Maps #34

1. I discovered the GPS coordinates for the HCPL ADM building (8080 El Rio Street Houston, TX 77054) to be +29° 41’ 8.89”, -95° 23’ 20.19”.

2. The geocache that I would be interested in finding (if I had a GPS tracker), would be the following: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=c04d689f-3e24-4669-b35d-bea4cea28a61. The GPS corrdinates for this find are N 29° 41.195 W 095° 23.018.

3. Unitl today, I had never heard of this geocaching "hobby" that a lot of people around the world seem to be participating in. I think the whole idea of this treasure hunt is quite amusing. Some of the geocachers profiles state that they have been to many different states and countries, just to go look for these hidden treasures. If I had a GPS tracker, I would probably go find the item that is listed on the link above, just because it is located close to my job (somewhere between Holly Hall & El Camino). The hint that the person who hid the treasure gave was that it was "under square, above circle". They don't disclose what type of item it is, they just display the GPS coordinates to find it. This could be a fun hobby, if I had the spare time to actually go look for the stuff!

Maps #33

Activity 1:

I visited the website, http://www.har.com/, and I searched for a 4+ bedroom/2+ bathroom home in the Northwest area. The house that caught my eye contained 4 bedrooms & 2 1/2 bathrooms. It also contained marble floors, granite countertops, fireplace, sprinkler system, area pool, & a satellite dish. The only negative things that I did not like about the house was that it was built in 1993 (I want a newer home) and one of the rooms was painted green & yellow (not my taste in wall colors, but I could always re-paint them).

Activity 2:

I did not like the website, http://www.discoverourtown.com/, because it did not have a feature that would let you search by a certain area of town. It basically contained a map of Texas, and I selected Houston, TX, and it gave me a ton of listings for stores, restaurants, etc. However, I could not narrow down my search by a certain address or zip code. On the other hand, I really liked the website, http://www.walkscore.com/. I typed in my potential new home's address and it gave me a couple of listings of what was nearby. The closest restaurant was Koi Japanese Restaurant, closest library was HCPL Northwest Library, & the closest clothing store was Retro Chic. The only thing to watch out for when typing in the home's address at this site, is that it is best to type in the city and state as well. At first, I did not include Houston, TX, and my first search included sites in California (apparently California has the same exact address as the home here in Houston).

Maps #32

Activity 1:

Out of the "100 Things to do With Google Maps", I was curious to discover where there was daylight at this time around the world. So, I clicked on that question and it took me to the website http://www.daylightmap.com/. It was a neat site to explore, since it showed the Western hemisphere in daylight and the Eastern hemisphere was blacked out.

Activity 2:

I chose the Terra Server website and I clicked on the celebrity homes link. It displayed aerial photos of celebrity homes. They included Britney Spears, John Travolta, Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, and Paris Hilton's homes. Here is a link to an aerial view of Oprah Winfrey's home:

http://www.terraserver.com/view.asp?cx=258893.856537649&cy=3813345.25186546&proj=32611&mpp=0.5&pic=-1&prov=-1&stac=-1

Maps #31

When I need to get directions from point A to point B, I always rely on yahoo maps. If for some reason I did not like the directions that the site provided me, my next choice would be to look it up on mapquest. I did visit the google maps and I really liked that site, because it has a wider array of options. I typed in my home address and I had the option of viewing the streets around my neighborhood and I also could locate stores around my area. For example, I typed in the word "pizza" and it automatically displayed the names of several pizza places (and showed their location on the map), along with their addresses and phone numbers. This tool would have been very helpful to me a month ago, when I was trying to locate the nearest Blockbuster video store.