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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_earth

Here is a link to Google Earth on Wikipedia. Google Earth is a virtual globe. You can use it to fly all over the world. It's incredible and I wanted to share it with you, having had such fun with it myself this past week.

Here are some coordinates for you:

Latitude 35.203651 degrees
Longitude -93.490732 degrees

This will put you on the center of 42 acres of fun in the Ozark National Forest. Named Camp Savannah after my Great-grandmother. She and her Dickie Clan lived on this mountain. In addition to wife and mother, she was midwife to many a new mother living on the mountain at the time. One lady she delivered in a tent on the North Rim of Huckleberry Mountain is still living at age 92 in Alma Arkansas, about 50 miles NW of this spot of her birth.

I hope you will try typing in a few addresses of your favorite luthiers and see where they live. I went to Nacogdoches Texas. What famous OLF luthier lives there? I want to know what the bare ground squares are in the forest west of Nacogdoches? Natural Gas Wells?

I hope you have fun. My wife needed to visit a new home of our doctor friend to pick up props for a skit. We didn't know how to get there but Google Earth did. In just seconds it found their house and gave us directions and the visual depiction which are actual aerial photos. I'm hooked.

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Latitude 35.203651 degrees
Longitude -93.490732 degrees

Oh, just learned this. If you know coordinates for any spot on Earth, simply separate the Latitude and Longitude by a comma. So the above would appear as the following in a Google search window, then hit enter:

35.203651,-93.490732

This is Camp Savannah.

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It is a lot of fun, Bruce. I mess around with it quite often. I found Serge's home a few months back.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

I just got back from Kevin Ryan's Place in California. I never knew he works near all my California relatives.

Next stop, 151 Wisdom Lane, Beebe Arkansas   

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We use it at work sometimes. We don't always have the latest aerials of an area. I've used it at home to show my son where I grew up and all the places I've been to over the years. One day we'll go back to VA.

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Aoibeann

WOW ! That is very cool .I've been playing with it for hours,checking out places all over the planet. I was checking out my old hometown up in Ohio and can't believe all the changes there ! Thanks Bruce Dickey!

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

Dave, I learned how to do directions from a point with no address to say, my house. The software takes you to the net webpage, then you have the option of Map, Satellite Image or a combination. It gives a printable directions and waypoint windows as you mouse-over the points.

It's simple to use but powerful too. As I was watching the morning weather report, I realized that commercial use for weather has been happening for some time. It just kind of dawned on me they were using similar software to do weather, with overlays of weather fronts and movement over time.

Having it on your own computer and being in charge of where you go is quite cool. Like flying a Citation and 172 rolled into one, and you don't have to buy AVGas.... or Jet Fuel.

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Keep in mind that some of the satellite images they use are several years old. I've looked around my area extensively, and noticed a lot of out-of-date stuff. For instance, a new shopping center went in about four years ago, but the Google Earth image still shows the old VA Hospital they tore down to build the shopping center. Another cool thing to see - one view of the Southfield Freeway in the Detroit area, there is a jetliner frozen in time right above the freeway, on approach to Detroit Metro airport. I've checked it numerous times over the last couple years, and that darned plane STILL hasn't landed.

Very, very cool application, though, no doubt about it.

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Rick Jones
Rochester Hills, MI
http://home.comcast.net/~rajones19

I've spent the last 6 years or so renovating and making additions to our house, it was a tiny little dump when we bought it and so run-down we got it for land value alone - the house was free. It now has a footprint maybe 4 times (or slightly more)than what it had before I started and is starting to look pretty darn nice. Also added a pool with a deck around it.

But Google are still using the pics from before I started, when it looked like a dump, even from space.

Hope they update the pics soon.

Paul B, What are the coordinates, I want to see it.

While we are at it, I want to see the plane caught in take-off mode, that'd be cool.

Hey, still it's a swell piece of software, even if imperfect. I'm glad to have learned of it and don't even remember how I found out about Google Earth?

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Bruce, the coordinates the pointer gives me are -34.000927,151.035308 but when I enter them manually it takes me somewhere that's a couple miles to the west. Don't know what's going on with that.

Anyway, it looks like a shed from space even though it's now bigger than either of our neighbours houses. Man, those people have put up with a lot from us. Noise from power tools, hammering, swearing when I hammer my thumb, the list goes on...

ok, here's my place

lat 49° 4'5.41"N
long 122°22'26.05"W

shops not there anymore. checked out the window just to make sure

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Google Earth is cool, but have you checked out

http://maps.live.com/

This is a picture of my home. (White arrow)

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Yes, those are my wifes pink flowers!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Who are you kidding Lance? We all know you picked them out and planted them.

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Aoibeann

Here's one for you. Go to Google Maps and type New York, NY to Paris France. Then look at directions #24

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

That is great Don!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Sounds like that rosewood I sent to Roy O, DHL Ground to Hawaii. It would have made it too but the truck ran out of gas.

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Lance, those are some huge back yards!

James, there all three just a tad less than an acre.
Gives the kids plenty of room to get in to trouble!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Lance, I must not be holding my mouth right on the download. I tried getting the Virtual Earth software installed. That's incredible, the shot of your property.

I've learned just a bit more about Google Earth though. You can actually Fly to your destination through the software. Pick out a couple points and then click FLY to the destination and it flys you up the chosen route in 3D, pretty amazing.

Then, I learned to go straight to Google and click on Maps for the details of rural and wilderness areas. Here is an example: My dad's cousin lives in a wilderness area. He pulled up a sign denoting a road, which appeared mis-labelled, because his dad years ago told him that road was elsewhere.

Turns out the crew installing the sign got off by one intersection, and about an 1/8th of a mile. So now we can put the sign back and in it's correct location.

Going to Google, selecting Maps, and searching is incredibly powerful and gives the most information. I like the Hybrid form which shows the photos with roads superimposed on those images.

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