Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts

Monday, March 2, 2009

Google Maps


Props to Google.

I found this picture of Elm Grove Park while virtually walking through the north end. Had a picture for every third of a block or so, and you could toggle the picture around - look up, to the left, right, down, zoom in a bit, whatever. Something is really fascinating about that.

Where did they get all those pictures? That's starting to confuse me. I mean, I understand how they can scan the earth from a bird's eyes view with their nifty satellites, but how on earth are they getting pictures like this? It looks like you'd have to be standing there, looking towards it, or looking up, to get a lot of these. It's a bit puzzling.

But it's not a bad thing. It's incredible really. It's like magic. We're getting close to a point where satellites and cameras will be interconnected in such a way that they can take high quality still-pictures of the entire earth at any point in time. They could maybe clean up their whole interface. It was a bit difficult to move virtually through the north end. Something seems fascinating about the ability, though, to look through what you neighborhood, or your planet was like at a point in time. It's a new sort of power that we've never had before.

I'm still confused though. How are they getting all of these pictures? If you've got any idea, leave a comment, because I'm still perplexed.

Friday, June 13, 2008

I'm 15!


This Friday the 13th, I turned 15. I'm quite proud to be this old and I had a really great time these past couple of days. It splits into two days really.

The first day was the day before my birthday, I got up and went to swim team as usual, and went to Troy's house afterwards. Following that, we took our bikes and went all over downtown - to the library, to book stores, the movies; in fact I didn't even go home except to ask Mom whether or not I could stay the night at Troy's, and I did. Basically what I'm getting to is that this was like an all-day party for me, and I was sure grateful for it.

I skipped swim team and slept in til I had to go home. And of course then we had a little birthday party there too. We ordered lunch from Flying Pie Pizzeria and had ice cream cake (yes this was lunch). After the food I was handed a huge box in wrapping paper. I ripped it open to find a notation software called Sibelius 5 and an incredibly cool keyboard compatible with the software. So I was set to write music!

Not yet though. Unsurprisingly, the software won't install because we don't have Mac OS X 10.4. So now we have two options-let all the money we spent on this gift to go to waste, or spend an extra $130 on upgrading our computer. Technology kind of cornered us into a spend more money or lose situation. Oh well.

If indeed we get this software to work and I can start writing music, it will allow me to do alot. I can start writing original pieces for the school band to play next year, and music for my own band. But it'll take a bit to get it up no matter how it goes.