Philippines High-resolution Satellite Imagery on Google Earth - July 2013

Here's an update to the high-resolution satellite coverage of Google Earth/Maps in the Philippines. I've been making and updating a map like this for the past two years (see June 2012 and April 2011), so might as well keep it going.

Compared to the rather disappointing update last time, in the past year apparently Google's been doing a good job adding high-res coverage to a lot of new areas, including Boracay and Panglao. As you can see on the map, there's now significantly more red than non-red. Amount of coverage is now at 85.8%.

• 54.7% in April 2011
• 60.1% in June 2012
• 85.8% in July 2013

Only big glaring omissions on the map is the large swath of eastern Bohol, and the mountainous areas in inland Mindoro. The largest uncovered city is Kidapawan (population 125,447).

My Philippines Island Hopping Update

Last weekend I got to go to Cagayan de Oro for a day to attend a wedding, marking the first time I visited Mindanao, our country's second largest island. The visit was less than 24 hours, but at least I can say I've been there.

This is what the map of the Philippines would now look like if it only included islands that I have set foot on:

Un-visited islands are in very faint gray. Most of the smaller islands I've been to are too tiny to even be visible on this map.

Major islands I've visited (land area over 500 sq. km):

• Luzon
• Mindanao
• Negros
• Palawan
• Panay
• Leyte
• Cebu
• Bohol

Smaller islands, with the city or municipality they're part of:

• Siquijor
• Panglao (Panglao, Bohol)
• Mactan (Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu)
• Boracay (Malay, Aklan)
• Crystal Cove (off of Boracay, Malay, Alkan)
• Bantayan (Bantayan, Cebu)
• Malapascua (Daanbantayan, Cebu)
• Apo Island (Dauin, Negros Oriental)
• Balicasag (Panglao, Bohol)
• Virgin Island (Panglao, Bohol)
• Grande Island (in Subic Bay, Bataan)
• Maribago (Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu)
• Lagen (El Nido, Palawan)
• Miniloc (El Nido, Palawan)
• Dibuluan (El Nido, Palawan)
• Entalula (El Nido, Palawan)
• Pinasil (El Nido, Palawan)
• Vigan (El Nido, Palawan)
• Corregidor (Cavite City, Cavite)

The only large islands I haven't get been to are Samar, Mindoro and Masbate, and I don't imagine I'll be going there any time soon. Not much interesting to see there I'm afraid.

Philippines High-resolution Satellite Imagery on Google Earth - June 2012

Here's an update to the post I made last year, showing the extent of high-resolution satellite imagery in Google Earth/Maps. Areas in red have high-res coverage.

I started work on this hoping to see some real progression over the past year, but it was actually a bit disappointing to find that there wasn't a whole lot of additional area that was covered. A lot of the updates recently are just newer satellite imagery for places that already had coverage. Anyway, most of the important stuff is covered, including the top 70 most populous cities in this country. That's every city with a population above 160,000.

Still not covered are the tourism hotspots of Boracay and Panglao. Something to hope for.

712,958 Steps in 12 Weeks

A few months ago at work we got an irresistible offer to join a program meant to motivate people into keeping fit. Irresistible because it's completely free.
The deal is we get a free pedometer in the mail, and for 12 weeks we report our results on pedometer steps, exercise minutes, and weight management. I was less interested in the exercise and weight goals-- my weight is just fine. But I have come to develop a bizarre fondness for gathering data on things normally taken for granted, so having a pedometer was an alluring prospect.
My total: 712,958 steps.

Pedometer steps per day

My most active day (29,646 steps) was on May 29, when I joined a 10K fun run in the morning, then went to the Mall of Asia in the afternoon. Only one other day breached the 20,000 step level.

My least active day (1,138 steps) was on July 25, when I stayed at home all morning, slept all afternoon, and worked from home at night.

Pedometer steps per week, 12 weeks.

This weekly graph shows the same data but looks more stable, less affected by daily events.

Cumulative pedometer steps

The kit included a little booklet that I used to track my daily progress of steps, exercise minutes, and weight management. It also included a rough guide to how many steps you should be taking for a healthy lifestyle. The recommended number to aim for is 10,000.

• Under 5,000 is Sedentary
• 5,000-7,500 is Low Active
• 7,500-10,000 is Somewhat Active
• 10,000-12,500 is Active
• Over 12,500 is Highly Active.

For me, simply getting to work means walking for about 1 km-- or 1200 steps-- so I'm already pretty much assured of 2,400 steps per workday. Still, only one third of my days reached that magical 10,000 step target. Worse, another one third of my days failed to reach even 5,000 steps-- which is classified not only inactive, but sedentary:

Other numbers to look at:

• Days: 84
• Total steps: 712,958
• Most steps in one day: 29,646 (May 29)
• Least steps in one day: 1,138 (July 25)
• Average steps per day: 8488
• Most steps in one week: 88,813 (Aug 1-7)
• Least steps in one week: 36,869 (July 4-10)
• Average steps per week: 59,413
• Days with over 10,000 steps ("Active"): 28 (33%)
• Days with under 5,000 steps ("Sedentary"): 33 (39%)

Assuming an average stride length of 80 cm (a figure I came up with just now from a few minutes of Googling), my total steps in those 12 weeks would add up to 570 km, which is approximately the straight line distance from Manila to Cebu.

The 12-week program may be over but I'm still wearing the pedometer this very moment. I think I'll decrease the tracking of my progress to a weekly basis now though, lest I lose my mind in graphs and statistics.

Flood of Wedding Photos

Well we finally received the complete set of photographs from our wedding photographer, and I was immediately crushed by the sheer volume of it. The whole thing came on 10 DVDs. Not CDs, but DVDs, each of them with their storage capacity reasonably used up.

The photos are shot at a resolution of 4288x2848, and average about 5 MB per image, with the largest ones reaching 10 MB. I had to copy them straight from the DVDs to my external hard disk because I simply did not have space for them on the actual laptop.

Here's a breakdown of where all these pictures are coming from:

Granted, the vast majority of these are duplicates, and it's not uncommon to have 15 images of the same pose with minuscule variations:

It will take several days-- perhaps weeks-- to sort through them and clear out the redundancies, choose the favorites, and post them on Facebook (that is, of course, the point).

Here's a random image. Not even one of the greatest photos, just a good random one:

Credit must be given where it is due: Our wedding photographer was Rolando Pascua, who is based in Cebu, extremely talented, and worth every cent.

The YouTube Alphabet

YouTube's search does the same thing as Google does, suggesting the most popular search queries when you begin typing something. Here's a list of YouTube's top suggestions for each letter of the alphabet. Perhaps predictably, almost all of them are related to music.

• adele rolling in the deep
• bruno mars lazy song
• chris brown
• drake
• eminem
• friday rebecca black
• give me everything pitbull
• how to love lil wayne
• im on one
• justin bieber
• katy perry
• lazy song bruno mars
• michael jackson
• nicki minaj
• on the floor jennifer lopez
• party rock anthem
• queen
• rihanna
• super bass nicki minaj
• the lazy song bruno mars
• usher
• victorious
• wiz khalifa
• x men first class trailer
• youtube
• zumba

Special credit goes to Bruno Mars for taking B, L, and T.

The Google Alphabet

Start typing into Google's text box and it suggests to you the most common search queries. Here's a list of the top suggestions for each letter of the alphabet. The unsurprising result is a veritable who's who of internet giants, retailers, common search terms-- and for good measure, some companies I have never heard of.

• amazon
• best buy
• craigslist
• dictionary
• ebay
• facebook
• google
• hotmail
• imdb
• jet blue
• kohls
• lowes
• mapquest
• netflix
• orbitz
• pandora
• quotes
• redbox
• southwest
• target
• usps
• verizon
• weather
• xbox
• youtube
• zillow