This section lists all blog posts, regardless of topic.
Processing satellite imageryAugust 6, 2007
One of the limitations of MS Flight Simulator is that the highways and buildings in the game are often "auto generated". ie. The computer randomly places roads and buildings on the ground since it doesn't have actual data. I had a brain wave this morning: Build software to process the high resolution satellite imagery that now exists (ex. Google Maps) to recognize the individual buildings and houses, including the slopes and directions of roofs, and if the satellite imagery was taken from an ever so slight angle, hopefully the height of a building could also be ascertained. If this approach worked, you could build a flight sim that contained highly realistic roads and buildings. Let's face it, half the fun of flying is being able to look down and recognize things you know, so this would make it that much more fun.
International Space StationAugust 5, 2007
This weekend Meredith and I are up in Kincardine at her family cottage, the "Huron Haven". Last night just happened to be one of the prime viewing nights to see the ISS fly over South Western Ontario, and it was almost perfect for the Kincardine area. At 9:30 PM, I went to the
NASA tracking page and watched the station fly over the south Pacific, finally crossing the shores of Mexico and then racing up towards Ontario. At 9:40 PM, an hour after sunset, we headed down to the beach and sat on the picnic table waiting in anticipation. As we sat there waiting, looking to the South West, we wondered "is that it"? After a couple of miscues, Paul finally spotted it coming up over the horizon. Soon it was high up in the sky, a brilliantly bright star. The higher in the sky it got, the brighter and faster it seemed to get, until it was directly overhead, just motoring! Amazing to think that three people are living and working up there. The next shuttle launch is scheduled for two days from now (Tuesday).
Another interesting thing I'd like to check out is called an "Iridium Flare". The Iridium sattelites, when they make a perfect angle between an observer on the ground and the sun, attain a brightness factor of -8, which is many times brighter than Venus, -4 at its brightest, and compared to -2.4 for the ISS last night.
Swimming Across Lake OntarioJuly 31, 2007
Last week I read an article in the KW Record that piqued my interest. It was about a teenager from New Hamburg that was planning on swimming across Lake Ontario, hoping to break the female record. So this morning it put a smile on my face to see a photo on the front page of the newspaper of "Sam" as she was heading out from Niagara on the Lake across a vibrant red sunset. I did a quick Google search to see whether there were any updates on her progress and was sad to read that she had asked to be taken from the water pretty early on in her swim. My guess is that she wasn't on pace to set the record and decided that she'd call it quits early on rather than endure the grueling 14 hours and come up short... anyway, hopefully things work out for another attempt. I can imagine you'd feel a lot of disappointment after receiving so much attention from the media and local politicians.
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