Earth's physical forms

This educational video might help a bit for homeschoolers and other new-to-geography learners.

Good Morning!

GoodMorning!
Originally uploaded by blprnt_van.

Good Morning!

GoodMorning! Full Render #2 from blprnt on Vimeo.

The maker explains at http://blog.blprnt.com/ -

GoodMorning! is a Twitter visualization tool that shows about 11,000 ‘good morning’ tweets over a 24 hour period, rendering a simple sample of Twitter activity around the globe. The tweets are colour-coded: green blocks are early tweets, orange ones are around 9am, and red tweets are later in the morning. Black blocks are ‘out of time’ tweets which said good morning (or a non-english equivalent) at a strange time in the day.

Much more info is at the post, with related images and explanation.

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder...

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder...
Originally uploaded by fgfathome.

Just one more gorgeous picture from the "big" bay area storm. Would have linked this earlier had it been up then.

It's still raining, but not lightninging. It feels unsettled, like seasons are changing a bit earlier this year. I hope this portends a proper wet El Niño effect this coming winter.

I wasn't expecting an earth-shattering kaboom

Ian O'Neill posted about his experience watching the shuttle sail overhead, and I added mine in a comment:

In 1996, for some reason, the shuttle flew over Sacramento on its way to Edwards.

It went over at the very crack of dawn, so I went outside a bit before that, wrapped in a blanket, and lay back on the sidewalk to wait.

Soon, in the dark east, a hot pink triangle materialized, and slid quickly overhead. I think it was pink from the heat. It was close enough to see that it was clearly a triangle, and clearly the shuttle, but I could see no details.

It moved silently over me, then disappeared into the equally pink sunrise to the east.

I wandered back into my apartment, curled up in bed, then as I was drifting off, the BOOM that you experienced rattled my window glass. I jumped out of my skin, and then burst into laughter.

It was honest joy.

I am a total shuttle-hugger, and that morning made among my most memorable space-related events.