Although I have been in New Mexico so many times I’d never be able to count them, I had plotted and outlined my latest novel project using my memories of the locations, and fresh looks through internet mapping services such as Google Maps and Terraserver. I located all of the important locations that way. I would often pick a location based on travel times or old memories, and then refine my choices, once I had a satellite photo of the place. I located lots of interesting locales that way, such as the roundhouse in Las Vegas, New Mexico, or the road side park about 40 miles north of Roswell.<\/p>\n
But when the opportunity came to make this trip and eyeball the locations first hand, in the back of my mind, I wondered just how good the internet mapping was. After all, some of the aerial photos and topo maps are twenty years old. A lot can happen in that time.<\/p>\n
So today, when I saw the roundhouse come into view here in Las Vegas, I was gleeful. (People who know me may try to imagine what that was like. Anyone ever see me gleeful? Anyone?)<\/p>\n
There it was, right where the satellite photo said it was, in just the exact condition I had expected ( and had counted on while outlining the novel). I snapped a few photos and located my motel, one that looked just like I had imagined. <\/p>\n
Tomorrow, I have more scouting to do in this town, but for now, everything looks great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although I have been in New Mexico so many times I’d never be able to count them, I had plotted and outlined my latest novel project using my memories of the locations, and fresh looks through internet mapping services such as Google Maps and Terraserver. I located all of the important locations that way. I… Continue reading Validating the Internet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[420,192,56],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-R6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3293,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292\/revisions\/3293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}