Placemarks

The feature of Google Earth that I really wasn't conscious of before I saw it is the community placemarks. Obviously, like Wikipedia, it's a "seek corroboration before believing" sort of thing, but I think the next time I travel to a new place I'll poke around these first; for major cities they could basically function as a user-written tourist guide.

Google now has a Local app for MIDP-capable cell phones, but I'm starting to think that something like a small tablet PC with wifi running Earth would be a nice thing to carry with you, especially if you remember to pre-cache a list of free hotspots.

(On the other hand, even given the 3D driving-directions tours, the plain Google Maps view often ought to be superior to photographic maps for navigation. It ought to be possible to switch Google Earth to a 3D but otherwise unadorned map view, maybe with the maps painted on the terrain; that's the big thing that's missing from it.)

Tagged!

Tagged by The Editors (thanks to glitter_ninja for alerting me; the notation below notwithstanding, I'd slipped a few days).

Four jobs I've had:
1. Algebra tutor
2. Intern who injects the deadly venom of the South American poison-arrow frog into a gas chromatograph
3. Chump who tries to get the other graduate students to show up at their hour staffing the Physics Question Center (my most spectacular professional failure)
4. 3D scientific visualization programmer

Four movies I could watch over and over:
1. Brazil
2. A Chinese Ghost Story
3. Metallica aka Space Odyssey aka The Captive Planet aka Sette uomini d'oro nello spazio
4. The Miracle Fighters

Four places I've lived:
1. Overland Park, Kansas
2. North Ridgeville, Ohio
3. Chantilly, Virginia
4. Cambridge, Massachusetts

Four TV shows I love to watch (Sam's recent forays into British TV are apparent here):
1. Doctor Who
2. QI
3. Black Books
4. SCTV (this list needed Canadian content)

Four places I've been on vacation:
1. Paris
2. Barcelona
3. Bridgeport, Nebraska
4. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Four blogs I visit (sort of) daily:
1. Pharyngula (change your bookmarks!)
2. Brad DeLong
3. The Poor Man Institute for Freedom and Democracy and A Pony
4. Uncertain Principles

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Pho
2. Grilled salmon
3. Raw tuna
4. Asparagus

Four places I'd rather be (if Sam can come along):
1. Boulder, Colorado
2. Florence
3. Someplace with a better commute
4. Boulder, Colorado

Four albums I can't live without, in the alternate universe in which people actually need specified items of recorded music to survive:
1. They Might Be Giants, Factory Showroom (yes! It is underrated!)
2. Talking Heads, The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads
3. David Amram, Triple Concerto
4. Interröbang Cartel, Needs More Wanger

Four vehicles I've owned:
1. 1996 Nissan Altima (or is it '97? I'll have to go check)
2. Wheels of my childhood: red three-speed Schwinn
3. The Tell-Tale Mountain Bike
4. BROWN CAR (I think I may have misidentified the make here, but never mind)


I tag nobody, because otherwise when will the madness end?

Update: I take it back: I tag The Claw! Because somebody has to!

Google Earth criticism

Bill Bumgarner weighs in: he doesn't like the GUI at all. I have similar complaints, but based on what I've seen of it, I think the Windows version has the same faults; these aren't specific to Mac support.

I think Google Earth gets cut a lot of slack just from the sheer joy of what it does, so people are willing to overlook its faults. On the other hand, that situation might be dangerous for Google, since they themselves started out by walloping competitors who were getting along that way. They weren't the first Web search engine, just the first one that worked correctly.

(The Mac version also has specific glitches of its own that probably come from the fact that it's an initial port: some resource strings refer to stuff specific to the Windows version, and F10's role as an Exposé trigger means that it can't run the Tour.)

More happy things

1. Via Daring Fireball: Microsoft distributes Flip4Mac's QuickTime Windows Media component for free, so now you can play (non-DRMed) Windows Media files on your Mac in anything that uses QuickTime, instead of using Microsoft's player. It really works. Very nice.

Not so happy: After playing with it a while, I see that the component seems to have a marked tendency to make the application crash when the clip ends. I don't know what's up with that.

2. After a long, long wait in which huge numbers of Americans watched it over BitTorrent, the first season of the new Doctor Who is coming to the US on the Sci-Fi Channel in March. I hope they don't mangle it too badly. While the new series has had its ups and downs, it's well worth watching, and the two-parter "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" is one of my favorite pieces of TV science fiction ever; don't miss it.