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Google Earth

Google earth might possibly be my favorite program on the internet. For all that it does it receives not nearly enough praise. It is possible to spend an entire day jumping from place to place and exploring almost as if you are on vacation there. What a cool program. You would think that once you released Google Earth there’s not much more you could add. Sure enough there are tons and tons of add ons that are available in the newer versions of the program. You can see points of interest, snapshots taken around a particular point, and even outlines of park boundaries. There’s even ways to import files into Google earth so outside interests can you Google Earth’s interface in displaying locations (such as is the case in geocaching.)

In the most recent version of Google Earth there are two notable big additions to the program. One being Sky view, and the other the hidden flight simulator. Sky view mode is impressive and awesome, but what really stole my attention was the flight simulator. Flight simulator mode is a hidden feature so it can only be accessed by pressing Ctrl + Alt + A (Command + Option + A on the Mac.) Once you have the flight simulator open you can fly anywhere in the world. if you’ve every played a flight simulator before you’ll notice that the controls are very smiler. Check it out, it’s a ton of fun, and can also be quite challenging. If you don’t have Google Earth yet, get it! If you have it already, update! this is one of the coolest things I’ve played with yet especially in the realm of cartography.

Link: More information on the Google Earth Flight Simulator

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A glimpse into my madness

Some people say I am crazy; going skiing every weekend, working every week day. At times I wonder myself it this is true. Then I have a weekend like I had this weekend. The type I haven’t had in two years. I am covered in bumps and bruises, and I am here to tell you that I wouldn’t want it any other way. I had a wonderful weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed the 30+” of snow that Cannon received last week. The 6-8″ that fell all day on Sunday was just the icing on the cake. This is why I do this. This is why I love winter.

Click this image to view pictures from my weekend.

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First Lite Brights, then Geocaching

Alright, again, I don’t like to get political on my blog, but right on the heals of my previous post about the “Boston Aqua Teen Hunger Force Hoax Devices” I saw a news story about how Geocaching can be mistaken as a terrorist activity.I can understand why, but this is a perfect example of letting fear stifle our liberties.For those who don’t know, Geocaching is a sport where users get GPS coordinates to where a box (or cache) is hidden.Users then use a GPS receiver to find the cache, and log the find in a notebook inside, and also online at a later time.Their reward for the find is to take a small treasure from the box.

This is a sport that I took up over the summer, and it really disturbs me that I need fear legal prosecution for simply getting outside and enjoying the meshing of nature and technology.So during all the hype we are seeing from this “Boston Hoax Device” saga keep in mind the hobbies and other innocent pastimes which could become unnecessarily regulated.

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Flag Etiquette

Lately I’ve been noticing that people are flying the American Flag at half mast for way too long. I understand that it is perfectly acceptable to fly the flag at half staff to mourn & honor a passing president. Don’t get me wrong from what I know of Gerald Ford, he was a great president, however this is the second time in a short while that I am seeing flags flown at half mast for the better part of a month. Our Flag is supposed to be flown proudly, waving from the tops of flag poles, it seems to me that flying it any other way seems week and shameful. This is all just my opinion, but for what it’s worth even on Memorial Day the flag is displayed at half staff only until noon and at full staff from noon to sunset.

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“July” … I mean “January” 4th weekend

So, Did you attend any good barbeques over the weekend, What great July weather we had, nearly 70° outside. Wait, what’s that you say? I have the wrong month? Oh, it’s January, not July. Sorry, my mistake. I guess the either just had me confused. I ask this of my fellow Bostonians; “Why are people celebrating this.” Hey, newsflash!! Your house is going to be underwater if this type of weather keeps up.

By the way, If you’ve never read any of my other blogs from past years, I complain about this topic like every post. The truth of the mater is this. We live in New England, like it or not, it gets cold and warm here. The problem is that, this usually happens seasonally, not weekly. This poses a small problem that perhaps you have seen in the news. Trees only have so many “Blooms.” Most have around 4. This means that if we keep getting these long strings of days, trees will bloom, and we’ve wasted 1. It is common to waste a few blooms as temps stabilize in springtime, but if we waste too many now, we will have a summer that feels like summer and looks like winter, doesn’t that sound fun? I was in New Hampshire over the weekend; “NEW HAMPSHIRE!!” & I saw trees blooming. Problematic.

It seems that old man winter is back now however, and the ski areas are getting snow & cold temps again, at least in ski country. Not to say anything for Blue Hills down here in Canton, MA, where I was supposed to teach one night a week.

My request to you is this, please embrace the wintertime. It’s really not so uncomfortable; you just have to prepare for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love summer. I love Baseball, Barbeques, Biking, Fishing, Sailing, Swimming, & all the other things that come with summer, but there better when you can really value them, by having both “a summer” & “a winter,” “…Because without the bitter baby, the sweet just aint’ as sweet” -Vanilla Sky

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Seasons Greetings

This past Saturday I saw my first snowflakes of the season. This morning I saw my first accumulated snow of the season. In case you didn’t know, I like the snow. Apparently I am a minority. If I have any readers from outside of New England, you might be surprised to know that most New Englanders (at least Massachusetts and south) hate snow and cold. The part I find interesting is that they also hate traffic. People; I am offering the solution. It is extremely simple. I will sum it up i n one word. “Leave.” Think about it, were in Massachusetts, we have seasons. One of them is winter. It snows during winter. If you don’t like it, leave. I don’t like traffic anyway, so if you leave you will be doing both of us a favor. Furthermore, there are many places where property is much cheaper then it is here, and if you go there, you will be able to live more richly.

Yes, I am a skier/snowboarder but that is not necessarily why I love the winter. I love seeing snow covered fields, and trees covered in snow. I recall sledding, building snow forts, and playing in the snow as a child. Becoming exhausted and laying in the snow and hearing silence because of the way snow muffles sound. Seeing snow simply makes me happy, and I really dislike hearing other people do nothing but complain about it. Sure there is some shoveling to be done (AKA cardio exercise,) and driving takes a bit more concentration, but neither of those are such a bad thing.

As you can see I am a fan of winter and all of the seasons we see here in New England. 6 weeks ago some friends and I started a homebrew to commemorate the starting of the winter season. It is done today. Coincidentally, there today is the first day we have seen snow, making the beer’s release seem like perfect timing. If you see me, ask me for a sample. And most importantly enjoy the season.

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WiFi & Nerdness

So I am sitting at Panera Bread killing time. I was surfing around the web and doing nothing of too much importance, when I realized the perfect thing to do. I thought; I should post to my blog. I haven’t in a while and its so the type of thing to do while sitting in a coffee shop surfing the web. It’s definitly the Web 2.0 thing to do.
I don’t really have too much to post about. I have been keeping super busy but not doing much of too much importance. Most recently I have decided what snowboard equipment I am getting, and decided exactly what my battle plan is going to be in terms of this seasons ski season. I have decided to work at Cannon again, (a decision that didn’t come easily,) & also do a night a week at Blue Hills. I think this is a good thing because I need to try and get excited about skiing again. Last season I wasn’t, and it usually is my favorite thing to do. I am hoping that the people at Blue Hills can help bring back some of the excitement I had lost.
I guess the other thing I have been doing is really trying to refine some of my work that I do in freelance video I do. In fact, I’m off to a meeting of the NPVA now. That said, it’s time to go.

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Board’s (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

I have a few things board related to post about, some good, and some bad, and no two about the same type of boards.

1. First off, and worst off; I bought a new graphics card, ATI Radeon X1300 All In Wonder. It is an awesome card. It supports 2 monitors has video in and out as well as an fm tuner. I pulled out my computer, (a task in itself) and go to put the card in, it doesn’t fit, but not by much… so I helped it along a bit. Bad idea, I fried my motherboard, now my computer won’t do anything besides power up the power supply. So that’s great, well at least now I can probably get a faster processor, which I have kind of wanted to do for a while. I just would have preferred doing it on my on schedule, and not be forced.

2. The second bit of board related news is “Snowboard News.” It’s September, the leaves have started falling, ski club meetings are starting up, all signs that it is time to start considering the new season. Most of you are probably saying it’s too early, but believe it or not the ski season actually takes a good bit of planning on my behalf in order to make it a good, fun year, (which something I overlooked last year.) Since I put so many days on my equipment each year I need to get new equipment often. I didn’t get new stuff last year and my riding reflected it.
So I have started the process of shopping for a board and now the big question is do I go with Burton, or Atomic? A little background: Burton is a really good, but a really big company, and it is hard to be noticed as a good candidate to represent their company (which produces schwag.) Atomic is smaller, and I have a history repping for them, but they kinda screwed me last year and I didn’t do any work for them. Is it time for me to make the move back to Burton?
Let me know your thoughts.

As for updates to this website, there is a massive picture/gallery redesign in beta for right now, and It would have probably been released this week, but then came my computer issues. If you would like a preview then email me, and I will send you a link.

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