LittleWyvern.com

We spent some time at work today playing around with Google Earth. It’s pretty cool, although everyone else seemed to enjoy it far more than I did. To me this is old news. Cool, yes, but old. I didn’t know it beforehand, but looking at Google Earth it is pretty obvious that this nifty tool is actually just the end result of Google buying up the company who developed the Keyhole Viewer (www.keyhole.com). That statement is made much more obvious now that I see Keyhole’s website has been redirected to Google Earth’s. Not that this is a secret – the website even says “Powered by Keyhole” – I only relate the information to point out that this revolutionary technology has been contained within my knowledge space for quite some time. I used satellite maps before they were cool.

I am not one to brag, in real life moreso than via weblog, but I want to take this opportunity to once again – and maybe for the first time – point you towards WorldWind. WorldWind is the program I helped write while interning at NASA just after graduation. In short, WorldWind is a more powerful, though less production-ready, version of Google Earth/Keyhole. I highly recommend that you use some of your free time to download and install WorldWind. I helped build the damn thing and still found myself entranced for a half hour before my boss forced me back to work. So anyway, check it out. And while you’re playing take a moment to appreciate all the hard work I put into the image compression and slicing. You probably won’t notice it. You’re welcome. I also wrote the original code that navigates you to a particular destination. I’m sure that it has been revamped and upgraded along the way, but still…

Also, if you like Space or the things that are inside of Space, or even things in Outer Space, you might find childish delight in playing with a cool program called Celestia. It is a 3D model of the universe and honestly, I think it’s fun just to fly through space and look at stuff. You can probably do other stuff with it (they hid the Death-Star somewhere in there), but I just like flying around and looking at moons and comets. The model accurately moves with time so if you want to see the Earth at night or find the next time your planets are aligned, go with the proverbial gusto.

As a note: Both Celestia and WorldWind are far more powerful and feature-rich than their interfaces would lead you to believe. Either browse their respective websites looking for a control list (many of Celestia’s most interesting features are only accessible via keystroke) or bask in the joy of discovery through random keyboard mashing.

********** News Flash ***********

This would be funny if it weren’t so utterly pathetic and ridiculous. But it ISN’T funny because there are at least 50 million like-minded morons in the United States who agree with Hayes. 50 million voters, anyway.