I was out doing some yard work and spaced out while looking at a neighbor’s house. I had never really noticed before,but there is a bay window that doesn’t really fit in. Doesn’t look bad or anything just doesn’t quite look like it belongs. And for whatever reason the question stuck in my mind which was off on it’s own while I continued to work manually, finally it came up with the easiest solution to the problem of finding the answer as soon as I got back in side,which I did an hour or so later.
Apparently the thinking-things-through part of my brain was occupied in the yard work because only after I opened my laptop to navigate to Google street map archives from back when the house was built in the 1930’s to see if it was original, did I detect the flaw in that plan.:smack:
Don’t feel bad. I had to re-read your post a couple of times, and think about it for a while. I thought it was a great plan at first. It took a minute for the flaw to register.
funny story … my mom was talking about going to Hawaii for a vacation and I said with out thinking "well if planes or boats are too expensive we could always take the train… 45 seconds later and I realized my mistake and laughed
mom how ever was waxing eloquently on how cool a train trip would be …for the next 20 minutes ,
finally I said “mom think about it … wheres Hawaii”
“in the middle of the ocean”
"ok would they have train tracks going there "
her face turned red as she realized what I was getting at and she then flung a fork at me because I couldn’t stop laughing …
It strikes me as interesting and vaguely funny that we incorporate so much technology that is barely a peace old into our worldview so completely. I imagine that the worldview of kids today when they are adults will be vastly different than my own, because their baseline for “normal and minimum” is so much different than mine.
I’ve been planning my Eclipse trip for over a year.
I have the focal length of my lenses and the composition all figured out. I was thinking about the shot, and thought “man, it would really be cool if I could get the Moon in the shot, too - I wonder where it will be during the Eclipse.”
There was once a question in a travel forum, about where to go on a trip to see two things the poster had always wanted to see: the Aurora Borealis and the Midnight Sun.
I work with automated control systems. I have been doing this for a long time. The manufacturers have been around for a long time, too and the products are constantly changing.
In my business I work with other vendors a lot, especially the companies that integrate different subsystems into a primary controller.
So every now and then I get a call from some young person at one of these companies that goes something like this. "We’re doing worked over at the old Smith place and Mr. Smith gave me your number. He said you programmed his WidgetMaster system back in 1985. Could you send over the IP address info and associated HTML files for his project?
There is a way to do just that, ask a historian. One of my favorite web sites, Historic Aerials :
Go to the “viewer” and put in a location and search for it. It brings up a current map that you can move around and zoom in, and aerial photos that go back however far they are available in your area. Near me they go to 1952.
These are old black and white versions of Google maps. They are not real low altitude and get fuzzy if you zoom too close, but I use them all the time to identify the configuration of old buildings. It might well show the bay window. and by looking at various years, you can tell approximately when it was added. Should you want a better view without the watermarks, it is inexpensive to purchase the view, which will be zoomed in a bit better.
If it is a newer addition, your county auditor’s website may have older photos on the property report.
If you are in a rural area, there are other options as flight services periodically take nice close aerials of all the rural homes in a county, but availability varies widely by location. This is the best site:
Enter your state and county to see what is available. You can enter an address and let the site find what photos are close, or click on “browse the entire archive” to bring up a list of county maps indexed to rolls of film. It is a bit tricky to find your way through the rolls, if your area is on the maps I can offer tips to navigate.
One of my time killing hobbies is going through the unidentified rolls of film from the several counties I have interest in. I have identified and posted locations and descriptions of thousands of photos that I have cross referenced to old phone directories.
And there are other options, but they are hit or miss. In Cleveland, the county auditor took photos of every single building in the 1950s and these are archived.
Dennis
That was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, one of those with the little penguin that cries ice cubes. Bugs says he’d love to stay but he only has a week of vacation; the penguin whispers in his ear, upon which Bugs is overjoyed to learn that the days and nights there are six months long.
That reminds me of when my kids were small and prone to arguments. They’d yell at the bathroom door: “Mom! Mom!” And I’d yell back: “She’s not here. She took a train to Tahiti.”
Another problem with a solution - once, years ago, one of our contractors faxed in a bunch of submittals . . . including a copy of the paint color chip.
I was once having a really sophisticated conversation with a friend about his life in Japan. When he told me he had visited Cambodia, I asked if he drove there. :smack:
