House of the rising Moonglum

Anyone who knows me a little bit, knows that I am a bit of a map lover (neither cartophile nor chartophile are in the OED). Anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE maps. So I am pretty much a fan of the google maps. I have been using it for years (MapQuest before that) and have generally come to trust it. In particular it’s directions tend to be superb. So Imagine my surprise when I was plotting a trip to Indy and the address that I was supposed to be going to didn’t exist. Somewhat humorously the satellite imagery is more recent than their map data:

It’s not the missing roads that bother me so much as the missing connectivity. I can go straight up Woodland, I don’t need to go up Zionville. I guess NavTeq needs more employees in Indianapolis. Fortunately for my work, county boundaries don’t change that often.

Hey all you people who are going to be asking me for computer help next week. Don’t forget to let your auto-update run. You will probably be fine anyway since most computers deal with incorrect dates and times, however there are some things that may become more difficult. As such these updates will let your computers know that DST has changed.

A note on time: The sun is not overhead at noon (though it is close). Unless you live on 24 very precise sections of the earth, the sun is directly overhead at some time within a half hour of noon. Not only that, but those sections of the earth move from day to day! To see how far off you are, check out the Analemma for your location. Time is just a way of coming up with a common consensus for when we need to do certain things. It turns out that changing that common consensus is much more difficult than simply changing the time. (Also, Ben Franklin was an understated, sarcastic prat, which is probably why I like him so much.)