View from the Rockefeller Center, New York City

View from the Rockefeller Center in Virtual Earth

I got the view as close as I could, and I’m pleased to say that it’s a pretty close match, the Met Life building is almost in exactly the same position.

It got me thinking about a cool mash up that could be made, I’ve seen geotagging and applications like Mappr but something that would take it to the next level would be an application that utilises the Virtual Earth API and allows you to create a virtual tour around a city while looking at photos you’ve taken long the way. I guess it’s a bit like the Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth app that was previewed a while back, but with more of an emphasis on photos that you have taken.

Scenario: You’ve just been on holiday, say New York for example. When you get back and show them to friends and family you load up your favourite app and show them the boiler plate slideshow.

My Idea: You get back, load up the virtual tour app that shows you the Virtual Earth representation of New York, then you go around every location that you want to show photos of, mark them and create a ‘virtual tour’ while tagging what photos should be shown at each point. This not only gives you a more interesting thing to show people but it also allows them to visualise where exactly you visited.

If I could I would try to build a prototype, maybe one day I’ll learn how.

Time flies when you’re having fun – this is something that I’ve heard people say and understood the sentiment, but until this year I’ve never really had anything that earned the use of it.

If anyone had asked me a year and a half ago the question ‘Did I think I would have lived in America for 4 months’ I would have told them the only answer that would come to mind – No.

A lot has happened since the start of this year – most of it flashing past before I’ve had time to realise.

The beginning of the year saw the end of the first year at Kingston, to think that months had past from the time I first moved in, moving back to Torquay for the summer and leaving Kingston behind was strange enough, it doesn’t seem much of a problem in most people’s eyes but moving around so much, from uni to home from home to America back to home and now back to uni again takes its toll on you.

Summer came and went, in between was a hail storm, application processes for Kingston Study Abroad and UNC Charlotte Enrolment, Visa Application and anything else you can throw in for good measure.

August 15th came and I found myself 30,000 feet above ground cruising across the ocean in a US Airways 757 literally flying into the unknown. After a few days things settled down from mayhem to just madness and that’s where it pretty much stayed until the end.

Every day that came in between was an experience that I will never forget, the people, the place everything – My only wish is that I could still be there…

The future looks uncertain, next on the endless list of things to do is to find a flat, I can only imagine what a mess that is going to be…

Looking back 2006 was probably the best year of all so far, I just hope the trend continues.

To all that I know, Happy New Year and I wish you all the greatest success for 2007…whatever it brings.

The further you get towards the present you will see less updates and less of the ‘good ‘ol’ posts that I was once famous for. It has been noticed several times and constant reminders have been given but the fact is life got in the way, I’m not saying there wasn’t time – I’m just saying that I used the time in different ways.

The ramp up to coming over here to North Carolina was pretty stressful add to that the impending terror threat it was hard to find the time to sit down, clear my mind and write a good post.

Since coming over here I’ve posted a few, but nothing compared to the past, like I said, life got in the way.

I’ve written a few posts on saying goodbye’s and leaving, and I guess you can call this another one, In less than an hour I’ll be leaving my apartment here in Charlotte and jetting back home into the sunset.

Of course in reality there is no such this as ‘jetting off into the sunset’ we all know the metaphor, and using it within the context of going back to England isn’t really the right use.

The time I’ve spent over here has truly been a wonderful experience and I wish it never had to end, the fact is if it weren’t for things outside my control I would stay as long as I possibly could, the time has gone so quickly, I guess time flies when you’re enjoying yourself.

For all the people I’ve met over the past 4 months, to all the people that brightened up my day and to all the people that cared I wish you all goodbye, I wish you all the best in the future and I hope that someday we will meet again.

Farewell

The first stop was the ABC Studios a few blocks from our hotel, then on the way back a stroll through Central Park, I would have liked to get more photos of it from different parts but there just wasn’t the time left to spend too long walking around it.

At around 9.30 we got back to the hotel and put our bags into a room where they could be locked up and stored until we arrived later in the evening. Once that was taken care of it was out again, this time the destination was Lower Manhattan.

Statue of Liberty

We took the subway and arrived in Lower Manhattan. We’d been advised that it wasn’t worth going up the Statue of Liberty – and it was good that we were because the queue would have taken us longer than the Empire State queue.

Instead of taking the ferry across to the Statue of Liberty we decided to take the Staten Island Ferry Tour around the Hudson River – which took us around the island of Manhattan showing us the Brooklyn Bridge, World Trade site and Ellis Island (the island where the Statue of Liberty is). It lasted about an hour and gave us a look at the city from a different perspective.

After the ferry tour we walked around Battery Park and took some photos or it and a building used in Men in Black. After it was time to take the subway back up to 5th Avenue and walk around time square again to visit the Rockefeller Centre.

Rockefeller Centre

After the spectacular view from the Empire State Building the previous evening we decided to do the same during the day to give us what we hoped was another spectacular experience. Unlike the Empire State building we didn’t have to queue for hours (if we had to we wouldn’t have been able to go up).

Once we were up we weren’t disappointed with what we saw, the view was almost as good as at night, the weather conditions were slightly hazy but there was hardly a cloud in the sky. The view from the top was spectacular, seeing the city in both times of day from that high up was something I really wanted to do.

We did some last minute souvenir shopping once we got back down on terra-firma and again wandered around taking in all we could in the time we had remaining.

At this point it was time to leave, four days and not much sleep later it was all over, back to Charlotte.

There were 100 more things that I would have liked to do, New York is a great place and I loved every minute of it, hopefully someday I will return…

However this was not one of those days, after raining on our parade (literally) the day before, we awoke to glorious blue skies – something we’d hoped would happen but weren’t ready to play the odds game on.

Like every other day we woke up at some unearthly hour, lacking the major ingredient of sleep we managed to drag ourselves outside and get one with the day without too much resistance from our bodies.

Once we were out in the bright Manhattan sunshine we walked about taking as many photos as possible, wandering around the odd shop that we happened to walk past on the way. On the way we saw a spectacular site – a steady stream of about 50+ Santa’s walking the streets waving and ringing bells…..Don’t ask me why but it was pretty funny to watch.

This is not the first time we’ve seen a group crazy people wearing red walking the streets, in DC we saw the same thing expect they weren’t Santa’s they were just people dressed in red running a mini marathon for charity….coincidence, I think not.

NBC Studio Tour

The previous week we’d booked tickets to go to the NBC Studio’s and go on a tour in the Rockefeller Centre. Before the tour we looked around the NBC shop to see what amazing stuff was there, and of course I just had to get the Studio 60 T-shirt and Baseball hat, in fact I probably would go as far as to say I would have bought the entire shop if everything had a Studio 60 logo.

I’ve never really been in a TV studio before so it was a great first time experience, the studio’s were pretty small and although I had no idea about the shows that they were for it was still a great way to spend an hour or so.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos so the only ones I have are of the outside.

Empire State Building

After the NBC tour and wandering around Time Square taking photos and grabbing a quick bite to eat we decided to head on over to the Empire State Building – thinking that there wasn’t going to be that long a queue since it was about 5pm).

3 Hours of waiting later – and after missing sunset we got up to the 86th floor, the sight was possibly the most spectacular of the entire trip – overlooking the entire of New York City.

After taking nearly 200 photos from what seemed like the top of the world we went back to the hotel and dumped all the shots we’d got so far onto our laptops to clear some much needed space for the next place on the list.

New York at Night – This City never sleeps

Knowing that we didn’t have much time left we hurried out with the intention of taking photos of Time Square at night, we packed our cameras, tripods and spare equipment and hit the sidewalk.

First thing was food, we hadn’t had much all day and we were pretty hungry so we decided to go to the ESPN Zone, an ESPN Burger later we were pretty full, the ESPN Zone is a pretty cool place, knowing that the great Nick Landry once visited.

When we’d finished we strolled outside and explored the hub of the city – Time Square.

It’s true what they say about New York, the city never sleeps, there is always things happening – shopping, entertainment – you name it there is probably somewhere open where you can do it.

While we were walking around we saw a few NYPD bikes parked up ready to spring into action, we asked one of the cops if we could get a picture on them.

We spent several hours walking around, taking photos and looking in the odd shop but soon it came time to leave – we didn’t want to but we knew if we didn’t we would end up walking the streets all night, by this time it was 2am and we were wide awake taking in the wonders we saw.

While waiting for the train to arrive at the subway station we enjoyed what was almost a mini concert, the guy singing was not your average homeless person, he was dressed very smart and seemed to be doing it because he enjoyed the music rather than anything else, it gave the station a nice community feel to it since everyone in their was mesmerised by his performance.

There is a saying, If you can do, if you can’t teach, there are a lot of teachers and professors that I admire and respect for their teaching style and aversion to the crap that is sent their way, people at Westlands will know the people I’m talking about, those few teachers earn respect from their students because they exude qualities of genuinely nice people, the others that have attitude problems and a myriad of other personality disorders never have and never will have my respect and are what is wrong with the teaching profession.

The joke in this story is that the people we expect to teach us in a university are at times worse than the people in state education.

For the most part professors are good, there are the exceptions of course, some of them you have to wonder why they bothered coming to work in the morning because their focus defiantly isn’t on getting people to learn – but 99% of them are genuinely passionate about their work, to the people who are the rest of this post isn’t referring to them.

Right here, right now, I’m bringing into question the role of the so called ‘teaching assistants’ that lecturers seem to have here.

Teaching Assistants (if we can call them assistants) seem to be regular students that are taking the course, and have an interest in either becoming a teacher or just showing off their over sized ‘I know everything’ ego. Not only do they think they know it all but they also think everyone else should – one in particular – my only question to him is WHY are we at university in the first place: to learn….

So here are the items on the charge sheet:

1. TA ignores me and Shane and helps everyone else – meaning that at the end of our final project evaluation he hadn’t seen ours, so we had no mark, despite the fact we had it ready a full 2 hours before everyone else.

2. He grades Lloyds lower than it should have been and decides that he’s going to have an attitude problem when Lloyd asks a question

3. He then proceeds to walk off

4. After his evaluation deadline, he tells us that if he hasn’t looked at it then its ‘tough’ and we get a 0 – forgetting of course that we’d been waiting 2 hours for him to come over.

5. When he realised that we had been waiting he gave us 3/10 for a project that he hadn’t even seen, which was less than we should (and would have got) if he had a clue and bothered to come over.

The guy is a moron and quite frankly shouldn’t be anything to do with teaching.

The funniest thing of all is that he obviously hasn’t read our files, we have a track record of “rocking boats” where things like this are concerned.

The first thing on the agenda was to go and watch the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade, we were out the door by 8am and wondered around trying to find somewhere decent to watch from. The weather was nothing more than a typical Manhattan day from what I can tell, dull and pouring with rain so standing outside wasn’t the greatest thing (the result of this is that I now have a cold). We stayed for a few hours and then decided to go back inside and warm up, we were soaking and cold so it was a welcome event.

The next item on the agenda was to go into Times Square, we were warned about the amount of people that would be there but we weren’t prepared for the amount of people that actually were there, plus the weather was still an issue. We had two tasks in Time Square, the first was to find where the camera on www.earthcam.com was and the second was to find David Blaine. The first one was successful however finding David Blaine was a different matter, every cop we asked had no idea where he was and although we didn’t explore too much we still have no idea where he was hiding.

The final stop was to Ground Zero – the site of the World Trade Centre. It’s hard to believe that it’s a little over 5 years since I awoke to the breaking news, seeing it in real life after seeing it so many times on TV makes you realise just how much damage was done.

After we decided to go back and dry off and spend the rest of the evening getting over the days walking ready for another day, this time (we hoped) with better weather.

Half a day….

That’s how long I spent sitting on a cramped coach, it’s one thing sleeping…I like sleep, sleep is good – boring – but good, dreams are good too, I have nothing against sleep, the only problem I have is sleeping in a moving vehicle with very little leg room and uncomfortable seats, consequently all of this put together – my demand for sleep and the reasons for me not to be able to sleep – means that little sleep was consumed on the journey.

The first coach driver we had was a pretty cool guy, but obviously on laws prohibit them from driving for 12 hours straight so we had to change drivers.

You would expect a person who was a coach driver to know how to drive a coach, or even how to start one, the first driver had to give the replacement a crash course in how to turn the ignition off of all things, and from what I can gather he was under the impression the first driver parked somewhere other than the ground….

Along the way we stopped off at the New Jersey Turnpike for breakfast and a rest from sitting down (we were about 30 minutes from the hotel, I don’t think anyone was in the mood to do very much else).

Our driver managed to excel even more and took about 15 minutes to find the hotel – driving down every road except the one he was supposed to and then managed to park in a place causing the maximum amount of disruption.

By the time we actually got to the West Side Y we only had about 45 minutes till the scheduled city tour, so we dumped our bags and cursed the fact that we hadn’t had any sleep.

The City Tour took a few hours and showed us some of the main parts of Manhattan, we stopped off at Greenwich Town and had a subway before starting the journey back to the hotel.

Some of you may know that on Thanksgiving Day there is a parade through Manhattan, the night before they blow up the big balloons that will be used the next morning…we found this out while wandering around and decided to ‘follow the crowd’ and take some photos of the balloon blowing ceremony.

More photos and commentry to come…

It will be a well needed break, of course there is a list of places to see and take photos of, and of course there will be the usual funny videos and photos to go with them.

And of course I will have lots of photos to upload…

1x Canon EOS 350D + 2x 1GB CF Cards + Battery Grip = Lots and Lots of photos…

The final score was UNCC 88 – Hofstra 82, here is the part that I would normally start talking about what happened during the game but I’m not really an authority on basketball so let’s just assume I’ve just given the play by play and you’re all informed about what happened.

As usual everything we go to include at least one crazy thing, it’s almost as if they throw it in with every ticket they sell to us, I can’t say I’ve seen the words ‘Buy one ticket get a crazy person free’ or even ‘for every ticket you get a crazy person half price’ on anything, but I guess something’s are in the small print.

The craziness extravaganza consisted (for the most part at least) of crazy mascot shaped things doing what crazy people do and messing around, round one consisted of propelling soft but possibly deadly projectiles into the crowd with a customised mortar based weapon, round two was a game of mascot basketball…

Now remember that these are mascots – people dressed up in furry suits that are about as durable as an iron bar in the Arctic, this combination made something that was pretty entertaining to watch, after all everyone likes to watch other people making fools out of themselves.

With all this craziness you would think that there isn’t any more of it within a 2 state radius, but nope, there was still enough for the Brass band to be infected with the spell too, either that or the gyrations and almost performance worthy um…performance was just part of the elaborate plan to steal craziness away from Norm the Niner.

Of course, most people aren’t reading this blog post for the not so up to the minute score information, they’re reading it to get the link to the photos of the cheerleaders (and who can blame you)