Fun with Google Maps

The best thing about Street View is that it allows one to take a virtual tour of the neighbourhood of anywhere that one has an address for, limited only by the fact that Google has not had time to completely document everywhere on earth (yet).

So attempting to use Street View to look around Cochin, Kerala, for example, will result in a bunch of dots linking to photos (see below) rather than the continuous highlights of an area that has been documented by the Google car.



I am sure Google will get to these places eventually. In the meantime, I am able to wander the streets of Heidelberg, Germany (where a friend and his family were staying for a month), or tour the neighbourhood of my childhood home in Guelph, Ontario.



Here are a few snapshots from my virtual visit to Shankill Road, Belfast, an address that has stuck in my mind since it was a sectarian hotspot before everyone learned to chillax:

Red Hand of Ulster


Rangers Supporters Club


Ulster Volunteer Force

The Gojira: so cool looking it's not funny

I haven't been paying a lot of attention lately to the colourful antics of the Sea Shepherd Society, but I couldn't help but notice the Cylon-like Sci-Fi lines of their new 'stealth' ship, the Gojira (pictured above.)

From Reality Junkies:

Last season on Whale Wars, The Sea Shepherd crew has introduced a replacement to the Ady Gil in their fight against the Japanese Whalers, this time it’s a beefed up looking version of the Ady Gil called Gojira which translates to Godzilla. Last year, the Ady Gil ended up ripped in half by one of the Japanese whaling vessels which was ruled to be the fault of both the stationary ship and the massive vessel that turned into it. How they got to that decision is beyond me.

Like the Ady, this ship will likely be used to track the factory ship (the ship that kills and packages the whales) which will allow the Sea Shepherd and the Bob Barker to tail it and prevent whales from being transferred to the vessel. Unlike the Ady Gil, this likely won’t be captained by Pete Bethune who was arrested last season for boarding the ship that split his in two.