entropy
archives
February 2003
6 Feb 2003![[link to here]](../../meta/flag)
The linky darkness of the web concealed the following sites for too
long. I link to them here in the confused hope that future
generations will discover them before I did.
- Photoshop Phriday
- Thematic collections of touched-up photos of funny non-existent
products. The quality varies, but there are some screamers in there.
I busted a gut reading the most recent two entries (Tech Toys
From Hell and Recalled Foods).
- declination maps
- declination calculator
- Everyone knows that a compass points north, right? Except it
doesn't point toward the geographic north pole ("true
north"), it points toward the magnetic north pole ("magnetic
north"), which is somewhere in Canada, slowly moving around, just to
keep you on your toes. Unless you happen to be in just the right
place, true north and magnetic north won't be quite the same. That
difference is called declination, and its value depends on where
(and when) you are. They could differ by more than 15 degrees in
either direction. If you want to understand what your compass is
telling you, you need to know the local declination. The US National
Geophysical Data Center has been kind enough to provide us with a
declination calculator. With that in
hand, there's little reason to look at the
maps, except that they're really cool.