Finally I remember to post about this nifty little program. Does anyone still say nifty anymore? Perhaps that’s too laid back for something that is so damn gorgeous.

EarthView places the entire globe on your desktop in a customisable form. It has some kind of funky hi-res texture map for the entire globe (’1km detail’ in the trial version, ie 1 km for every pixel). You won’t be spying on your neighbours but this isn’t GoogleEarth, this is all about surveilling the majesty of the globe from your desktop like some almighty space-jeweller. During the day the continents glow in the the sun, night veils the continents in the (realtime) shadow, and the world lights up with millions of homes illuminated.

Then you can do all kinds of nifty (what) things like zooming in by 100% or so to bring it into nice detail over your favourite patch of land, and adding a classy starfield affect, and showing locations and times. The full version can even - with a cheap annual subscription - download real satellite cloud photos and digitise them over the top (in the shot I have lower-res faux-clouds enabled).

I’m sorry if this sounds like a sales pitch, but you can trial it free for 14 days so I don’t feel particularly shameful. And I sincerely recommend downloading the higher detail texture files if you’re going to get up close and personal like I have.

little eye on the world indeed.

Greetings.

My site has been down for a few days because the hard drives at my host went through an emotional crisis (partitions spontaneously combusted), so all the data was lost. Luckily I have offline copies of everything so there’s no permanent damage (although I can’t quite restore all the crap that was in my /temp folder. Probably a boon.)

My web-related plight obviously pales in comparison to what happened and is happening over in New Orleans. The immediacy of the media and the internet in covering the event (in stark contrast the governmental response..) does emphasise how fundamentally disconnected the world community is, despite supposed globalisation. But nobody is powerless to help. Personally I donated to the SomethingAwful Red Cross fund via Paypal, since SA is itself affected by the hurricane/floods - administrator extraordinaire radium has been keeping us afloat (somewhat literally) but no doubt it’ll soon be time to get the fuck out of Dodge.

The last I heard PayPal had still locked Rich Kyanka (Lowtax) out of his account, and some $20,000+ was left in limbo (probably thanks to various trolls sending fake complaints their way). Many have Paypal themselves and they said that all the money would either be returned or the account would be reinstated and the money could be sent to Red Cross. They’re a total joke.

“There’s Sex In My Violence! What’s this lame soft-core porn doing in my ultraviolent “Grand Theft Auto”? I am outraged!”

Thank God. I mean, thank God there was a screechy and pointless uproar over the fact that violence-addled teenagers can, via a free downloadable patch, watch badly animated semi-explicit soft-core sex scenes interspersed throughout the No. 1 best-selling video game, “Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas.”

Elsewhere, some giant asshat of a man raises similar “issues” with The Sims 2:

“In a manifesto sent today to press outlets, Thompson focuses on dismantling the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and exposing what he calls the industry’s “latest dirty little secret.” The secret’s out now, and it involves nude sims.”

Guess what? People have sexual organs. And I can conjure them up with my mind!

MESSAGE TO GOD: I DONT WANT TO SHARE THIS EARTH WITH THESE PEOPLE ANY MORE.