links for 2010-10-03

Why on Earth would we want to do that, in an era of glossy animation-rendering engines, game-design ogres and sophisticated avatar worlds? Because if you want to give young students a grounding in how computers actually work, there's still nothing better than a little experience at line-by-line programming.

Liquid Galaxy is a cluster of computers running Google Earth to create an immersive experience. It started as a Google 20% project, and just kept growing! We built Liquid Galaxy installations in Google offices across the globe, and brought them to over a dozen different conferences. People liked it so much that we decided to share it. The latest public versions of Google Earth for Linux, Mac and Windows all include the features that make Liquid Galaxy work. This site documents how to use them, and all the supporting scripts and configuration files we use. We even put up the plans for our custom frame.