Geography is Fun!

Or should I say 'orthographic imagery'? I found a picture of my truck from space!

This tells me that the most recent imagery on Google was taken on a Wednesday (miniature gaming day.)

Garmin Fenix

Good looking, compact, wrist mounted GPS that you can sync with a computer, or another Fenix (like your team leader's as Gear Scout suggests.)

Yes Please.  Garmin, if you're reading, I would love to beat one up in Afghanistan over the next year.

Remote Sensing Conundrum

Courtesy of China. Those of you who've been reading long enough know I'm slowly nibbling away at a degree in Geography with a heavy emphasis on Cartography and GIS, a large part of which is Remote Sensing, so I can't help but be intrigued by these things.

Must be crappy out...

So I checked the stats for today, and noticed they were slightly higher than normal, which is weird for a Sunday.  Then I thought about it for a second, and checked the handy little map on Sitemeter-

Reminded me of another map-

Sorry... geography moment...

But I do agree, nice day to stay in and surf the blogs.  Too bad some people have to work...

GPS is getting an upgrade.

Starting with new satellites with better clocks.  Accurate clocks are pretty important for the whole GPS thing to work, and improving their accuracy will significantly cut down on systematic errors, greatly increasing precision.  The article does mention that the new satellites will triple the available signal, but not if that is due to more satellites in the constellation.  I'm assuming that since they're slowly swapping them out one at a time that your current receiver should be able to pick up the new satellites.  I'd guess that once enough of the new ones are up that you'd need a new receiver to take full advantage of the new signals.  Sounds like it's going to take about 10 years to complete the upgrade though.

Of course all the articles I can find just keep rambling on about how the financial world relays on GPS... Seems Wall Street likes the insanely accurate clocks.  Makes sense I guess, I just never heard of that use for them, we tend to concentrate on the geographic aspects of the system in all my classes.

Combine this with the supposed GPS logging of "doorsteps" during the current census (I don't think they're actually doing doorsteps, just a much more accurate log of street addresses) you can either put on your tinfoil, or revel in the fact that the Garmin or TomTom in your car will actually be able to tell you where a house is, instead of getting you within a couple blocks (it's not that the GPS is off, it's the current database.  They just kind of arbitrarily distribute the numbers along the street since nobody's actually taken the time to collect the data till now.)

Anyway, I'ma done geeking for now.