken from 2006.

Finally, I've been messing around with various movie making software. Specifically, Fraps and Windows Movie Maker. I thought that might give an interesting perspective.

See the video below...

David Alvand's back garden

There's this bloke in Plymouth who keeps running against the grain.

He really wants to be left alone. So much so that he's prepared to build huge concrete walls around his home, and then, once the council have forced him to remove them, he endears himself to his neighbours by planting a shitload of leylandii round the front of his house.

He's made the national news, which presumably is the last thing he wants, given that he values his privacy so much.

Of course, with Google Earth, it's difficult to keep prying eyes at bay.

So here, for anyone that's interested, is David Alvand's house, as seen from above.



The image is dated April 2007, so the trees in the front will have grown a bit since this picture was taken. Apart from the rampant growth to the front of the property, it's not much to look at really, is it? Pretty much bog-standard semi detached with an untidy looking and fairly small back garden. Same as every other house round there.

Mr Alvand, did you do this just to make yourself seem more interesting?

Already a day out of date...

I love to see cooling towers get demolished. They go this funny wobbly shape that to me is the epitome of the word "woebegone". I feel quite sorry for the poor things really.

The familiar curved cooling towers we see are hyperboloid in shape. This gives a lot of structural strength using the minimum of material. The demolition of these particular towers, the 250 foot tall Blackburn Meadows cooling towers, near Sheffield, England caused quite a lot of argument.
53°25'5.62"N, 1°24'22.04"W

Some people thought they were an eyesore. To others, they were a local landmark. They stood for many years after the rest of the power station that they served had been demolished. This was due to their proximity to the Tinsley viaduct, which carries the M1 motorway past the area. The viaduct has been strengthened over the last few years, and this allowed E-on, who owned the towers, to proceed with the demolition.

The demolition was not a total success. Once the dust had settled, it became apparent that part of the north tower remained standing. It collapsed in on itself a few hours later.

The towers live on though, in Google Earth, and are likely to do so for quite some time.