Google Street View went live in Australia the other day. When they first launched this last year in the States, it was just a handful of intersections in major cities, and I thought “lame” and went back to snowboarding with Samuel L. Jackson.
It’s only just now that I’ve discovered that Street View in Australia (and presumably, for some time, in the United States) actually has hundreds of thousands of photos from virtually every street in the country, from the esplanades of Sydney to the remote desert highways of the Northern Territory. Notable absentees are Kalgoorlie and most of the Top End, including Darwin. Nonetheless, this is fucking amazing.
Here’s my house!
My car isn’t there, so I must be somewhere out and about. It’s not parked on the edge of the road outside Warwick Train Station either, so I can’t be at university. I’m probably at work – but Google was FUCKING LAZY and didn’t bother to do every carpark in the country as well as every road, so we’ll never know for sure. I’m out there somewhere in that frozen moment of time. Judging from petrol prices, that frozen moment was quite some time ago – last year at least:
At the same time it can’t be any earlier than about October or November, when I was driving to work and saw a group of people on the side of the road clustered around a guy who’d taken a spill on his motorcycle, and who later died.
Here’s the driveway where, in mid-2004, I had an accident of my own and could easily have died. I used to ride my bike at top speed down the footpath on this hill every day on the way home from school, despite Chris’ warnings that a car could back out of a driveway and I’d run right into it. As it turned out, he was right, and one afternoon I woke up lying on the verge of this house with a broken arm. I note that they still haven’t trimmed that view-obscuring hedge.
I think this is an awesome little toy. If you had decent broadband and mountains of spare time you could take a virtual roadtrip from one side of the country to the other. In fact, sooner or later I expect to see a blog doing just that, as dull as stretches of it might be…
There’s the usual hysterical panic from the tinfoil hat brigade, who claim that it’s a breach of privacy to be able to see a photos of people walking down the street, or the outside of somebody’s house. Whatever. Here’s a news flash: when you’re in public, people can see you!
11 comments
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August 14, 2008 at 12:18 am
sunrise089
So how long before you’ve location tagged every place in End Times?
August 14, 2008 at 1:47 am
grubstreethack
Never because it actually reveals how grossly inaccurate most of my descriptions are.
Curiously, though, Eucla is a mysterious gap in the otherwise well-covered Eyre Highway.
August 15, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Smiley
The Gypsy Jokers should let those nice Google Street View people into Kalgoorlie.
August 18, 2008 at 12:52 am
ellishaaaaa (thats not my email addy...derr)
he mitch you smell :)
just thought id be nice and let u know
seeing as u were nice enough to throw the golf ball at me last night lol
btw… why would u put ur house picture and adress on the net on ur blog
havent u ever heard of stalkers!! lol
and what does the school oval look like on that google thingo? does it give overhead shots? or is that google earth as opposed to google streets or whatever?
August 18, 2008 at 12:53 am
ellishaaaaa (thats not my email addy...derr)
*hey
(lol)
August 18, 2008 at 3:25 pm
grubstreethack
Well well well, if it isn’t Little Miss GAVE UP ON HER OWN BLOG, hysterically shrieking about stalkers!
They’re all integrated. On the Intertron. You can ogle the school oval to your heart’s content for free!
August 18, 2008 at 7:07 pm
ellishaaaaa (thats not my email addy...derr)
hahaha i didnt give up on my blog. i just changed sites is all.
seeing as u and chris knew my one i left it. lol.
by the way, what course do you do at uni? creative writing?
August 18, 2008 at 9:55 pm
grubstreethack
I sure do, and right now I have to write an in-depth dissertation about genre narrative techniques!
And your friends are supposed to know about your blog. What’s the point in having one if nobody reads it? How would people know what to think about things if I didn’t regularly update this one?
August 19, 2008 at 10:15 pm
ellishaaaaa (thats not my email addy...derr)
haha well now theres a point i hadnt thought of:
we’re all incapable of thinking and therefore rely on the genius and wit of ur blog to guide us poor disavantaged peoples.
where would we be without u? lol
haha im just kidding. urs is actually interesting.
especially the one where u described ur near suicidal experience with the whole diving thing lol. so silly.
anyways… is the course any good? what u gonna use it for after u finish it??
ur at uwa yeh?
August 20, 2008 at 12:04 am
grubstreethack
It’s growing ever more tedious and I’m going backpacking after I finish it and I’m at CURTIN THANKS FOR NOTICING
August 20, 2008 at 4:32 pm
ellishaaaaa
haha how was i to have noticed that? lol. but that does make more sensecoz when i went there on sunday that was the first id really heard of the course and then realised u did that. u have a short fattish woman with short brown hair as one of ur lecturers? she was sorta scary… yet also boring… lol