27 August 2006

Huangyangtan - Please watch your step

OK, I´m back in this internet cafe. Actually it´s a videoarcade with PC´s next to a billiard table and dozens of video games, but at 1 EUR for 20 minutes it´s the cheapest in town. It has only the disadvantage that every mouse click seems to be accompanied by various bells and alarms going off around me in 7.1 Dolby. An online security check via Symantec.com shows there´s no apparent firewall in this system, so I suppose by now my bank account has been emptied by the Russians and my soul is being mass-counterfeited in China somewhere.

It appears the Huangyangtan thing is slowly coming to a close (please watch your step as you exit). Early on one of the forum monitors made the Google Earth forum post a "sticky," thus keeping it at the top or beginning of the Military forum. I guess the idea was to make it easily findable by curious newcomers. A noticed a few days ago that the post has returned to being a normal one, so it´s somewhere further down with all other posts. That seems to have reduced it´s read-rate from about 1100 to 200 a day. That´s interesting to see; I wouldn´t have guessed that a post´s position at the top would attract that many readers. As far as I can judge it´s not common for an individual post to be made a sticky, which is usually reserved for forum-related notices as well as for large, theme-related collections of placemarks.

I'm running out of coins, so I´ll wrap up for now. How are things here on Gran Canaria? Daughter, otherwise rather reserved, is running around with an extremely active and talkative nine-year old German girl she has met in our hotel. When not in the pool they spend a large part of the day loitering in the elevators, waiting to jump out and scare people. They have somehow collected 11 cents from hotel guests for services unknown to me.

Strong winds at the beach yesterday, from the direction of the Saraha, sent sand flying across the dunes just as Wife and I arrived. Most of it was landing in my contact lenses, so with my eyes shut she led me to the water. After 30 minutes the wind reversed direction and blew all the sand back, onto our beach blanket and then into the water. We, like most other people, gave up after a while. But that has been the only bad day here.

Adios, until Thursday (when we return home).

1 Comments:

At 27 August, 2006 15:30, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Kengrok,

Well I'll admit to being a reader. First found out about your discovery a few days ago, having been forced to stay away from GE for a few months, which hasn't broken my addiction!

Your find has reignited my appetite for GE, so you are responsible for many lost hours sitting here at my kitchen table surfing the Earth!

Seriously though, thanks so much for sharing this info and blogging about it. It helps to have a place like this to bring together all the info. I find the GE community gets a bit mind-boggling at times, with all the different threads.

Anyway just wanted to say hi and well done. Your description in your first post sounds a lot like me - a geography addict. Ever since I was 5 years old looking at block diagrams of the earth in my grandma's atlas, I've been into it. Ended up doing a degree in geology. I'm also into models and software, so like you GE is a dream come true for me. It's good to know there are kindred spirits out there. And like you I'm off to buy more RAM to cope with all this excitement!

I'm certain we're at the threshold of amazing advances in harnessing the web for geographical applications. It's an exciting time to be alive!

Keep up the good work.
Lilly :)

 

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