WEEK 8

Aside from the infernal weather conditions (not to mention, the record high temperatures), this week I accomplished something that I’ve wanted to complete for the past weeks. I actually got the glider moving along its trail at Google Earth. It looks so happy… I fixed the bearing, making it seem perfect as the glider makes turns on the line. The problem I had before was that I was looking at the angles from a flat surface point of view. However, since the earth is round, one has to take that into account when finding angles for the bearing, or else one would get results which would be way off.

 However, now there are other issues that I am facing. One of them would be to give the glider a constant speed. This sounds like a simple Physics problem; however, for some reason Google Earth is not getting the correct speeds at certain points. I’m not sure if this might be because of a rounding error or perhaps it might be assigning the speeds to the unsuitable lines. Whichever it may be, I’m finding it rather meddlesome.

Another issue which I face, with this project that is, is the angle the glider makes when it moves head down and head up. According to Katie, the glider makes a 26° angle when moving head up and also moving head down. Also, one more thing I would like to add to this are Widgets sorts of things, that way they would display the information retrieved by the glider as it moves through the points. I’m not sure if I’ll get that far. It’s not only that integrating those things into Google Earth would be difficult, BUT it would also be time consuming to be making graphics.

The weather this week has truly been a hassle. I was surprised when I went to Target to look for a fan, and found out that all Targets in this area sold out on fans and ACs. Luckily, Rite Aid still had 5 on that morning making it 4 after I walked out.

Below is an example of my latest work with the Glider.