geoffschultz
10-25-2005, 02:00 PM
I've spent a lot of time creating a Google Earth presentation of my cruising aboard the BlueJacket. For those of you who don't know what Google Earth is, it's a program that allows you to view satellite images of the earth and you can "fly" anywhere that you want with a flick of your mouse. You can zoom down to amazing levels of detail. In many places you can make out details of cars on a street. In some areas (such as Boston) 3D representations of buildings have been constructed such that you can fly *between* the buildings. It's absolutely amazing!
The Google Earth program is free as well as access to the satellite image database. However, it does take a fair amount of CPU power and a high speed Internet connection. To download a copy of the program, go to:
http://earth.google.com/
One of the things that you can do with Google Earth is to create "placemarks" and "paths". A placemark is a location that you want to reference and paths show a route. I've created placemarks and paths for virtually all of my cruising. This includes locations from Maine to Florida and virtually all of the Caribbean. The placemarks include text snippets from my logs and then link to the entire log as well as photos from the area. The logs from most of the US east coast and eastern Caribbean are pretty thin, but the photos are good. Everything gets much better starting in Venezuela and west of that.
Anchorage placemarks utilize anchor icons, placemarks which include diving information have dive flag icons, and land based travel utilize either sign posts, Myan pyramids or airplanes. Icons are grouped by region / country / state or year.
Once you have Google Earth up and running you can access the file containing my placemarks and paths at:
www.GeoffSchultz.org/GoogleEarth/BlueJacket.kmz/
I hope that you enjoy!
-- Geoff
The Google Earth program is free as well as access to the satellite image database. However, it does take a fair amount of CPU power and a high speed Internet connection. To download a copy of the program, go to:
http://earth.google.com/
One of the things that you can do with Google Earth is to create "placemarks" and "paths". A placemark is a location that you want to reference and paths show a route. I've created placemarks and paths for virtually all of my cruising. This includes locations from Maine to Florida and virtually all of the Caribbean. The placemarks include text snippets from my logs and then link to the entire log as well as photos from the area. The logs from most of the US east coast and eastern Caribbean are pretty thin, but the photos are good. Everything gets much better starting in Venezuela and west of that.
Anchorage placemarks utilize anchor icons, placemarks which include diving information have dive flag icons, and land based travel utilize either sign posts, Myan pyramids or airplanes. Icons are grouped by region / country / state or year.
Once you have Google Earth up and running you can access the file containing my placemarks and paths at:
www.GeoffSchultz.org/GoogleEarth/BlueJacket.kmz/
I hope that you enjoy!
-- Geoff