A Brief Non-Poker Discursion

I very, very rarely post non-poker content, but I've been playing around with the free "Google Earth" program, available for download on Google, and the program is cool. yes, Google always wants to mess with your other browser programs, but to be able to be enjoy something as neat as Google Earth, free of charge, I'm willing to put up with a little bit of hassle.

So what can you say about a progam that prevents a coherent, unified view of the world's high-def land-sat maps, all put into a structure that literally allows you to surface over the globa at will? While the resolution varies greatly, the shots are awesome if you happen to be curious about one of the regions where the photos are linked up at greatest resolution. I can check out my childhood home, or zoom in on an 8' satellite dish that I helped erect in a good friend's yard a couple of years back. It's all in the freakin' program.

It's a great program for checking out more exotic locales as well, such as this medium-resolution view of Wake Island:



Of course, it's a top-down look at the world, despite neat rotational tools that can make it seem as though you're skimming over the Earth's surface. It means that you can't really see signs such as this, so we'll just have to take it on good faith that they really do exist: