The Internet May Actually Be Useful!

While I whiled away the evening hours a few days ago, surfing the Wide World Web of Useless Knowledge (do I really need to know how badly Britney is at parenting or how many different ways Chuck Norris can kill me with his thumb? - (647) - I accidentally stumbled across something actually useful to me.

Google Earth.

Since the existence of this program will be of no great surprise to most of you, I won't go into particulars, except to say that I had seen it before (when it first came out) and had promptly forgotten about it. So when I came back to it, to research a new project, I looked up my own neighbourhood, and discovered something new to me - a path through the woods near my house.


Big whoop - a path in the woods - this is a big deal? Not really, though I had walked past the entrance to this path many times on my evening walks, and never noticed it. It's simply not very visible from the road (it's a deer trail). But on Google Earth, it was as plain as day, and now it is part of my evening routine. It is a pleasant path to walk, through wooded fields and an open meadow, and I never would have found it on my own.

How odd, that the information that came from outer space, traveled thousands of miles across fiber-optic lines and coaxial cables, could reveal something so mundane in my own back yard.

There may be a future in this internet thing after all.