Ocean Floor to be added to Google Earth

Google Earth Fills Its Watery Gaps (via nytimes.com)
Google Earth, Google Ocean: mysteries of the seafloor are mapped for the first time (via guardian.co.uk)

This is big news to all the Google Earth users out there!

Google Earth is a great tool for anyone who has any need for maps on land, and now, you can find maps of the ocean too. This is great for anyone looking at boating channels or looking to SCUBA dive somewhere. This isn’t a small undertaking either, considering roughly 2/3 of the earth is covered by ocean.

There is also some talk about incorporating global warming trends into Google Earth.  I could understand how some simulations of it could be very cool to watch.

Al Gore is going to be headlining the debut of this new software, so expect some talk about Global Warming.

And of all the songs named “Ocean”, this was the first that popped into my head.  So enjoy listening to this as you read the linked article.

Sebadoh – Ocean

In very related news, I am currently working on a program to convert ESRI shape files to GeoRSS and KML documents, which will open in Google Earth.  I already have the code working, and am working on the UI now, so if anyone out there wants to be a beta tester, please contact me.

 

Another Weekend In New York

(photo via neatorama).

So, I was hanging out in Williamsburg the other day, and found a pretty nice Tea place.  I noticed quite a few of the people that would fit into this bingo board.   While I’m on the subject, I’d like to list some of my findings / adventures.

• Tompkins Square was a great place to eat our Russ & Daughters smoked salmon bagels.  We also saw a black squirrel here!  Why have I never seen a black squirrel outside of Manhattan?

• Cops drove into McCarren Park just to say “Hi!” to us, while were sitting on the bench (in the cold), maybe they thought we were like dealing or something, but really we were waiting for a friend.

• We decided we needed some spicy for for dinner, so we looked up Spicy on Yelp! and found Sigiri Sri Lanka Restaurant.  I love spicy food, but I opted for medium spice, because I had heard it is really spicy.  My two friends ordered the hottest, they teared up, and turned red, and my friends are the type that can take hot food well.  Aside from the spice, the food was very good, our waitress was amazing, and the prices were very reasonable.  I would suggest this place to anyone looking for a bit of Spice in the East Village.  I should be off to write my Yelp! review right now.

• I would also like a mention my favorite tea place on the Lower East Side, Teany.  It was also a find on Yelp! while I was walking down Houston Street, looking for something toeat/drink.  I love tea and vegan food, and this place has 98 varieties of tea.  They also get food straight from Vegan Treats in Bethlehem, which is a place that would make my list of top 15 things in The Lehigh Valley, if I ever got around to making such a list.  For a great review on this place, check out VeganFriendlyNYC (They get the photo credit).
  

 

Personalities

I’m not psychology expert, although I have taken three, yes three, undergraduate psychology classes… that means something, right? No? Hmm… in any case… I always thought the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was interesting at least for laughs.

I always loved how some tests would ask you questions, then dictate your answers back to you, as in the example below:

1. Do you like cheese? (Y / N)
2. Do you like ice cream? (Y / N)
3. Do you like cars? (Y / N)
4. Do you like trucks? (Y / N)
5. Do you like birds? (Y / N)

Analysis:

You enjoy dairy products of all kids, including the most sharp cheddar cheese and mild mozzarella, as well as both hard and soft ice creams. You are the type to enjoy long rides in the car. You would rather stay in a small vehicle, because you are uncomfortable being in or around large trucks for large amounts of time. You also would like to be far away from birds, because they cause you discomfort.

The Sixteen Types
ISTJ	ISFJ	INFJ	INTJ
ISTP	ISFP	INFP	INTP
ESTP	ESFP	ENFP	ENTP
ESTJ	ESFJ	ENFJ	ENTJ
The table organizing the sixteen types was created by Isabel Myers (From Wikipedia)

I know after reading that you probably think I’m a crazy nutjob, and you’re right. But what I’m trying to say is that a lot of these personality tests pretty much dictate back to you what you just told them, so it’s not really going to be very accurate at stereotyping you into neat little groups. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tries to standardize everyone into 16 groups as showing in the table to the right.

I’m not going to completely plagiarize the information in Wikipedia, because you can easily click a link and read the article yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

I went though looking for a free test to see what I come up as, I didn’t go into any detail to retake tests or anything to get better results, but I came up with this one, and the results seemed to mirror reality, and they didn’t seem as canned as the ones in my example test.

The test I took can be found here:

http://coldboot.no-ip.com/~mranostay/cgi-bin/keirsey.py

My results can be found below:

Your 60.0% Extroverted and 40.0% Introverted

Your 15.0% Sensing and 85.0% Intuitive

Your 40.0% Thinking and 60.0% Feeling

Your 10.0% Judging and 90.0% Preceiving

The results from this test point that my category is: ENFP.

I’ve taken the liberty to highlight the glaring errors in this website’s spelling, to point out that this is just for fun. If you want a real personality test, they do have some ones you can pay for linked from the Wikipedia page. I would probably suggest asking a professional for better information, because I don’t believe that people can be squished into 16 different, yet distinct groups. Especially when you realize some of the results seem to be close to the determining line.

In any case, this is a fun test to play with to see what kind of stereotypes can be made about your personality based on input. It is also interesting to see what Wikipedia has to say about your personality. Unfortunately you probably can’t learn anything about yourself that you didn’t already know… but hey, this is just for fun! Enjoy!