Saturday, December 01, 2018
Blur = focus
On my morning walk I noticed a yard that's completely dug up. It's not excavated rectangularly as you'll see when a sewer pipe or water main is being replaced, and it's not plowed for replanting grass. Looks more like the deep tumble that remains after a tree-cutter has ground up the roots. But the mess is much bigger than one tree root.
I didn't remember seeing any trees in that yard, so I checked Googlestreet for a past view. Sure enough, no trees there in 2011 when the googlepics were taken. Still a puzzle.
[Later, after a second look, I think it's just preparation for landscaping after all. They dug out some big rocks and old foundation pieces, giving the same effect as root-grinding. A reminder that this neighborhood is old enough to have some archeology. Many of the 1970s houses were replacements for 1910 houses.]
Googlestreet created another puzzle. A different house on that block is blurred out. The blur has a wide range so it affects most of the block. The blurred house is NOT a meth house or a perpetual crime scene; it's a nice neat orderly house. The house NEXT to the blurred house is more likely to be methy.
I'm pretty sure the blur is new. I've used Googlestreet fairly often for this type of memory-checking, and I would have noticed the blur.
Looking it up, turns out you can request to have your house blurred, and Google will do it. Seems counterproductive, since it dramatically FOCUSES attention on your house and makes people wonder what's going on there!
Labels: Heimatkunde
¶ 8:11 AM
