Where the names have no streets

What's the richest country in the world?

Ireland, because it's capital is always Dublin.

Aye Thang yewe.

I've spent a bit of time this evening floating around above the Irish Republic. I was actually looking for somewhere that I'd been to when I visited Ireland years back.

I came over on the ferry and needed to find a place to pitch my tent, but I was in the middle of a city. So I took a bus as far as it would go. It went south, and dropped me off in the middle of a housing estate near a hill. I found a nearby field and started to unpack.  A local girl saw me, and explained that if I did this, I'd probably get mugged/stabbed/set on fire so I packed up again and started walking up the hill.

I'd walked through customs with a bit of weed on me. I was totally casual about it, because I'd totally forgotten I had it with me. Anyway, they weren't stopping anyone. Just glancing at passports. But I'd had a bit of a toot on my pipe, and now here was this girl telling me that I'd be lucky to survive the night.

I got the fear, man!

Then a group of young people turned up. The oldest was in his mid teens. The youngest was about 8. They were passing a spliff around, so we had a talk and a smoke, and they told me to go right up the hill out of harms way. So this is what I did. I slept hardly at all that night, and spent the next day putting some miles between myself and wherever it was I'd stopped.

In fact just about everyone I met was nice to me. No bad stuff happened but everywhere I went, people were advising me, "Don't go to Cork. It's stab city". "Stay away from Wexford. They'll suck your eyeballs out and feed you to the nuns".

Anyway, that's what I've been looking for. A sink estate on the south side of Dublin with a hill just to the south of it. I suppose it would help if I could remember some place names. I ended up on the road to Naas the next morning.

Floating above Ireland, there are millions of little red circles with names next to them. In other parts of the world, these represent towns and villages and cities. In Ireland, they  mark the point where two hedges meet. Or the middle of a field.

Places like Quinsborough

Or Corbally

or Crooksling

or Lugg

twinned with Lugmore...

 Ah those crazy Irish people. Since they have all these towns, it's obvious that they need to build lots and lots of houses.

Oh, hang on...

And again!

Some time ago, I attempted to use a limited amout of information to precisely locate where a photograph had been taken from.

At the time, what I could do with Google Earth was a bit limited because of the quality of the imagery, but now this part of the world has proper aerial photography, and not just crappy satellite pics.

The person that took the photograph actually told me pretty precisely where it was taken after he read my post,but could I have got close without him volunteering the information?

Most of the logic was correct last time. In particular, I identified the direction from which the photgraph was taken, and that's important because it helps me to find the road sign.

In fact there are two roadsigns visible on google earth that could be the one shown on the picture. I think the image uses some telephoto, and so what you see is foreshortened. This makes it more difficult to relate the sign to other features such as the trees and hedges.

Especially now that the image is clearer, I'm reluctant to say too much.

Let's just say, if I've got this right, the photograph was taken from a first floor window, and the window was facing the rainbow.

Sherlock strikes again!

Today, the weather was clement!  So I girded my loins, and wound my merry way to the allotment. I was digging up the last of the spuds, when I noticed a curious thing.

You can see the skyline of Liverpool from the allotment, and today, the concrete pole that used to be called St John's beacon, but what is now the Radio City Tower looked almost as if it were on fire,  except what appeared to be rising from it was not smoke, but cloud. This column of vapour rose from the horizon right up to the cloud base. I briefly toyed with the notion that someone had nuked Manchester, but that seemed unlikely, and there are no reports of such a thing occurring on the BBC's news website.

So I suspected  a power station. But how could I be sure? I couldn't drive in a straight line from the allotment to St John's beacon, and then beyond. Too many buildings and fences and gardens and rivers in the way. But I could create a line using the power of Google Earth!

I made a placemark at the base of the beacon.



I made another placemark at the allotment.



Then I lined things up and let the "camera" drift eastwards.

We passed over Wallasey and Seacombe, then out over the river to the centre of Liverpool. Then out of the commercial heart of the city and into the suburbs. To Wavertree and Netherton. To Tarbock Green and Farnworth. And there! Directly in front of me was Fiddler's Ferry Power Station. I placemarked that too!

And as you can see, they line up perfectly. Google Earth was also able to tell me that the direct, as the crow flies distance from Allotment to Power Station is 15 miles. Or, if you prefer, 2,415,015 centimetres.



The wonders of modern technology!

Edit:

Wait! There's more! Those 2 million centimetres took me over hill and down dale. And Google Earth knows exactly how up the hills were, and how down the dales were too. And it's given me a topological profile of the terrain between Love Lane Allotments and Fiddlers Ferry Power Station.

My life is enriched! Thank you once again Google Earth!

As you can see, the river Mersey is a flat, sea level bit to the left of the profile. We head down to it, and up away from it, soaring up to a rarified 225 feet above sea level in the Edge Hill area of the city. Watch out for nosebleeds and blackouts before you float gracefully down to a mere 50 feet above the briny towards the end of the trip. 50 feet lower than the starting point, at an average slope of about 1.5%. Nothing that a good stout pair of walking boots couldn't cope with.

Seriously, I've been using this thing for quite a long time now, without necessarily looking deeply at every aspect, so it's still got some surprising tricks up it's sleeve! To access this function, click the ruler button on the top bar (between the planet button and the email button) then simply click on a point and move your mouse pointer to a different point. You'll see a line. When you want to make the other end of a line, click again.

But you're not just limited to individual lines. You can do complete and complex journeys by combining lines to make paths.

As you can see from the picture above, I've just found that we drive 2.5 miles to do our shopping run at Asda. I could use Google Earth to work out  a shorter route. The possibilities are endless!

Drawing fire?

Well there I was, doodling away merrily, and it turned into something mechanical looking. I had some kind of belt driven contraption in mind, but it's just what it is... A doodle that developed from a blank canvas.

The trouble started when I saved my doodle. At a loss for what to call it, I called it "I found this in my garage. Anyone know what it is?"

I don't even have a garage. I certainly haven't found one of these things.

But then a question from another doodler attached itself to my picture.

"How big is it?"

My response was flippant.

"It depends how close you are" I said, with a nod towards Father Ted famously trying to explain to a perplexed Dougal that the cows were tiny because they were far away.

I thought that would be that. My obtuse response to a request for more information would tip people off that I wasn't seriously looking for an answer to my question.

When you log in to doodlebug, you go to a sort of start page, and that page contains a doodle. Usually a high quality, pleasing to the eye doodle. It stays for a day or two and then is replaced by another. None of my doodles have ever been selected for this honour.

Until now.

Site admin, obviously disappointed that my question had so far gone unanswered, have made my drawing the one that everyone sees when they log in. So far, it's been viewed almost 1,000 times. And I'm dreading the moment where someone asks me to post a photograph.

If it does develop into a full blown lets help the guy out sesh, I will have to fess up and say "hang on, that's just what I called it"

2011 starts with a kiss!

Can't say I'm a huge fan of Kiss. I was a bit of a metalhead whwn I was in my mid teens, but it's not really my thing.

They certainly know how to make an entrance!

What interested me was the use of Google Earth, blown up on a huge screen, and zooming from outer space to the venue itself. In this case, Manchester's MEN arena. I wonder if they did the same thing for their other dates.

U2 too are making use of Google Earth. They make a 3d model of their 360 degree stage setup thing, and you can go take a look on GE a week before each show.