Lions and Gazelles on The Work Ethic

 

“Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

– Unknown

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”

– Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)

American statesman, scientist, and printer

luck: noun: a force that makes things happen

You want more luck? Be the force that makes it happen…

  1. Prepare. Work hard to be ready for the opportunities that are important to you. Research. Practice. Perfect.
  2. Be awake. Pay attention to the people, events, and things around you. Evaluate logically and trust your gut instinct.
  3. Take action. Put yourself out there. Explore. Be vulnerable. Make contact with people. Take risks.
  4. Expect positive results. Optimism improves your chances. If (when) you fail, embrace the lesson and continue on, smarter.

That’s it. Now go be lucky!

The Animals in Google Earth

 

Nearly six years ago, the “National Geographic Magazine” layer was added to Google Earth. While we haven’t discussed it much lately, it remains one of the great gems inside of Google Earth. You can find it under the “Gallery” layer in Google Earth.

One of the best parts of that layer is the “Africa Megaflyover” photos that were captured by Michael Fay. Michael took over 92,000 photos while flying across parts of Africa, and hundreds of them are visible in Google Earth. The quality of the images is stunning, as shown here.

 

camels.jpg

 

User “Reggie98” in the Google Earth Community built a great collection of placemarks to highlight the African animals captured in these photos, and organized them by animal type. The original post is from 2005, but still does a great job of showing off the animals.

 

cattle.jpg

 

There is a lot of great stuff to explore in the National Geographic layer, so go check it out. Also, with nearly 1.3 million subscribers, the Google Earth Community continues to be a great way to meet other Google Earth users and find answers to your questions. If you haven’t been out there in a while, we certainly suggest you check it out.

Watching the Lunar Eclipse

We’re always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world—what can we say, it’s the geek in us! Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20am PDT today, we were both excited and disappointed that this rare occasion wouldn’t be visible from our Mountain View campus like last year’s eclipse. We suspect we aren’t alone, so you’ll be glad to know that we’ve worked with Slooh Space Camera to let you experience the spectacle wherever you are in the world, in real time.


Slooh will host a live mission interface using Google App Engine that lets anyone not lucky enough to live in certain areas (South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia) take part in this rare astronomical event. It’s equipped with audio narrations from real-life astronomers so you can hear a firsthand, expert account of the event. You can also watch the live stream on the Google YouTube Channel or from the Sky layer in Google Earth (download this kml), while exploring the fascinating world that exists in our galaxy. Finally, those of you on the go can download the Slooh Space Camera Android app to view the images right on your phone.

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to view this event in the sky, we hope you’ll get the chance to step outside and indulge in the spectacle. For everyone else, we hope our moon madness helps brighten your day.