Missed opportunities

My house was built less than two years ago and the satellite view of my home on Google Maps showed this: a lot of grass, but no house. It’s the lot in the middle of this angled view:

sat-old

I know that aerial photos are updated from time to time and I figured that I’d have plenty of time to prepare a little gimmick before the next update.

But inevitably, time caught up with me and the aerial imagery has been updated with the house but without my prank. Here’s the boring white roof of my house:

sat-new

This photo doesn’t clearly show that the roof is flat and only slightly angled. It’s not covered with tiles but with a heavy sheet of durable plastic. It’s white, presumably to keep it from heating up in the sunlight.

That color has another benefit: it’s a good background for painting! Wouldn’t it be neat to put my family logo*) on the roof of my house?? That was my plan, as soon as I learned that the roof would be white.

[qb]-logo 17x19 20120310

The logo is quite easy to do; I just need a bucket of black paint and a paint roller. And a long ladder to get up there… Of course I’d make the logo point north (instead of aligning it with the roof) so that it looks right on Maps. Sadly the solar collector is mounted in the middle of the roof and I haven’t yet figured out how I can make that blend in, but it would only matter in high magnification.

All other houses in the entire neighborhood have red-tiled roofs so this white roof really stands out. Putting that canvas to use would be a fun “little” Easter Egg! I can still execute this – it’ll just be longer until you can see it in Google Maps because we’ll have to wait for the next imagery update and who knows when that happens. I know that the updated imagery was taken roughly nine months ago, so there’s a significant delay even after they take new photos.

Now let’s hope I don’t procrastinate until I miss the next update, too!


*) Look for a post about that logo sometime soon. Well, probably later this year, but you may remind me!

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One Response to Missed opportunities

  1. oooh! that would be so cool to put that on your roof and have it show up on google maps!

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