Presenting

The Google Earth Tours!

Locales of DIE FASTING

Locales of GREAT MISCHIEF

Geography lovers, rejoice! Google Earth is an exciting free computer application that smoothly shows you recent satellite photography of everywhere on earth! It allows one to add or subtract details as needed, and to see the photography from different virtual heights. Quite amazing!

It also allows one to save one’s private “placemarks,” and to compile a group of placemarks into virtual "tours," which can then be shared.

Your author was unable to resist creating tours of the scenes of his 18^th Century novels as they exist today. Readers who are unfamiliar with Google Earth (and who have the requisite computer horsepower—PC or Mac—and broadband internet connection that make it work fluidly), may well be delighted to allow their curiosity regarding the books to introduce them to a 21st Century marvel.

Rest assured, the tours take pains to avoid spoiling the plotlines of the stories for those who haven't yet read the books!

Download Google Earth (25 MB). A standard installation process will be required.

Play with it a bit, it’s engaging and fascinating!

Once installed and ready to run the tour(s), I recommend at least temporarily choosing the following non-default Google Earth settings, prior to commencing:

Select Tools / Options from the menu

- Select the Touring tab

- Slow the Tour Pause option to 10 Seconds (or more if you’re a slow reader)

- Select Show balloon when tour is paused

- Note that you can easily Restore Defaults after having taken the tours

- Apply and OK

In the Layers area (which regular usage of Google Earth will induce you to manipulate constantly), I recommend selecting only Roads, Borders and Labels, and Terrain; and de-selecting all other items that may be present. Even the Roads can be a distraction in the less-populated areas, but they're helpful to keep one's bearings in the towns.

You might also wish to View / Full-Screen (F11). This can be toggled while the tour is in progress. The tour can also be paused and resumed as desired—or conducted entirely manually, step-by-step, by clicking the relevant buttons in the Places section.

You may also wish to de-select other Places, in order to concentrate on the tour.

Note: A simple convention with regard to naming places was the following:

KNOWN Historical Sites are shown in GREEN

APPROXIMATE Historical Sites are shown in YELLOW

FICTIONAL Sites are shown in RED

	Download the DIE FASTING Tour (11 KB). It takes about eight-and-a-half minutes to run.
	Download the GREAT MISCHIEF Tour (47 KB). It takes about eight minutes to run.
	Sorry: Still “under construction”

You’re welcome to save these tours to your hard drive. (The tours have been created as a “public service.”) However, it shouldn’t be necessary. If Google Earth has been fully installed, your system should recognize the files’ *.kmz extensions, and the tours should open Google Earth and run automatically (whether from the Internet or from your hard drive).

You're on your own from here on out (although I'll gladly respond to e-mail queries).

JONATHAN CARRIEL

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