Monthly Archives: December 2007

Need to convert UTM to Lat / Long?

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My wife hikes the Palmetto Trail with her childhood friend. They call me “Compass” because I get on Google Earth and map out their route then download it into the GPS. The maps provided by the Palmetto Conservation Foundation have UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinates, which are a whole other ballgame from Lat/Long.

After 10 long minutes of scouring the web, I found one site that converted the UTM coordinates to latitude / longitude: The Canadian Spatial Reference System’s GSRUG at http://www.geod.nrcan.gc.ca/apps/gsrug/utm_e.php

The link I found was broken (from a 2005 keyhole bbs post) – so here’s the product description from the CSRS website:

Geodetic Survey Routine, UTM/TM to/from Geographic coordinate conversion. Compute either Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates from the geographic latitude and longitude of a point or the reverse conversion.

News 2.0

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or “Geeks are hard wired to one-up other geeks”

I suppose it would just illustrate my kinship with these souls to publish a formula from my hypothesis that “15 minutes of fame” is an outdated concept. Given that News 2.0 is presented on nearly ubiquitous media and is available on demand, the baseline fame “hang time” will vary as a function of the true mass appeal of the story. No longer will “15 minutes of fame” be awarded solely by media outlets – now spotlight seekers have the power to grab the attention of the media on the internet, who can pick up the story and award t minutes of fame. The formula is

t = (e^(1/x) + ln(x))
x = number of internet webpage views
f(10) = 3
f(100) = 6
f(1,000) = 8
f(10,000) = 10
f(100,000) = 13
f(1,000,000) = 15

Case in point, this story on WIRED caught my eye:

Star Wars-Obsessed Rocket Geeks Build and Launch an X-Wing Fighter

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/15-12/st_xwing

But it’s only worth sharing because of this response:

What Really Happened to the Life Size X-Wing