Google Maps revisited Coriolistic Anachronisms - A Vancouver Blog

Hi, I'm your friendly Coriolibot (as in "ro-bot").

It would seem Vince (shame on him) hasn't posted a fresh entry in a couple of days, so I am here to keep you entertained no matter what!

The post below is a random entry that we hope you haven't read before. Regular current entries follow. Enjoy, and come back soon for brand new posts!

Note: this random entry is served on a per-visit basis and will change if you reload the page. It will also not show up on regular RSS, Feedburner and Twitter feeds.

Random Entry: Westbound  
 Next: HDR 101 - The results | Previous: Of sunsets and mankind
Jun 26
   Vintage! This is a random post. The year was 2009...

10 best ways to download the 5 most useful free social networking tutorials from 7 startup sites in less than 20 minutes via a new faster photoshop plugin

Of course, the title doesn’t mean anything! It never tried to.

This just illustrates what I think of the direction blogging is taking nowadays: a tangent to nowhere via this visceral need and pathetic attempt at magnetizing traffic by using catchy and keyword-savvy titles, and the corresponding topics. So what do I think? It’s SHIT. And yet I’ll bet anything that this very title will get me more traffic than a post about Stanley Park’s incredible beauty and the pictures that might go along...

It would seem that less and less bloggers are writing for the fun of it, for the pleasure of rambling, for the lust of a few puns, for poetic license, to say nothing, to say too much, to put foot in mouth and dots on i’s, to be unique. Instead, most are beginning to write for traffic and to please the masses, to attract numbers and distract them long enough to gain a numbed interest - click here and make me your fav, addict yourself to my keywords, chain your returns into my lack of creativity, me, me, me.

The hell with social networking and all those bright new ideas and startups turned giants, if all they can generate is stereotyped bulshit, the disapearance of individuality and the end of a properly punctuated sentence.

We didn’t need 15 years to evolve from IRC to messaging, to intelligent blogging and comments, back down to Facebook and finally as low as Twitter. We could have stayed there. IRC was geekier and funnier, and it was already invented.

If you want an antidote to all this crap, go check out some amazing mammatus. Really!

Or enjoy this from Bash.org, to make us smile after such a bleakly negativational post:

<reo4k> just type /quit whoever, and it’ll quit them from irc
* luckyb1tch has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* r3devl has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* sasopi has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* phhhfft has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* blackersnake has quit IRC (r`heaven)
<ibaN`reo4k[ex]> that’s gotta hurt
<r`heaven> :(

Note from Vince:
Ok, this was for IRC geeks only - one must understand how the /quit command works otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever.
/me says too bad for you.
: - )

Defined tags for this entry: , ,

 

2009-06-26 21:43 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime:

2 Comments

Display comments as(Linear | Threaded)
  • 1 - Marie says:

    « Is this cos I started to tweet? Which I agree, so far, is really stupid and mindless and neurotic. For news, fine. For observations and opinions? Boring. Hm...maybe for tips. Get to farmers’ market now for red currants on sale? »

    Date of comment: 2009-06-27 08:40 •
  • 1.1 - Vince answers:

    « Of course not, my own self-inflicted tweeting experiment was under way long before yours. Maybe it gave me a chance to reflect on it, though... But mostly, I wrote this after having surveyed quite a few blogs that I read occasionally. :-) »

    Date of comment: 2009-06-27 11:37 •

Add Comment


Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed


We now go back to current chronological entries:
Random Entry: Frivolous drawing  
 Next: HDR 101 - The results | Previous: Of sunsets and mankind
Jul 6

Google Maps revisited

I’ve said it before, we live in a wonderful age. Even if one can’t afford to travel (that would be me these days), there still are amazing virtual options to explore the world, options that weren’t available to us only a decade ago. Google Maps, for instance, continues to innovate and impress me. You can now, in select U.S. cities, get a street level photographic view of an address. That’s right. Anywhere in town!

Let’s say you’ve just booked a couple of nights at the Penguin Hotel in Miami Beach (yeah, I stayed there overnight, years and years ago, on my way back to Little Cayman) and are wondering what the hotel looks like, and if it indeed faces the beach as advertised? Well wonder no longer and type Penguin Hotel Miami into Google Maps. Voilà! Drag the mouse on the picture to scroll around the 360 degree view, or click on the street arrows to move along.

Planning a photo shoot from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and wondering if the city will be too far away in the background? Go to Google Maps and check it out!

And then of course, there are my recent non-Street View favorites, like the ray spotted swimming among surfers on Bondi Beach, Sydney, and the urban core of Everest’s Base Camp.

For more amazing views of our Earth from the sky, read my previous post Google maps and our Amazing Earth .

Defined tags for this entry:

 

2007-07-06 20:32 • Posted in Bits and pieces: & Web winks:

3 Comments

Display comments as(Linear | Threaded)
  • 1 - Mapper99 says:

    « Check out this huge list of Google Street View wierdness:

    http://streetviewgallery.corank.com »

    Date of comment: 2007-07-09 07:02 •
  • 2 - Craig says:

    « It would be very cool if they had a time search feature so I could see Banana Wind going around to the North Side of Little Cayman on Google Earth maps...with you at the helm and Rod keeping the guests entertained. Those were some great times! »

    Date of comment: 2007-07-09 21:15 •
  • 3 - Vince says:

    « Mapper99: Thanks for the link. Some of those pix must be rather embarrassing for the people. Here’s the modern children warning: Behave! You never know when Google’s truck is going to drive by and immortalize you with a finger in your nose! ;-)

    Craig: LOL! I hadn’t realize you were a veteran from our days in the sun. Now you’ve got me wondering... But you’re right about time travel-Google, it would be fun.

    I’ve studied the current map carefully, the satellite picture is definitely post-hurricane Ivan (the new docks are up.) It must have been taken during the morning and I can make out all the dive boats; a Newton on the Meadows, a boat that could be one of Southern Cross’ leaving Jackson Bight, a Newton on Sarah’s Set, two others on Mixing Bowl and Marilyn’s Cut, the Aggressor on Randy’s Gazebo, more Newtons on the Great Wall and Lea Lea’s and finally another boat (Southern Cross too?) on Joy’s Joy. But no canopy-less Banana Wind. She might already be on her way back and going around the West End below the cloud, or maybe she’s in Grand Cayman for good... Sigh. »

    Date of comment: 2007-07-09 22:49 •

Add Comment


Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed