Get in on the John

Hey guys, want to see something really cool? Well, if you have a windows 2000 or Xp computer, go on over to Google Earth and download that sucker! It is really a great program, and I am very impressed with it's ease of use. Basically, Google earth is a 3D globe with satellite images wrapped around it. So what you end up with is a realistic picture of earth from the sky, one on which you can zoom in all the way on one spot almost enough that you can read the writing on the billboard downtown from where you are sitting right now. ( Unless you are in Africa, of course. But even then you can still see some blurry houses. )

You know those thrillers where the government zooms in on the car's license plate from satellites and sends the CIA to kill the guy? Well, now you can be the government. It is really cool. It even has the ground accurately mapped so that you can tilt the camera and actually see how high mount saint helens really is.

You can visit the forbidden city of china and see all the little tourists visiting the place! You can see the Vatican! You can count the number of spy planes in area 51! You can find the house you are sitting in right now! And any other place that you can see from the sky on planet earth!

Creepy? Perhaps. The thing is, the photos go from recent to 3 years old, so don't be expecting to be able to boot up google earth and see what your neighbor is doing in their back yard or anything. I just think it is awesome to get an idea of how truly massive earth is.

You can even download satellite picture overlays that they sometimes have on the site, like when hurricane Katrina was still going full force they had real-time satellite updates of the flood and the destruction so you could see what was going on, and then turn it off and compare it to how new Orleans was before. I even downloaded a virtual tour of Paris where it takes you to the more interesting parts and tell you what they are. Almost as good as one of those bus tours.

Anyway, here is a picture of where I am sitting right now, my dorm in Manhattan, Ks. It may be kinda strange looking at things from a top down perspective, but the place is instantly reconisable if you have been there before. That brown box thing down at the bottom is Kramer, where I eat all of my meals. My dorm is the one with the round yellow thing in the middle of it.




I was also able to find Conakry, Guinea on this big globe of ours. Here is it's picture:
Pretty cool, hunh? I didn't know that the islands were that big. Look at them! They are almost bigger than Conakry!

So, if you have an Ok computer and an ok internet connection, I thought that google earth was really an awesome download, and you should try it. And if you do have it, click here to be flown directly to where I am in Kansas. Look around, although there is not much to see!
And just because I think it's cool, I will end this post with a picture of mount St.Helens taken by me, using google earth. ( Really good definition on this one! )