I was working on a graphics problem with one of our laptops this week. The customer was Keyhole, makers of an incredible mapping utility (you can download a trial here) and their graphics were not rendering quickly enough on our systems. We got that fixed quickly enough, but the software intrigued me. I even found my apartment building (it uses aerial photographs – not yet as complete as Mapquest’s now departed utility did, but with the full innovation of Google Corp. behind them I have no doubt it ultimately will. When I tried to look up houses of friends and family in Ohio, however, the detail just wasn’t there. Then, when I opened another window, I discovered that Carrboro, NC is one of about 10-12 places worldwide that have high resolution maps. I always knew we were special (people here call Carrboro “The Paris of the Piedmont”), but I didn’t think the word had gotten out. If you download the trial (good for 7 days), be sure to check us out.
The picture above is higher detail than you will see there. It’s a larger picture of the Birds of Carrboro webcam I try to keep running. Road Runner keeps changing my IP address and I can’t always catch it the same day. My little window to the world is comforting. If we have wireless access in our classrooms (where I have spent the better part of this week), I can have a little touch of home there.
I haven’t posted much the past week. I have been learning to use some music software that I’ve had for ages but never had the time to work with. The most powerful is a package called Reason (from Propellerhead software), which basically gives you the power of an electronic music studio on your computer. The power of this program is overwhelming and I’ve barely scratched the surface after 3 weeks of play/work.
6:34:21 AM 
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