7513 - Looking at pictures.

[scottobear]

Man, I got nothing on top of yesterday's triple-threat. Just as well. A hat trick is plenty for now.

good options are still open.

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It's payday! I didn't bother to do laundry...I'll do it tomorrow, or this weekend sometime. Still going to see MP, after the club, maybe just a restful time at HQ.

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Wow... the A9 maps beta is pretty impressive. they've taken photos of a lot of downtown areas, including about 100 feet from my house, all the way to where I work. Here's Andrews Ave, for example. Go about 2 blocks south to Andrews and Las Olas, and you can see the fountain, and where I hit the moonlight movies, and the Museum 'f Art. Other areas in my stomping grounds - the bus central terminal, a DOSE sticker (on the back of the one way sign, almost right in the center), In fact... if you start here, and walk east on Broward, you can see what I see on the walk home. Or, you can start here, and head west, and walk from close to my place all around my neighborhood downtown.

Farewell, Cheeburger, Cheeburger! You can tell the photo is a little old.. the fixtures are in there, and the "Now hiring sign" is up... not to mention the rolls of paper towels to catch grease and goo. Hmm... looking for when they took pictures. The big gay cow in front of Big Gay Al's gift store is unadorned, so it wasn't November, October, January, February, March, or July (he gets decked out for the season). The Issue of city Link is a little hard to make out detail on, too. A boxer? My Best guess is from this article - January? Jsut an educated guess at best. Between New Years and Valentines' day. A lot were taken early morning.. sun low in the east. Probably to keep traffic out of most of the shots. Lots of homeless caught on film.

Now I want to catch some sort of action scene or crime that the rolling truck missed.

I'm easily entertained.

I wonder how long it'll be before all of these pictures are live, and realtime? Oh! I know! Timeframe.. a movie theater! The Gateway (Where I met april, way back when) is on Sunrise. Ok.. when was Phantom of the Opera / Hotel Rwanda / The Woodsman Playing? All released about Christmas 2004. I suspect my guess of mid-late January 2005 is pretty spot on.

Apparently it works for a lot of major cities, now, and more are added all the time. A big competitor for google maps, maybe? I Checked out some streets Austin, TX and Boston, MA. Interesting to tour neighborhoods I've never been, or haven't been to in a decade.

[edit: the direct image links do not work... note to self, download and host them myself. the links marked "here" or for austin / bosotn work fine]

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Moment of "I did not know that":

Pumpkins and squashes, like their cousins the melons and cucumbers, are berries. (Definition of berry - An indehiscent fruit derived from a single ovary and having the whole wall fleshy, such as the grape or tomato.)

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Awesome flickr / google world hack -

Ok, here you go...

In Google Earth right click the "My Places" icon and pick "New" "Network Link".

Add a name like "Flickr" and set the Location to:
http://www.geobloggers.com/makeXML.cfm

Change "View-Based Refresh" to "After Camera Stops"

Now you spin round the Earth and focus in on a spot, when the camera stops moving it'll go and grab the nearest 50 geotagged Flickr Photos (that are registered with geobloggers) within about 2,000km of the point you are looking at.

Very very cool (and addictive!) via

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Long weekend ahead! I plan to see a zombie movie, and spend time with friends. Good Deal.

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An incredible image here of burning oil fields in Iraq, just north of Basra. Zoom out to see how far the plumes of smoke have travelled, and zoom in to see how huge the fires are.

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my Flickr calendar is spiffy way to track images. I like this layout, especially.

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1 year ago - planning a trip, big rock candy mountain, getting journal-spam,

2 years ago - Heroclix Icon, Playboy Mystery, The Thorns, Octopus hot dogs, King Kong, Acme Illustrated Catalog, Newtcam pic (see the day prior for one of his gut sticking out), Lunch with Danny, Las Olas Walkies, a wonderful surprise chat.

3 years ago - settling in, south beach remote cam, Newt-lassie comparisons, power puff/marley

4 years ago - Rookie Bodine, good thoughts, crash test dummy plot seeds, redolent, the power of cheese, Ornj goes camping

5 years ago - shotgun

Comments

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Hey that's my bank that you were looking at in Austin! ;) Or was...I worked a few blocks over from where your map cuts off on Trinity.

I wonder why I can't get the pix from your area to come up? I just get blank page. Gonna try again.

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Holy cow...very cool, but creepy. Are you able to see thes photos?

http://maps.a9.com/-/maps/?ypLoc=austin%2C+tx

The 3rd photo is my old office building (one of them, the other was at the state capital grounds across the street). I can see the windows on the top floor that I sat right next to.
Then, on the left is the parking garage where that guy followed me inside, hid behind polls and followed me around some more!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

it doesn't remember your location... but if you put in a street address, it'll zip right on down to that location. it put me back in austin.

Yikes!! I remembe rthat scary garage story.

I looked at austin because both you and my buddy Graypumpkin live there. :)

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Holy cow..I've been busy following it straight down congress. I can post it publicly because I don't work there anymore (You no problem, but others read it). Your original Austin location was just mere feet away all my food haunts up and down Congress, and across the street from where I broke my ankle that night.

This is creepy-excitement. :0)

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

wow!

it is weird seeing your neighborhood online!


How is your roboleg these days?? no leftover issues, I hope?

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

It's very weird. I can think of 10 years ago, when you would be chatting to someone..trying to show them something with words, and that was pretty much useless.

That left ankle is very weak, and will turn out if I'm wearing high shoes. I didn't realize that they should have given me physical therapy after an ankle break...others made sure I knew it..um...about a year after the fact. ;)

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

I wonder how long until the pictures refresh realtime... creepy!

you can still work out and build up ankle strength, I think.

be careful on high shoes! I don't want you to go TIMB-ERRRR!

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I looked up some exercises on the net for ankles that have been broken. They're very funny. :)))

How weird -- that the Austin link you gave, was to one of my exact places that I go. That's downtown Austin.

Go up Congress (top of map) and you run into the capital, and I worked there & across the street.

Go back down Congress and it goes straight to my place. I just drive up and down that road, wearing a groove in the street. :D

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

you never know.. when they update th epictures, you might be in one.. or someone you know!

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

I can tell what time of year they took the photos...by one of the clues (decorations) near where you linked to. It's winter..either before or after Xmas.

Weird!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

nifty! it seems they rolled a lot out at that time!

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Ha...the photos were also taken *after* 9/11.

The capital is just inches up Congress (right next to where you linked to in Austin) at Congress & 11th.

I see orange barricades at the front gate of the capital, and a State Trooper sitting there. Barricades & a trooper sitting at the entrance started a day or two after 9/11 and *still* remains that way.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

*there*'s a solid context clue! :D

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Here's an odd thing... Atlanta warned Austin that they took a home vid camera away from a guy, who was filming certain buildings in Atlanta. From his video, they learned he went to a few other cities and did the same. Austin's Capital & surrounding buildings were found on the video.

The newspaper here made a big deal that the guy was Saudi (or nearby?) & was Muslim (something like that). {{{I hope his possible skin color isn't what made Atlanta stop him on the street in first place}}}

Sooo...what's the difference between that guy's video of Austin's capital/surrounding buildings, and Amazon's *multitudes* of photo of same thing?? {{And Amazon doing the same thing in Atlanta!}}

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

It's really pretty illegal to stop anyone from taking a picture of a public building for any reason... (unless the guy is wearing a top-hat with a twirly-moustache and a bowling-ball with a lit fuse sticking out of it.)

I suspect the guy was hammered by profiling, for good or ill.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

I think the direct image links only work for the person fiddling. I'll download 'em later, and host from my own server. :)

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

hmm, it seems to be short-term query-based.

I'll go back and ge tthe exact addresses later. the ones that say "click here" rather than a photo link should work.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

http://maps.a9.com/

try that, and enter 1100 e broward blvd... that's about a block from my house. :) walk west, and it' slike playing bard's tale with lauderdale!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

see if you can get via context clues when the pictures were taken.. I've narrowed lauderdale to jan 15-31, give or take.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

I wonder if you'll hit a point where some were taken one month, and others were taken much earlier/later.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

it's done by amazon... they paid techs to drive around cities with a truck topped with a camera. you cna see it reflected in some windows.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

send 'em a resume!

"I like to drive in boston metro"

I bet they don't get many of those!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

kudos! :D

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Ha..I thought I was being odd in trying to figure out when the Austin photos were taken. Guess it's not just me!

Ours were definitely taken sometime after 9/11 (security measures I see outside the Capital). Either December or January (only 1/2 of downtown Xmas decorations are up).

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

it seems the end of 2004/start of 2005 is when they unrolled a lot of 'em!

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Yeah seems like it. Just found another clue for mine. Photo showing the building across from my old office is built - so it's in the last 1.5 years for sure.

[rejectomorph]

I can't see the A9 maps either, and the link in your comment to ckirkman only takes me to their home page, not the map page. The "Andrews Ave" link in your post, and some of the others, also take me to their home page, and the rest of the links take me to pages that simply don't load, even when they say they have. They don't work in either Opera or Firefox. Maybe the site only likes IE.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

hmm. I use firefox exclusively, and they work here.

that's very strange. maybe it's beta-only still?

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

Try clicking on the link he gave in Austin. I use IE, and it's the only link he gave that worked for me. The Boston one also takes me to their main page, like it did for you.

At the top of the austin page, I can type a full address in, then City & state...

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

weird... I suspect they're still having some bumps.

[rejectomorph]

Nope. It only fetches their home page. I can't find their map page at all.

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

My bad - the Boston link works for me, too. It's just the direct map links he made that don't work for me.

Try this direct link to their map page: http://maps.a9.com/

[rejectomorph]

That one still takes me to their regular home page. I tried entering the URL in their search box, and their map page wasn't among the results. Maybe the beta for maps only shows up for registered amazon users. I'll try registering later and see if it works.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

that's entirely possible... some random cookie letting folks in.