The Earth Is Square

Found an interesting article in the paper this morning from the Associated Press.

W.Pa. man linked to arson by GPS pleads guilty

BEAVER (AP) — A western Pennsylvania trucker linked to arson by his truck's global positioning device will spend up to 10 years in prison.

Thomas Reinhardt, 48, New Brighton, was sentenced after pleading guilty to arson and causing a catastrophe Wednesday.

Reinhardt must also pay $344,900 to two families whose homes caught fire when he set fire to his home on April 5.

Reinhardt initially told police he was at a Butler County rest stop when the fire broke out. But GPS records from Reinhardt's trucking company showed his rig was parked about 100 yards from his house.

Let this be a lesson, if you are going to commit a crime.. make sure you don't have anything that can track your location on you or the vehicle.

And with GPS units and GPS trackers becoming more common and cheaper, how many more criminals will end up being caught because of them?

Hanna has hit land and is moving up the East Coast now.  The good thing is that this storm is bringing some much needed rain to this area.  Hopefully we can get a good 18+ hours of rain today.

This year marks the 154'th fair since it started in 1855.  The Bloomsburg Fair is the largest fair in Pennsylvania and one of the largest on the east coast as well.

Yes, you can get lost easily

This year the fair starts on September 20th and ends on the 28th.  I have created a detailed Google Earth KMZ that shows the locations of various buildings as well as where the entertainment can be found.  They are adding web cams, as as they get turned on, I will add them to the KMZ.

Well, it seems that the download link and page for the Google Chrome browser is up now.  And in the immortal words of SpongeTron; "Everything is chrome in the future!!!!!!!!!"

One thing I notice right off the bat, Google is keeping with it horrid practice of deciding that is best.. it installed without asking WHERE *I* want to install it.  *sigh*  Hmm, it also seems to have a hard time importing Firefox settings while Firefox is running.. strange, Firefox can import while IE is running.

Well, so far not really impressed.. it is take almost twice the time it takes IE and FF to load a web page.  No Java support yet, that is kind of a surprise.  But this is a first public release of a beta, so all of this should hopefully change for the better.

"Porn Mode" .. er, Incognito Browsing.. not what I was hoping it would be.  I was hoping it would keep people on the outside from knowing all about me, here it just keeps my browsing history off the computer I am using.  Though, the guy in the trench coat and spy hat is cute.

Where are the bookmarks/favorites supposed to be?  I can create shortcuts all over my desktop... but why would I want to do that?

Will it become my new browser of choice?  Probably not.  Will it change web browsing?  Doubtfull.  Will it improve Google's services?  Most likely.  Will I do a deeper review than this? Naa.  Save that for the fan boys and people with too much free time.

Update:

If you fear the Google Overlords too much ;)  You can try the open-source project behind Chrome, Chromium.  The project page has details on how to get the source and compile it for yourself, especially for different platforms.  You can also download builds from here.

April 1st, 2005.. On that day I said that Google has their own satellite called gSat, at that time it was an April Fools joke.  Well, in late 2008 it is no longer really an April Fools joke.

Google has made an exclusive arrangement with GeoEye that Google will be the exclusive online mapping firm for imagery from their new satellite - which is scheduled to launch this week (on September 4th). This follows a similar arrangement Google has had with DigitalGlobe, another satellite company, for years now. Not only that, as part of the deal, Google's logo is being flown on the side of the rocket.

But it is funny how back them people thought it would be a joke for Google to do this.. now look three years later.  My prediction availabilities are on par with Carnac the Magnificent.

CARNAC: Don't Be Evil.

ED McMAHON: Don't Be Evil.

(Carnac rips the envelope open and removes the card)

CARNAC (reading): What people hope Google still is.

Two really nice videos of NASA WorldWind running on a multi-touch setup with touch control.  touchEarth is a Nasa World Wind TUIO gestures based MT application developed in C#. It contains all the regular gestures to zoom/Rotate/tilt and pan using various 1, 2 and 3 finger gesture combinations.