Composite from the final scene on Earth in Battlestar Galactica's 'Revelations' (season 4, episode 10).
Production has stalled due to the writers strike so we may have to wait till 2009 to find out who got there first?
Us or Them?
Thanks goes to ChurchHatesTucker for building the composite.
Google users in the United Kingdom will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google.co.uk homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.
On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.
As most will know but some still contend against, the world is indeed round; and to track a point within said world we use a system of Latitude and Longitude; and maybe the odd Harrison watch.
Now for computer's it's a little more complex. System's like Google Earth and Virtual Earth use something called Geocodes.
Unlike Latitude and Longitude which operate with hours, minutes, seconds; Geocodes are point-mapped numerically to the location.
Now converting zipcodes to geocodes is simple but I've been looking around and apparently UK postcode -> geocodes aren't freely available due to Royal Mail wanting cash, but I may be wrong.
Here's some resources to get you started...
Geocoding with Virtual Earth & Google Maps
Precise Map Pointing with Virtual Earth
Finding things with Virtual Earth
Source...
John Griffiths
