Publish Your Photos on Google Earth

This is from Earthling, my nephew, who works at GoogleEarth, about contributing to the content layer of GE:

“Okay, it’s not technically Google Earth, and we don’t accept pictures that are too personal, but this can be done. I don’t know if you’ve played with the Panoramio layer in Google Earth (it’s on by default), but if you click the little blue and white circles that look like compasses, up pops a photo someone took. Its a lot of fun browsing these, they are by far the most popular layer we have.

How do you upload your photos? Go to www.panoramio.com and make an account and just start uploading. In order for them to eventually display in Google Earth, you need to give them a location. To do this, start uploading a file, then click the Map this Location button, enter a city name, pick the country/state from a list, and it show you a google map of the location. You can navigate in this just like on Google Maps, and when you find the spot where you took your picture, just double click on it.

The upload time takes a long time… so I don’t know how performance will be. Also, we (Google) don’t display photos of just people anymore. They will simply be removed from the feed panoramio sends Google. The layer is not real time, it gets refreshed every month or so.”

My comment: I uploaded a photo to Panoramio and it didn’t take me much time at all, even with my unreliable QualityNet connection. But just as with WordPress, I downsized the pixels in the photo considerably.

Liberation Tower at Dusk

For your comparison:

Sebille Collection: New Addition

My husband and I are delighted by the variety of sebilles in Kuwait. I probably didn’t spell it right, and I am probably going to give some semi-erroneous information to my non-Kuwaiti, non-Muslim readers.

Sebilles are places where you can get sweet fresh water to drink or to wash yourself with before prayer. In some places, the government may provide them as a public service, and in other places you find organizations or individuals who will provide them as a charitable work, the way nobles in France would build a cathedral, or we might contribute a pew or a stained glass window to a church, or build a library for a city. In a hot country, sweet fresh water is a blessing to anyone who needs it.

My husband is really good at stopping when I want to take another photo, and even at spotting those we don’t already have. We love the creativity involved. There are some very utilitarian places, all stainless steel and refrigeration. But here are two of our favorite, more creative models. (Please, if I didn’t get this quite right, correct me in the comments section!)

The first is in near the Heritage Souks, back near the gold souks. It is a representation of the famous Kuwaiti Water Towers, which survived the invasion of 1990.

This one was in a residential area, but I have also seen a couple elsewhere. I think it represents the Liberation Tower. I understand that at night, the red light on top really lights up!

Special Reduced Rates

Kuwait Times
23 January 2007

Brothel Raided
Farwaniya police launced an inspection drive against vice dens in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh area in which police raided 4 flats, arrested 19 women and three pimps. During interrogation, the pimps confessed that they would charge men KD5 for women under 25 years and KD3 for women over 30 years and cheaper prices for women around 50. Police filed a case and referred the women and pimps to the authorities.

Weather Underground

We all have routines that get us through the things we do every day, things we do almost without thinking. You get up, you take care of your morning ablutions, fix some coffee, and then, in my case, you check e-mails, read the day’s selections from the lectionary, check the blog, and check the weather.

Part of my routine is Weather Underground. I like it so much, I added it to my blogroll, over there to the right. When I click, I get Kuwait Weather, first thing, but over on the left are all my favorite cities where I have family and friends – Seattle, Pensacola, Doha (Qatar), Mfuwe (Zambia), Colorado Springs, Zanzibar . . . all at a glance. With one click, I can see what the weather will be there, too.

And for any other city I’m travelling to, I can just type it in and it will take me there.

When my son was getting married, I could check the weather for many years back to see how hot it generally gets on that day in that city – it gave me a range for which to pack.

I’ve tried a lot of other weather sites, but this one has the things I need. It’s part of my daily routine. You can find it here.