Via metalana: strangemaps, which is quite wonderful.

I particularly note a map I've always wondered about: a US Pop vs. Soda Map.

This week I've bought art, a chair, and framing. And I'm looking forward to how my den's going to look in a few weeks.

catbear is making me a largeish print from a photo he took in Ottawa. I'm so looking forward to seeing it.

I have a large satellite photo of Lake Ontario. I love the photo- the blues and greens, the topography, the clouds. You can see where we live now, where my parents live, and Ithaca, from a 450-mile height. But it's been in an unflattering plastic frame for the last five years, because I was afraid to find out how much it would cost to do properly.

At catbear's suggestion, I'm having it laminated and plaque-mounted here at the University- for only $50. Gee, I should've done this years ago.

Finally, I bought a chair, which will be delivered in January; I've meant to have a second chair in that room for ages, and this one is super-comfy. And gold-coloured. And reclining.

It's... a bit weird to give myself permission to spend my own money. On myself. "Frivolously." But not, because it will bring me joy for a long time.

Google Maps, you're fired. The "Baker Road" there on the right hand side? It totally doesn't do that. That's... a trail through the woods and down my parents' driveway. None of that's a road. Especially the dead-end bit to the north that's actually a precipice into a gravel-pit. *rolls eyes*

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If you zoom out a bunch of steps on that map, it's my route tomorrow afternoon. I'm staying one night at my brothers' house in Adams, one night at my parents' house, lunch with my grandmother in Henderson Harbor, and back home Sunday night, late. melted_snowball will be working in Toronto on Saturday and up to no end of hijinks on Sunday. At least I hope he will.

It amuses me that I will have considerably less network connection to you all than chezmax does, who I'm currently chatting with on a ferry travelling from Hiroshima to Miyajima.

In other news, I have Photography Seminar homework which will be fun.

1) Draggable routes on google maps. Nice interface, cleverly done.

2) Google property search! The interface is still slightly clunky, but it's got tons of data; I think they're getting into real estate tools in a fairly big way. I found this a month ago, and today it took me a while to find again, because nobody's blogged about it at all.

Anyhow: go to http://maps.google.com/preview, type in your address at the top, chose the "mapplets" tab on the left, then choose the "real estate sales" box below it. Say "Submit" and you'll get a list of properties for sale within the mapped region. I hope I'm not the only person who's finding it sort of addictive to, say, look for places for my parents to retire to...

The property search isn't a standalone project; it's a demo for "mapplets" which I would love to take the time to learn to program. You can add layers to google, overlay them, and I believe you can put this all onto your own site. Mashups of mashups. Geeky, eh? (good article with a short video.)

OK, back to finishing up my work before vacation!

I can't decide which is cooler: World Mapper or Gapminder.

Gapminder receives points for flexibility and animated panache, but I'd like a "guided tour" to suggest statistics to compare or interesting bits of data. [oh. that's what the "help" section's for. Hm, I'll have to investigate further].

World Mapper is not only immediately obvious as to what it's for, there's a lot of well-presented visual and text information behind the scenes. The printable PDFs look top-notch and if I were a teacher, I'd be all over them for lesson plans or posters. The A-to-Z index is amazing, too.

Courtesy gmaps_sights: To celebrate Australia Day, Google is doing a super-low flyover of Sydney this Friday. They've put up a live pointer of where the plane will be at any given time of the day, and they're recommending people wear distinctive clothing, go outside, and wave at the plane if they want to be put into Google Earth and Google Maps. *super-jealous*.

The second thing is: clementines! Via james_nicoll: Zehr's is selling a big box (2.3kg) of clementines for $5, and damn but they're tasty. It's all sort of weird given Florida's citris clobbering, but these are from South America instead. I'm not happy about what's gonna happen to the price of citrus this year, though.

Finally, I'm looking forward to d. coming home this evening. Not till 9:30pm, but I'll take it.

Google Labs' Transit has great potential; for the regions already covered, it looks like just the ticket.

The specs don't look so complicated; I wonder how much it would cost to import our local transit system.

According to the Google Group, Toronto's given Google their complete transit info, and may become another test-bed.

Last night: more insomnia. This time, preciptated by the dog howling in her sleep, twice. And one 'o them late-night headaches. Hate hate hate.

But:

this (People Bowling, thanks miss_chance)

and these gorgious animations:

FAA Flight Paths (thanks ckd)

made the time pass.

Gah, but it's cold and wet out. Tonight, d. and I are going to see Rocky Horror at the Princess; first time for both of us in at least a decade. I'm looking forward to it- apparently they don't care what we toss, as long as it doesn't hit the screen. Wow.

No stage-show, though. Boo.

I'm... trying to decide whether to take another nap. This morning we got a fair bit done (bagels, food-shopping, shoe-shopping, hardware-store) but I don't really feel like anything too complicated for the afternoon.

Oh right: I need to finish our costumes for tonight.

The Bellagio Fountains re-created with Diet Coke and Mentos. A pretty fine show. Work-safe, though maybe turn down the volume first.
Their website is full of neat explosion science too (yay, nucleation sites!)

The Errant Aisle of Manhattan. What would happen if Manhattan went wandering? The rest of Radical Cartography is also worth browsing if you like maps. I like his animated time-zone map. (work-safe, doesn't seem to work well in linux grr). He's also done a proper map of Boston's T system with real geographical distances and a time-series on Boston's landfilling. Yay cartography!

The first one seen via epi_lj.

[edit: I knew I forgot one.

bbumweblogomat has been experimenting with high-speed photography. He's getting some neat shots, like shattering ice.. I found his site while looking for mac info, and added his feed to LJ because he has some great photography as well.]