August 24, 2003 Archives

Right after 9/11, a photo circulated on the Internet showing a man on the observation deck of the World Trade Center, facing a camera. Behind him, a plane flew directly toward the building. It, of course, was a fake.

In fact, tools like PhotoShop make it incredibly easy to turn the unreal...real. Such is the case with a satellite image making its way across the world, mostly through email. It has been resized and had the levels tweaked a bit, but it's the same image.

So far, I have gotten this from my father, my friend Howard, loads of viewers and other well meaning people. If it were true, it would be a pretty spectacular shot.

The real photo is actually a montage of a number of satellite images from a Defense Department Weather Satellite (DMSP). In order to get a fully clear view, and cover the whole country, the actual time frame of the image is Oct. 1, 1994, to March 31, 1995.

Few people look at visible satellite imagery at night, because all you can see are city lights... and normally that's not very helpful.

If you really take a good look at the phony image, it's done in a ham fisted way. The areas of removed light shouldn't resemble a black hole, but should be shades of dark gray. After all, there was some illumination from the moon. Also, there were pockets of lights still working, even within the blackout area. And, though wire reports implied otherwise, most of Connecticut was powered up and good to go.

When I first saw the photo, I knew it was wrong because I know the original very well. It's a classic. But, I also knew this satellite doesn't see the whole country at once, nor is the whole country ever cloud free.

There are before and after images from the blackout, and they are pretty amazing. Unfortunately, fact isn't quite as glamorous as fiction.

I am desperately trying to enable some good weather info on this site. I have Hamweather installed, and it works. But, I can't integrate it to my look.

I have tried NOAHweather, but am having no luck. Looking at some of the code makes it seem like there are hard coded paths that don't apply on my system.

I will try again, but it's driving me a little crazy.

In better computer news, I installed a wireless router and pci card for my friend Steve. Now, no more wires between rooms.

Though it didn't go 100% smoothly, it was pretty good. Belkin did an excellent job on the software and manual, making them nearly foolproof.