Oh! The Places You'll Go!

In 2004 I was working for a trade-show display company; when things were busy, the work could be a bit frantic. When things were slow, they were really slow. So slow that I spent many long hours fiddling around in my office, trying to stay engaged. I could only do so much advance work for the clients, I could only winnow over the display details so much, until there was just not much to do at all. I started exploring the web, following anything that piqued my interest farther and farther afield. I got interested in the history of the Distant Early Warning system of radar bases in the far north, and found a website of remembrances and pictures from DEW line veterans; I read every page-it took almost a week.

After that, I got curious about live webcams, and started searching for them. Only five years ago, there were fewer than you would think, perhaps-or, maybe more than you would expect. One of the very first I found was Kitt Peak National Observatories north and south cams:

http://www.noao.edu/kpno/kpcam/

I had visited Kitt Peak in 1995, a wonderful break during a lazy drive from Tucson to Las Vegas, which trip is properly the subject of some later post. Suffice it for now to say I found the place a bit magical, the peak thrusting up from the surrounding desert, the views beautiful, and the thought of all the amazing astronomical science being done there a bit intoxicating, for a geek like me. Indeed, when I came home from that trip, I made it a point to periodically log-on to the site's BBS (the WWW was still a-borning then) to browse the posts of different grad students and astronomers working there (blogging was still a gleam in the eye of tech-types then, too). I even engaged in duplex chats with the occasional bored astronomer, sitting around while the telescopes compiled images.

Finding the cam link was sooo coool! And while I've never lost the taste for searching for public cams, Kitt Peak is the only one I have bookmarked on every computer I use-sometimes I just have it up on the little Mac laptop at my side while I read, or play guitar, or watch t.v. It's my window on a beautiful, exotic place from my travels, and I get a kick out of watching the sunrise, or sunset, or daily activities the cams show.

There are some wonderful cams out there, and many aggregators to help one search for them. I'm not going to load this particular post with links, but I think maybe I should take a page from Bet (of Betland fame) and start a "Cam of the Week" recurrent theme.

So let's start here, with my beloved Kitt Peak. I encourage all commentators and lurkers to send along suggestions for this feature--after all, it would be a full-time job to seek them all out, and evaluate for uniqueness or general interest!