Happy New Year - We all hope that 2009 will be a great improvement over 2008 in many ways, but still it was a very good year for PyramidCam and we are sincerely thankful for that. Happy New Year and THANKS to Rami and Karim and their families; to STARDOT TECHNOLOGIES in California for our first-class server, excellent support and the best possible equipment; to Rami's faithful office staff at the SIAG hotel; to Empress Ginger & Hathor (Forums); to Diane in Indiana for all those super image captures; to 'Stoker the Cat' for giving up her 'live cam' to the birds this year; to all our friends and 'PyramidCam Crew' who have sent me (Jim) questions, comments, and screen captures; and to Sandra here in Saxonburg for reminding me that something needs fixing (on the site too).
Jim & Vance
Thanks to Diane in Indiana for capturing this meteor trail and sending it to us. November and December often provide images of meteors entering the atmosphere, or in this case passing through the atmosphere. This example is traveling at an upward angle from left to right and back from the redish head there are trailing two hotspots. Due to the high speed of the object, our camera exposure causes the light spread out over the image. It thus appears that we have captured three pieces of one meteor that has perhaps broken up after entering the atmosphere. Since we have an angle and exposure time, we could estimate the object's speed at various given heights above the earth. To be visible, a meteor must be within 120 miles of an observer, become visible on average at 55 miles above the earth's surface and burn up by 50 miles above the surface. This meteor is moving between 50,000 and 150,000 mph. Pretty awesome.
November 19th -
Here is a neat site that produces time-lapse videos from your live camera. Timecam.tv
Is this sweet, or what?
BirdCam back Live! In response to a 'diminishing number of requests' and because it's just started to snow, the BirdCam in our backyard here in Saxonburg, PA has just gone live again. If you want to see what our little town looks like, go to HistoricSaxonburg.com, a website that I built for the Historic Saxonburg John Roebling Society (for free of course) - John Roebling founded Saxonburg, invented wire rope and built the Brooklyn Bridge. BTW, should your require a website built for your good selves or your business (not for free), please contact me - I've designed and deployed quite a few, including this one.
November 9th - The Two PyramidCam sunsets from the 8th were featured on Coast to Coast on Sunday. (see Listener's Emails).
Moon setting over the Pyramids on Thursday, November 6th
Image date: 9/13/08 - This was a PyramidCam image captured off a live cam site by one of our Forum members who kindly forwarded it to me. From our experience it could not be a bird, plane, helicopter, insect, camera artifact or kite. I don't have a full size original, so it is not as clear as it could be.
PyramidCam sunset on November 8th - How can it get any better? Thanks Diane for zeroing in these two great shots and forwarding them to us. For the full size image go here...When you get there, just click on the image.
For the full size image go here..
November 8th - I've taken down the BirdCam for the season. Most of them have flown south and it's pretty drab and dreary back there in the woods now that all of the leaves have come down. If we could just get Stoker the PyramidCam cat to choose one place in the house to sleep, I'd put the camera on her again. Will work on it for a winter project. I know a lot of you have been missing her. Thanks.
Last night's sunset was spectacular with the sun setting directly between Khufu and Khafre in very clear air. I'll have images of that in a bit.
November 2 - Here is a location map showing PyramidCam viewers for each day - let's fill up this map and pick up some new countries
October 23 - Check out the PyramidCam Sunset Image for Today from our Daily Image Archives.
Personal Update - I (Jim Sorenson) have been pretty busy making ends meet back in the U.S. after many years living as an expat in Cairo, so the site has suffered much for fresh content lately. The camera at the Pyramids continues to run very reliably, however, and you will probably be here for the images anyway and that's great. If you would like to have more access to web content that concerns Egypt and the Pyramids, join our very active Forum where you will find others of like mind. You will be welcomed by our very friendly and able administrators and if you are scheduling a visit, there is the place to ask questions and receive comprehensive answers from members 'who've been there and done that' a lot more than than once. So join the PyramidCam Forum and mingle with the experts. TTFN
Our Photo Album is back. We have a new Photo Album that presently contains all the images from the old PhotoBlog, but without captions or comments. I'll add those as we go, meanwhile it's going to be a challenge for those of you who have not seen these images before to figure some of them out. LOL. Once we are up and running a bit, we'll allow viewer uploads of Pyramid Pics and the Photo Albums will be directly linked (bridged) to our Forums so members there can upload also. Our first goal will be to collect Pyramid Pics from as many different countries as possible - an ambitious first target is 50, and we'll put them on a map for you.
PyramidCam on Google Earth - Here you should find our placemarks that locate the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Sound and Light Show and our camera position. You will have to have Google Earth installed to view. I've just re-installed this so that it goes directly to the camera position.
Weather - Go here to have a look at the latest weather activity in Egypt. The annual winter - Spring storms are starting and you can watch them roll in from North Africa bringing rain, wind, sand and cooler weather to the area.
Best Images Slideshow - a Google Image Album of some of our best images captured over the past two years at PyramidCam.
Welcome to PyramidCam. I've carried out a minor redesign to allow the page to load faster and to make it possible to better organize our content. The image gallery needs a total overhaul and I'm working on that. We capture an image every 30 seconds and have been doing so 24/7 for the past 30 months - do the math and you'll see what we're faced with.
The Forum is back up and there you will find a number of friends checking in who are deeply interested in Egypt and the Pyramids. We also have a rolling news feed that ferrets out and posts articles about Egypt, the Pyramids and Egypt archaeology. The Forum is a good place to check in before you begin your plans to visit as many of our members have made more than one trip to Cairo and can help you with most any of your questions about what to expect and what to do after you arrive.
Background - PyramidCam was started in 2005 by Jim Sorenson and Vance Kozik with the indispensable support and assistance of Rami Siag of Siag Hotel and Travel. Our camera is deployed from the top of the Siag Hotel in Giza, the best possible vantage point to view the entire Pyramids Plateau. StarDot Technologies provides our IP webcams, which produce the highest quality images possible - and which are so reliable that we have not had a single minute of down time due to camera failure over the past two and a half years.
Support - Our site is entirely "not for profit" and therefore we very much appreciate it when you check out the ads and the websites of our partners - The ads go some way to support the project, but not nearly far enough to prevent us from going out of pocket from time to time to keep things running. Donations via PayPal are also very much welcome, indeed.
Purpose - PyramidCam was conceived principally to provide a unique high quality view over time of the Pyramids at Giza for those around the world who might never have the opportunity to visit - we meant for it to be the next best thing. We also wish to encourage Egypt tourism and judging from the millions of viewers we are reaching and the many many emails that we have received praising the site, wondering at the unique power and beauty of the Pyramids and (the writers) promising to make a visit at the first opportunity, we know we have succeeded, at least in some small degree.
Weather - the NetCamXL IP webcam that we are running features an external weather station and you can read the real time temperature, humidity and barometric pressure directly from the station's sensors if you check just under the date and time in the upper left hand corner of every live image. Each image will give you the actual date, time and weather conditions in Cairo as well as a live view of those weather conditions.
PyramidCam Items and Features - In the past we have posted images, stories, reviews of local trips, movies and other items of interest concerning Egypt and the Pyramids here on the home page. We will continue to do so, but in brief. The main body of these features will accessible through a link to another page on the site. To see what we have covered over the past six months, go here. This is still very much a work in progress.
Please support us by bookmarking www.Pyramidcam.com, visiting our Google ads; and by checking out the websites of our partners.... Please also tell friends and family about us. If you want to put us on the 6 O'clock news, that would be great also.....
Many thanks
Jim
