{"id":105,"date":"2009-03-20T15:13:03","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T05:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/?p=105"},"modified":"2009-05-19T03:09:04","modified_gmt":"2009-05-18T17:09:04","slug":"google-earth-learns-about-madang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/2009\/03\/google-earth-learns-about-madang\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Earth Learns About Madang"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always been disappointed with the satellite images on <a title=\"Tour the latest Google Earth\" href=\"http:\/\/earth.google.com\/tour.html\">Google Earth<\/a> for the area around Madang. Until today. I don&#8217;t remember how I drifted to Google Earth again. Something on another web site caught my eye, I suppose. Anyway, I downloaded the latest version and cranked it up to see if Madang looked any better.<\/p>\n<p>WOW! You can see streets and everything. If you try to zoom in to the level of seeing who is parked where, it gets a little fuzzy, but you can see the colours of the cars just fine. No registration reading yet. Can&#8217;t see people very well. But Madang is finally coming in crisp and clear:<a href=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/madang.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2878\" title=\"Madang, Papua New Ghinea - most of the town on Google Earth\" src=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/madang-450x358.jpg\" alt=\"Madang, Papua New Ghinea - most of the town on Google Earth\" width=\"450\" height=\"358\" \/><\/a>Of course, the first thing anybody does with Google Earth is look for his house. Ours was easy to find. Just south of the end of the airport runway, north of the big pile of wood chips and directly across the harbour from the main wharf:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/my_house.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2880\" title=\"Our house in Madang is directly across the harbour from the main wharf\" src=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/my_house-450x358.jpg\" alt=\"Our house in Madang is directly across the harbour from the main wharf\" width=\"450\" height=\"358\" \/><\/a>Here is a shot of <em>Nagada Harbour<\/em> and the Jais Aben Resort:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/nagada_harbour.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2881\" title=\"Nagada Harbour and Jais Aben Resort\" src=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/nagada_harbour-450x358.jpg\" alt=\"Nagada Harbour and Jais Aben Resort\" width=\"450\" height=\"358\" \/><\/a>The top island is <em>Leper Island<\/em> and lower is the north tip of <em>Kranket Island.<\/em> In between is Magic Passage, one of our favourite diving locations. The reefs are very nicely visible:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/magic_passage.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2879\" title=\"Magic Passage - one of our favourite diving locations\" src=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/magic_passage-450x358.jpg\" alt=\"Magic Passage - one of our favourite diving locations\" width=\"450\" height=\"358\" \/><\/a>Those familiar with Madang will recognise this location immediately. It is the north end of the golf course (at the bottom) and the Coastwatcher Monument at the upper left sticking up like a big white rocket ship. It looks to me as if this shot was taken at about 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/coastwatcher_monument.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2882\" title=\"The Coastwatcher Monument and the North end of the Golf Course in Madang, Papua New Guinea\" src=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/coastwatcher_monument-450x358.jpg\" alt=\"The Coastwatcher Monument and the North end of the Golf Course in Madang, Papua New Guinea\" width=\"450\" height=\"358\" \/><\/a>Here is a nice shot of <em>Kar Kar Island.<\/em> It&#8217;s too bad that the fringing reefs are not visible. Also the cloud cover hides the giant crater where the active volcano sleeps (for the moment):<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/kar_kar_island.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2877\" title=\"Kar Kar Island from Google Earth\" src=\"http:\/\/messersmith.name\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/kar_kar_island-450x358.jpg\" alt=\"Kar Kar Island from Google Earth\" width=\"450\" height=\"358\" \/><\/a>The shots of Madang were taken before last July. I can tell because the <a title=\"A Venerable Mango Tree Falls to the Chainsaw\" href=\"http:\/\/www.messersmith.name\/wordpress\/2008\/07\/a-venerable-mango-tree-falls-to-the-chainsaw\/\">huge mango tree<\/a> that was behind our office is still visible. We chopped it to make room for an office extension.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s cool to join the rest of the world. Now, we too can send someone a link to say, &#8220;Here is where I live!&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always been disappointed with the satellite images on Google Earth for the area around Madang. Until today. I don&#8217;t remember how I drifted to Google Earth again. Something on another web site caught my eye, I suppose. Anyway, I downloaded the latest version and cranked it up to see if Madang looked any better.<\/p>\n<p> [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[27,25,22,23,9,24,26],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jans-interest","tag-coastwatcher-monument","tag-jais-aben-resort","tag-kranket-island","tag-leper-island","tag-madang","tag-magic-passage","tag-nagada-harbor","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messersmith.name\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}