Outside My Window
I live a busy life. To bring some order into the enormous potential for chaos, I have routines. Not inviolable routines; I can be flexible when I need to be, but routines that help me take care of the important things so that they don’t get lost in the pressure of other demands.
I start each day with coffee, and sit at my laptop and check all my e-mail. I read my daily readings in the Lectionary (see blogroll). Then I check the blog and respond to comments. Sometimes I write an entry, sometimes I don’t.
So this morning I have just sat down with my coffee, just opened my first e-mail, and suddenly, three men are outside my window, washing the windows. I am still in my nightgown, and had NO warning.
The Qatteri Cat was fascinated, and thought I had arranged this for his special entertainment. I was aghast, and rushed to the back rooms, away from the prying eyes.
I needn’t have worried. As you can see, just as I grabbed my camera, another traffic accident happened and they were very taken with the loud argument that ensued. My friends, the Kuwaiti police showed up about an hour later to sort things out.
Raise Your Voices
My blogging friend Hilaliya raised HIS voice in an article entitled Kuwait ‘Ministry Of Communications’ Attempts To Extort Internet Users and found an elaborated article on the Ministry of Communication ban. You can read his rant, and go to the Arab Times article by clicking here.
WordPress Snap Feature
Yesterday I noticed a cool new thing on my blogsite; when your arrow goes over the blogroll on the right, Snap provides a small window-preview of the blogroll entry. Very very cool!
I don’t know if you have to be on WordPress for it to work? Would someone out there not on WordPress try the Snap preview feature and let me know if it works for non WordPress users?
Google Earth – It Just Keeps Getting Better
This morning I had an e-mail from my nephew at GoogleEarth. There are days I feel like one of the luckiest women in the world – my sisters and I have the most interesting children, now young adults, and they are all working in areas where they feel useful – stressed, working too hard – but greatly satisfied, greatly productive.
How cool is it to love Geography, and to be working for GoogleEarth? I grin every time I think of my nephew, who loves the work he is doing.
His e-mail a couple weeks ago reminded me that the new GoogleEarth was out and to be sure to upgrade. You can be sure I did. Today, he tells me about another blog that always has the most up-to-date goodies from GE – Google Earth Blog.
On November 12, Frank Taylor, the blog author, says:
Google has quietly introduced four new Featured Content Layers today. Go to the Layers on the lower left and look for “Featured Content”. Open the folder and look for the new layers at the top. Each is marked with a red “New!”. Here’s a brief overview of the new layers:
Rumsey Historical Maps – This is a collection of historical maps which you can overlay over their location on Earth. If you are not running Google Earth 4, you will not see this layer. Open the folder and turn on the map that interests you. The first link shows you the locations of the different map and each description gives you a few details. You can then turn on each map and they will be overlayed in GE. The maps are “regionated” which means they will load more detail as you get closer (it also means the images are scanned at a very high resolution). I’m sure some of my mapping friends like Jonathan Crowe will be curious to see these.
Tracks4Africa – this is my favorite of the new layers. There are maps of places to go in Africa built by compiling data from GSP tracks. The layer also has lots useful information and photos. Zoom in closer to see more detail. You can read more, and buy the maps for your GPS, by going to Tracks4Africa’s web site.
Spotlight on Africa – This is a collection of placemarks showing the flag of each country of Africa. The placemark description includes an overview of basic information of each country from the CIA World Factbook. The placemarks were developed by the National Geographic My Wonderful World campaign to help kids become more geographically aware. This is nicely done, but you can see the whole world done in a similar fashion in this collection.
European Space Agency – this layer shows ESA logo placemarks of different locations where a satellite photo can be viewed of that location. A small picture is in the placemark description, and a link to a page where you can see a larger picture. I am disappointed that you can’t just view the larger pictures overlayed in Google Earth though.
I am blown away by all the new Africa content. On a day when the sky has turned yellow in Kuwait, there are waves cresting out in the Gulf and the air smells like impending squalls, it is a perfect day to spend in Africa, via Google Earth!
Frank Taylor has all kinds of useful information on GE, and I am adding him to my blogroll.
Little Diamond
My neice is blogging! She started just as I did, without telling anyone. When I saw her on Friday, she very casually mentioned it in passing. Woooo Hoooooo! She is beautiful, and articulate, and always full of amazing information, and a lot of fun. Her website is A Diamond in Sunlight.
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