Here is today’s commute to work… this time we were one car back at the railway crossing, so I decided to film people driving through the flashing lights…
And still have not heard back from “The Leader” yet either 
and some one posted a comment as to who cares..
I’ll leave it to Top Gear to show you what happens when you don’t care.
Google has turned on street View Australia. but it is not just Capital Cities. Places like Broome have been done as well.
This image shows the extent for beyond Melbourne for example.
This is the google video for street video Australia…
and more info here on the Google Australia blog
But there are interesting issues as well. take here for example….
Notice the bits missing. this is not due to any privacy issue. My GPS always freaks out going through this area called the Black Spur. The reason, tree density. The trees are so thick here, that it is hard for the gps to get a fix, espically when moving at speed. (from the Kml Page this kml shows what i mean)
And round the same area is a road called The Acheron Way. A single lane dirt road.. and even that has been done, but it also has issues with tree density.
And here are photos of the type of car that Google used. These were taken in Toorak on December 2 2007. (Click for bigger versions)
I have also updated the previous post (on boom gate madness) with an iframe to show the google street view in use. By adding in these 360 views you can dramatically expand out a users understanding of an environment.
However you can’t go passed this video to show the power of google maps.
small update :- channel 10 on the late news on 5/8/08 says google street view invades privacy. They of course then go on to say how google will blank out faces or things if you ask them. Then as the do the voice over on the story they show standard stock footage of people walking across a pedestrian crossing. I don’t think they get it yet.
Ok..so back from another driving trip… Up to Hanging Rock and Mt Macedon. (which will be a post later today).
For this post I have a highlighted video (speed up to double only) of one of my biggest annoyances on the road - the fact that the speed limit around roadworks is some what optional in Victoria. On the drive down City Link I notice that there are signs saying roadworks 60kph. Of course at this time I have to dive across from the fast lane to the slow lane so I am not a moving road block (to other vehicles which do not slow down).
I have the gps trace showing that I was doing 60pkh past the roadworks (and approx 101kph once I accelerated once the roadworks finished).. All the time the car is on cruise control as well! You will also notice that everyone goes flying past me in the 60 zone. In some cases flying is an understatement. 21 cars all up broke the law speeding past. Within a few minutes of getting past the roadworks I have over-taken 6 of the 21 people that went gone flying past me and I catch up with most of the rest of them within the next 5 min as well.
What annoys me is that these are the people that will complain about speed cameras and speed limits, yet here they all are BREAKING THE LAW. Of course if I exceeded the speed limit I would probably get nailed straight away, but that is my luck.
Well I spent all day yesterday out on another snow chase.
Firstly I approached the bank to get a load to pay for the fuel, lucky for me I wasn’t going alone and was taking a 4y/o with me as she had never been to the snow before having lived in Darwin for the last few years. (On an amusing side note, she has for reasons that escape both me and her father started to refer to me as Captain Wolf. I can live with that, I have been called worse!)
But to keep things on a technical nature so that I can justify putting details onto the blog I have a few new goodies… They are a KML of a Toboggan Run (which has the distance at 600metres and the max speed at 16kph!), the video of said run and a whole pile of new photos. The trip was the same route as a few weeks ago so the trip KML has changed really. Apart from the fact that I was stuck behind the same stupid slow guy for 50k’s who refused to go above 60 at ALL! (will put up video shortly!)
And on to the media….
The Toboggan Run (KML File on the KML Page here)
More Photos here.. http://flickr.com/photos/wolfcat_aus/
And the Drive home which is once again the webcam attached to the Asus R2H to recorded the whole trip. This time I have New Order’s The Beach as the soundtrack, simply because it is the same length as the video was meant to be (of course it is 20 second to short but what can you do).:-)
This video is just to cute to ignore and not share.
