It's a Wonderful World ...

As a famous American once said (I think it was MacGyver) "A good map will always get you where you want to go."

Photo courtesy UrtheCast

I love maps.  It doesn't matter if they are 400 year old representations of the known world, or the satellite images from the internet mapping sites.  Man-made borders change, natural disasters leave their mark, but you still rarely get the chance to see the beauty of the earth.  I've always loved seeing the world from an airplane and have been lucky enough to fly over some incredible sights - the Hudson Bay when the ice was just starting to break up, glaciers and icy coastlines in Greenland, the Sydney Opera House, the Grand Canyon - all from a height that shows you the detail of silt running from the mouths of rivers into the ocean, of reefs and islands, cities and farmland.  The circular fields, seen from above, certainly take you by surprise.

I could go on, but this post is about a new way to see the world.  In the news this week were details about a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts who placed (or should I say replaced) cameras on the International Space Station that will be permanently pointed below, and there will be a live feed on the website www.urthecast.com.

This is the story from www.businessweek.com -

Scott Larson just survived a particularly stressful month during which the equipment he sent to the International Space Station sat in limbo.  His startup, the Canada-based UrtheCast, created special still and video cameras able to withstand space radiation and extreme temperatures in order to record earth from space in high resolution.  The cameras arrived at the space station last fall, and after an eight-hour spacewalk on Dec 27, they were installed.  Only they didn't appear to work right, Larson says.

Photo courtesy UrtheCast

So the cameras were taken down.  A station-related issue was fixed over several days, and the equipment was finally mounted during a six-hour spacewalk on Tuesday.  "There have been a lot of tense moments" says Larson, whose company raised $68 million for the project.  "It's space, and stuff happens in space, and you never quite know.  There are always technical issues in any kind of engineering project.  But because there are people out there, they can fix them.  That's been a huge asset."

From here on, UrtheCast hopes for smooth travels as the space station orbits the earth 16 times every day.  The nearly 70-employee company will spend several weeks calibrating the cameras, which will send their first image back to earth in February.  "We hope it's spectacular, we don't know what it's going to be," Larson says.

Once initial tests are wrapped up, UrtheCast expects to start selling space imagery to clients in farming, urban planning, media, and other industries at the end of the second quarter.  The company has already signed distribution agreements for $21 million annually, according to Larson, and will also begin streaming images onto the Web in the third quarter - in effect challenging Google Earth with a free video-imaging service.

A 4.5 foot long camera will record 90-second videos 150 times a day as the station circles the planet, Larson says, while a second camera will continuously snap still photos.  Together, the stills will cover a 47.3 kilometer wide swatch of the planet and generate 2.5 terabytes of data a day, the equivalent of about 270 full length movies.  UrtheCast's engineers will condense and post the visuals to the company's website within a few hours.

"I think everyone in the world will want to come to the website at least once," Larson says.

-oOo-

I'll certainly be one of the "everyone in the world ..." who regularly visits the website.  I can't wait.

I wish UrtheCast.com all the good luck in ... well ... the world, with their new venture, and I hope it's a very successful business both for them, the farmers and urban planners, and just plain Joe (or Jo) Public who will get the chance to see the beauty around them.

Note:  I wish I knew where the top photo was taken as it's an amazing image from the website.  It's a coastline that probably looks completely different when you're on the ground.

There and back again ...

To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit (or was it at the end of Lord of the Rings?) my trusty 2004 San Remo Red Subaru Impreza has taken me "there and back again" and has now racked up 111,111 miles!  I thought my mileometer had broken when I saw those numbers staring back at me yesterday, but it slowly blipped over to 111112, so I knew everything was okay.

Since we bought the car, its travelled from the Seattle area to San Diego numerous times - to visit the In-Laws - taking the more scenic route down Highway 101 south of San Francisco, rather than the I-5.  It's a great drive, sometimes merging with Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, with incredible views by the ocean.  The 101 takes you through Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world, home of garlic ice cream (... interesting),  through California's central valley where  there are fruit and vegetable fields, as well as nut orchards, from horizon to horizon.  On through San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria with a stop at Buellton (home of famous Andersen's Split Pea Soup) and the town of Solvang for some pastries, to the coast highway to Santa Barbara, and then maybe to Malibu and find your way through Los Angeles to San Diego via the I-5 or 15.  Hmmm - I think we need to take another drive down there soon as just looking all that up on the map has made me restless for another trip.

Our trusty car has also taken us on drives across country, through Yellowstone National Park, to the Little Big Horn (Custer's Last Stand) and Mt Rushmore, taking in Glacier National Park on the way home.  Our last trip to Yellowstone gave us some unexpected snow - would you believe it was the end of May! - so the poor car has had it's fair share of scrapings and brushings.

Our trusty Subaru has taken us on the road to nowhere (name that band... )

and had a close encounter (name that movie ... oh, wait .... too easy... )

I also managed to find a way to feed and water the husband along the way (at the same time!) ...

Apologies for the blurred photo but there are some bumpy highways around the west coast (it's a nice sharp image of the dashboard though, in case you're interested).

All in all, the car has certainly earned those 111,111 miles.  When I saw the numbers, I had to pull over quickly so that I could take a photo before the numbers changed - I've never had a car that's done so many miles.  In the UK, you can't drive very far in any direction without falling off the edge, so to me, this is a real milestone.  The big debate is whether or not to get a new car or see how far we can get with this one, but I'm not sure I like the new, redesigned Subaru Impreza - it doesn't have the unique shape that it used to have (like ours) but now looks like umpteen other small hatchbacks.  Still, it's a great car and I like having the safety of the All-Wheel-Drive (this is beginning to sound like a car commercial).  The two main things I want in a car - besides all that safety stuff - is a rear windshield wiper and a hatchback.  Well placed cupholders come in the top three as well.  I guess the longer we leave the decision making, the higher the numbers on the mileometer will be.

Just to translate - I did a check on the internet and discovered that the American for "mileometer" is "odometer".  Now the big question is - what's an odo?

The Color Purple ... and Green.

My absolute favourite colour combination is purple and green.  I'm not a sentimental person, but somehow my heart skips when I see these two colours together.  I don't know why.

I have no idea if there was something in my childhood that had these colours - a toy? clothing? something in the house?  Nothing comes to mind, but it makes you wonder where these likes and dislikes come from.  I've never been a real fan of blue and yellow, and I know my parents had ... actually still have ... a heavy glass vase from Venice made with those colors, that has been around since I was a small child.  Never liked it.  Actually, now I think of it, purple and yellow is another combination that makes me grimace.  It's not the yellow, it's the colour it's with.  Maybe I prefer my yellows to be anti-social!

Seeing the aubergines (eggplants) always reminds me of the wonderful farmers' markets that I've seen both locally and around the world.  The colours are so vibrant, you can almost feel the vitamins in the air!  Purple comes in all colours as well - the aubergines in the image above are heading slightly to the burgundy side of the spectrum, while the other photos show the purples nearer to blue.  There's also mauve and lilac which I guess are "official" colours themselves, but I'm still putting them under the heading of Purple.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the color as a deep, rich shade between crimson and violet.  Purple was the colour worn by Roman Emperors and magistrates and late by Catholic bishops.  Purple is often associated with royalty.  Looking on the Web, I found this information -

• Purple is the colour most often associated with the artificial and the unconventional.
• It is the major color that occurs the least frequently in nature.
• It was the first colour to be synthesized.
• Purple is the colour most associated with ambiguity.
• Like other colors made by combining two primary colours, it is seen as uncertain and equivocal.

Interesting.  I really enjoy researching for these posts, like the one I did on the colour blue.

The logo for the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon is purple and green but I can't think of too many others, if any.  It is a combination that you don't see very often in the design world.

My favourite image is still the first one on this post - dark, deep purple grapes hanging from vines covered in bright green leaves.  Ahh, there goes the little frisson (favourite new word) in my chest ...

Happy Hour

I had a great evening out last night with some of the women from the office where I volunteer.  Someone suggested we go to Whiskey Gulch Coffee Co in Port Orchard, WA.

I hadn't heard of this place and, after checking out the website (www.whiskeygulchcoffee.com) we saw that they only served coffee along with a great looking menu - I guess our usual Friday Happy Hour could wait another week.  When we got there we found that they'd just opened a bar - last night was their opening night - and now sell locally sourced wine, beer, vodkas, etc.  and it looks like it would be a great place to hang out in the summer, as they have an outdoor patio with tables overlooking the bay.

We had a hilarious time, probably annoying everyone else in the place because we couldn't stop laughing,  I think the topics discussed were: parents knowing that the teenagers they'd left alone for a night had had friends over as the house was TOO clean when they came home; oldest son who missed the school bus and ran the bus route home even though there was a shorter way back to the house; pushing your glasses back up on your nose when you've leaned (lent?) forward ... even though you're wearing contact lenses; four year old daughter asking "... do Mommies lie?". Okay, so not so funny sounding when it's written down but I'm sure the glasses of wine helped - don't they always?

One thing I do miss about living in London is the excellent public transport, especially the Tube. Here, you only get to drink about one glass of wine, because you usually have to drive home. Not that I regularly got drunk or anything when I was in London, but it was always good to know that you could have another drink and not have to worry because you were taking the subway home.  Of course, it did mean that half the people who were travelling on the train with you were somewhat the worse for wear, which made things a little interesting.