Around the world in 80 milliseconds

Got the chance to play with Google Earth today (alas it's *waaaay* to big for my home computer). Interesting, and will be a lot more so when they get more data. Though I suppose most people are going to be using it to find places in cities as opposed to looking down volcanic craters so it may be awhile before I get the really interesting stuff. They DO have a volcano layer (hasn't got Paricutin on it, but most of the biggies are there) on the map system. They also have a fairly good tour of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado which is fun. But I'm getting tired of having things start to blur out just as they get interesting.

Like everybody who uses this thing the first thing I did was look up my home address. The interpolation software put me three doors down from where the house actually is, but it's not their fault the numbering is weird. I'd say the picture is at least two years old because the place across the street has been remodeled substantially in that time. But not TOO old because I'm pretty sure that's my green Saturn parked out front, which car I've had for 7 or so years. I'd love to know who the two people crossing the street are, but alas you cannot get that close without everything blurring out. Yeah, I know, there is such a thing as the illusion of privacy. :/

I DO need to find out how the heck one gets this thing to give you the names of countries, islands and whatnot. Continents are no problem, and I know pretty well where things are (wow, Japan has a lot of volcanoes!), but it would be NICE to zoom down on an island and find out what its name was. I tried to get it to tell me the names of the Florida Keys and it wouldn't. Now you can enter the names of things you want to look at so the list has to be in there SOMEWHERE...

It's also fun to back out into space and roll the globe around to unfamiliar angles. Noting, as usual, that Antarctica looks rather like a duck...

THAT was interesting...

Finished my message, went to post it, and the software insisted that my password was "easy to guess" and I should change it. Ok - a few tests later and I find that it says the same about any random set of letters. So what they want is for it to contain a number or symbol. Which is fine, but they really ought to say as much. More accurate. Less rude.

Sigh.....