All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Google Maps and our planet Earth

cog on 2005-07-09T14:41:36

Google maps are absolutely wonderful.

I've been travelling through the world with them, and I never cease to amaze me.

For starters, I went to find some of the places I've been to, such as the London Eye and the Big Ben, in London, England, or the Skydome (er.. Rogers Centre) and the CN Tower, in Toronto, Canada (I was there last week for YAPC::NA).

And then you can search for things you've never seen before, such as the Statue of Liberty (in my particular case). Oh, and is this what I think it is?

And I feel like I've been learning a lot from that. For instance, Portuguese TV gave an idea of Iraq that has nothing to do with the pictures I see here. Yes, I know the pictures might be outdated, but still... And have you seen this monument? Wow... That, BTW, is the Shaheed Monument.

Anyway, I thought that, besides of finding your homes and all those places that are familiar to you, it would be nice to pose a list of things and see who could find them :-)

So here you go, a couple of challenges:

  • The biggest boat


  • A desert island with huge capital letters spelling "HELP" (no, I don't know whether there is one)


  • A desert island with huge letters spelling "Perl"


  • An elephant (or a herd of them, preferably)


  • An ant (extra points for this one)


  • The biggest bridge (this one is the biggest in Europe)


  • An airplane taking off, flying or landing


  • The biggest helicopter


  • The biggest concentration of helicopters possible


  • People climbing up a mountain


  • The biggest swimming pool


  • More weird things

re Is this what I think it is?

n1vux on 2005-07-11T22:15:49

Well, that depends what you thought "this" was:

The rectified oblique views can be disconcerting; Lady Liberty is particularly twisted from preferred perspective. In some urban areas, adjacent skyscrapers are from different passes, and so seemingly cross in the air.

Re your Challenges

Alas, your Airplane is taxiing on the taxiway not landing or taking off. What is "weird" in the "Other" Lisbon? Regarding large planes, the Spruce Goose was in the dome adjacent to the Queen Mary but has been moved (here for them), and you can't see inside the dome anyway.

I can give you in Boston --

  • an oil-tanker passing a container vessel in port;
  • Plane landing is just a half mile away, nearly at the end of Runway 27/9 on roll-out. Planes are waiting at the north end of Runway 22L and 22R waiting for their turn to take-off.
  • How about a controversial work of art by Sister Corita Kent that is supposedly the largest copyrighted piece, Christo not withstanding. The original was much smaller. (Already google-spotted, but I found it by browsing, since I live within the blast-radius ...)
  • Near the airport on our harbor, the green floating dry dock was no longer green and no longer floating when this image was taken, but hadn't yet fully foundered and washed ashore in a storm; it's gone now, having been cut up after it blew ashore.
  • Also on our habor in Google is a ship unloading Salt (for road treatment) and two off-loading petroleum products, all in the Chelsea Creek;
  • a crisp color demarcation between salt and fresh waters at the dams;
  • Big Apple Circus (who these days pitch their tent further south -- and this tells me it's an April image);
  • and on the Charles River, near Fenway Park, there is a sailboat class by Smoot Bridge; and further upstream, you can barely make out crew-boats practicing, hardly unusual.
  • Nearby we have museum ships the USS Salem (Cruiser, Quincy's Fore River) and USS Massachusets (Destroyer, Fall River).
  • Alas, Lexington Green (shot heard round the world, 1775) is not covered in detail, but Concord Bridge is there, as is First Church in Roxbury, where Billy Dawes set off on his ride that night.

Bridges -- Wikipedia obliges with GoogleMaps links for some, e.g., Seven Mile Bridge; others, you find yourself, e.g., Confederation Bridge in a fog bank.

Re:re Is this what I think it is?

cog on 2005-07-12T10:20:44

If you thought "this" was Forbidden City, you win

Great, I won! :-)

What is "weird" in the "Other" Lisbon?

Look again... If you still can't see it, think "dirty" thoughts. Only about half the people get it O:-)

your Airplane is taxiing on the taxiway not landing or taking off

I never said it was :-) I simply put a link to an airplane as an example :-)

As for all your other links, ++ and ++ :-)

Re:re Is this what I think it is?

n1vux on 2005-07-12T16:38:32

If you still can't see it, think ... half the people get it O:-)

Oh. Looked like perfectly normal European triumphal parkway, such as we practice in Boston.

If you hadn't guessed, I like maps :-) I wish GoogleSat were using slightly more up-to-date images, though -- there are brownfields where buildings have grown, and parking lots where grass has been planted.

Re:re Is this what I think it is?

cog on 2005-07-12T16:47:36

slightly more up-to-date images

I think it varies with the place. Some places they're over five years old, others are less than a year...

when and where

n1vux on 2005-07-13T19:25:56

Oh definitely. Depends on the cloud cover largely. In Deciduous areas, winter seems to be preferred for close-in detail.

The "Old" are locally more obvious to me than the "new".

Re:when and where

cog on 2005-07-14T09:24:36

And, weird as it may seem, I think some of the pictures might have been taken by night... :-\

I'm saying this because one can see the car lights, at times :-\

You'll spot them easily if you use their software, but that only runs on Windows... argh...

Night? Re:when and where

n1vux on 2005-07-14T19:17:05

I was assuming the darker images were autumn / winter images with the deciduous leaves fallen, not Infrared or night. I stand by that theory.

The bridge over the road a bit east of your focus has a crisp shadow (left) and a bus with presumed headlights about to pass under. I suspect this is a late afternoon image with running headlamps already being somewhat effective.

The nice red-tile roofs would not be so cheery cherry, nor the backyard pools so azure, in IR, even if the leafy lawns were false-colored to green (as they can be with 3-freq IR).

Re:re Is this what I think it is?

cog on 2005-07-12T17:05:04

the Queen Mary

Eh... Someguy tells me *this* is the real Queen Mary...

I wonder if there's two of them... :-)

Two QM's

n1vux on 2005-07-12T18:13:00

Yes, there are two. Long Beach has the original, permanently berthed. Yours is the new one recently launched.

But no reason the same ship couldn't be in two places on Google Earth ... since they're not simultaneous. Sort of the the tour-bus-driver who appears at both ends of the old motorized panorama-cam group photos ...

Re:re Is this what I think it is?

runrig on 2005-07-12T18:15:37

Someguy tells me *this* is the real Queen Mary.

That may be the Queen Mary 2, the original is in Long Beach, CA (USA) and doesn't go anywhere anymore.

planes and non-Google sat

n1vux on 2005-07-12T17:30:01

Big Airplane not flying. GoogleMaps shows the same airport through this directory, from which you should be able to search for landing airplanes to your hearts content; the US AirNAV directory links Google Maps too; will also search Balloon-ports and Ultralights.

For news-worth Sat pr0n from other sources, try the Intel Briefing picture of the week.

Alas, no Helicopters spotted for sure yet. Sikorsky, Bridgeport has some interesting shapes shrouded in the wispy clouds, but no confirmed. There should be a chopper in view at PYM * since it's home of both the MSP Air Wing and MedFlight, but I can't see one yet.

Re:planes -- Cheating / Spoiler

n1vux on 2005-07-12T18:25:31

I'm Cheating, but others, found a wicked cool plane over Hong Kong harbor. Shadow seems reversed, oddly. Their "Aircraft" category has a Cessna in-flight with enough altitude to be distinctly large. And they say I've missed at least one on the water approaches to Logan here in Boston, not surprising at all. And they have Helicopters.