Category: skateboarding

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Nokia N-Gage – another “Handheld Hero”

I posted an image of this on my Dribble account the other day along with a similar bit of writing, but I thought I’d should really add a blog post about it here too as it’s one of my favourite devices, plus I’m trying to write a bit more frequently on my blog again.

The Nokia N-Gage is one of what I call the “Handheld Heroes”, these are 12 handheld devices that I consider to be icons of their time and are symbolic of a particular point of technological change in the last 30 – 40 years (ok, the pencil is quite a bit older than that ?). The N-Gage was released around 2003, so over 20 years old at the time of writing this(!).

The N-Gage was an amazing device and in many ways was ahead of its time. Long before Pokemon Go was a thing Nokia explored the idea of location-based / location-aware games, but mobile connectivity was very limited, very slow and very expensive at that time. I recall thinking about how amazing it would be to be able to walk around with a device and have a constant connection to the internet, but it was a long way off from the ubiquity of 4G / 5G today. So whilst there were a few location based games for the N-Gage this lack of affordable mobile data meant it had limited appeal.

Nokia Push was one of the coolest initiatives that they tried, basically there were two aspects, one for skateboarding and one for snowboarding. Both involved using sensors attached to the skateboard or snowboard and then tracking the telemetry such as rotations, flips, height, speed etc. For skateboarding the intention was that you could compete with someone in a different location in the world, both skaters could see from their phones which tricks the other had done:

Nokia Push skateboarding promo video

For snowboarding the intention was to track telemetry such as height, speed, rotations, impact etc:

Nokia Push snowboarding promo video

So the N-Gage wasn’t successful in location based gaming but it definitely had some of the seeds of what was yet to come, Nokia Push explored that even further. Yep, the N-Gage was a weird device to make calls on (especially the first version, see “Sidetalking!“), but talking was not what was really intended for, and I loved mine. What’s not to love about a phone that can play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater?

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Skate City – Apple Arcade

I seem to be one of the lucky ones who got access to Apple Arcade (Apple’s new subscription gaming service) a few days early (although I’m guessing that everyone on the developer betas got access??).

I’m enjoying the new Skate City game which is made by Snowman who previously made the great Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey games. Apple Arcade opens to all on September 19th so go check it out.

A wee bit of gameplay! :)

Check out more about Skate City on the Instagram page: @skatecitygame

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Wallows

This photo book about the infamous “Wallows” ditches in Hawaii looks pretty cool:

The Wallows, one of the most iconic locations of 1980’s skateboard culture. The spot was featured in the beginning of the Bones Brigade’s 1987 video “The Search for Animal Chin,” in which Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero, Mike McGill, Rodney Mullen and Mike Vallely go in search of the mysterious (and fictional) skater legend Animal Chin – have you seen him?
Thirty years later, photographer Taro Hirano – himself a skater during the 1980s who was heavily influenced by the video – visited the location in Hawaii to capture it in photographs. His images focus on details and dirt, and record the legendary location from the eyes of someone able to see the magic and history of this drainage ditch.

https://www.shashasha.co/en/book/i-haven-t-seen-him
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RaD: A definitive history of Skateboarding in the UK from 1978–1995

Growing up as a BMX obsessed then skateboarding crazy kid in the 1980’s “RaD” (short for Read and Destroy) magazine was THE major source of everything about skateboarding.

Every month, every issue, I would read it from cover to cover. From the cover, contents page, articles, letter’s page*, photos to the small ads at the back I would consume everything about it and so much of it is forever burned into my brain to be recalled at random times! In the times way before the internet, instagram, youtube and social media the printed skateboard magazine was the only window into the wider realms of skateboarding in the UK and beyond.

A small sample of my personal RaD magazine archive :)

RaD had several key photographers who contributed to the magazine: Vernon ‘Jay Podesta’ Adams, Tony ‘Dobie’ Campbell, ‘Mad’ Mike John, Tim Leighton-Boyce, Paul Sunman and Wig Worland. I once stayed over at Tim Leighton-Boyce’s flat in London many years ago and spent hours looking through boxes of photos, some which had been in print and some that never saw the light of day.

Since the late 1990’s all of Tim’s and other contributor’s photos and all the materials from the production of RaD – much of which predates fully digital workflows of graphic design and print production – has been in storage in various places. But in recent years massive efforts have been taken to sort through all of the remnants of the RaD magazine archives and has resulted in a Kickstarter campaign to document the history of skateboarding in the UK and the role and influence that RaD magazine had and the effect it continues to have to this day.

“Skateboarding History. RaD. The book of the magazine.”

The Kickstarter project is titled: “Skateboarding History. RaD. The book of the magazine.” and has the sub-title “A definitive history of Skateboarding in the UK from 1978–1995
The Read and Destroy archive book project.”. The plan is for a two-volume book and is summarised on Kickstarter:

This two-volume book revisits the seminal independent magazine RaD (Read and Destroy), first published over 30 years ago – and still with a global following today. It is an inside view on skateboarding and youth culture from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, told primarily through the archives of 6 British skate photographers at the core of the magazine’s original editorial team.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/322122905/rad-the-book-of-the-magazine/description
This is what the finished two-volume book should look like.

There are only about 8 days to go as I type this so if RaD magazine is something that had a similar influence on yourself as it did to me, or your keen to see this aspect of skateboarding-related social history be brought to the surface, or if you love photography or graphic design then I’d strongly encourage you to go and back the project as the resulting book is going to be something special in all those aspects. Do it, go back it now and help make it happen!

View the Kickstarter project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/322122905/rad-the-book-of-the-magazine

You can also find more about RaD on their website and social media sites at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQsQoUZ4b-w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mSWrgHp0CU
*My own letters made it to the letters page once or twice ;)
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Skateboard urbanism, hostile design and the V&A Dundee

Excitement about the impending opening of Scotland’s first design museum, the V&A Dundee, is growing. Many a passer-by has recently stood outside the Heras fencing and stared at the building as it nears completion.

Some of those people will have noticed with anticipation the stone benches and ledges of the mirror pool and contemplated not just their aesthetics but also their functional use. Skateboarders tend to view cities and architecture differently than the average person walking through a town centre, seeing potential for skating in the various objects and structures encountered in the urban environment.

Benches and ledges of the mirror pool outside the V&A Dundee.
Benches outside the V&A Dundee.
Benches outside the V&A Dundee.
Benches outside the V&A Dundee.
Benches and ledges of the mirror pool outside the V&A Dundee.

 

“Skaters by their very nature are urban guerillas: they make everyday use of the useless artifacts of the technological burden, and employ the handiwork of the government/corporate structure in a thousand ways that the original architects could never dream of.” ~ Craig Stecyk

As the quote above by Craig Stecyk suggests, very often the creators of architectural surfaces have not had in mind some of the ways that people ultimately interact with them, skateboarding, bmx, parkour, all make use of the urban environment in alternative ways. Walls that were intended to contain or guide people become something to jump over, grind and slide on.

This latter point is what raises a concern about the benches, ledges and the general surrounding area of the V&A Dundee. Has the “skateability” of the surrounding street furniture been a consideration when it has been designed and built? Is this going to be a surprise consequence and result in the deployment of hostile design measures to prevent anyone trying to skate any element of Kengo Kuma’s creation?

Skateable by design – Glasgow Museum of Transport

In 2011 Glasgow’s £74m Riverside Museum of Transport, designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid, was opened to the public. From the outset the museum was designed to have a multi-functional open plaza area intended for hosting events and to be specifically skateboard-friendly. Lawrence Fitzgerald, Project Director for the museum describes the intentions:

“Rather than discourage the informal use of the hard landscape by skateboarders and cyclists, the Riverside museum provides an undulating and kerb-free space for this hard-to-attract young audience. Inside the museum, teenage transport is further validated through displays on Glasgow skateboarding, BMX and chopper bikes.”

So from the outset skateboarders have been encouraged to skate parts of the building itself and in the area surrounding the building. Rather than attempting to prevent this usage they instead have embraced and actively encourage it, and in turn to encourage a younger demographic to have a reason to visit the museum. Their commitment to this has continued with the hosting of various skate competition events and also in the summer of 2017 with the addition of purpose built concrete features to provide even more opportunities for skateboarders.

One of the design briefs for Glasgow's Riverside Museum of Transport was to make a skateable area, so the metal blocks out the front were designed and built to be skated. (Image credit: Glasgow Museum of Transport)
New additions to Riverside Museum of Transport under construction in 2017. (Image credit: Concreate Skateparks)
New additions to Riverside Museum of Transport under construction in 2017. (Image credit: Concreate Skateparks)
New additions to Riverside Museum of Transport under construction in 2017. (Image credit: Concreate Skateparks)
New additions to Riverside Museum of Transport under construction in 2017. (Image credit: Concreate Skateparks)
Completed additions to Riverside Museum of Transport. (Image credit: Concreate Skateparks)

For a Museum of Transport there would obviously have been quite a degree of irony if they had chosen to actively fight against these activities.

Unskateable by design – Bristo Square, Edinburgh

In a fairly stark contrast to the approach of actively embracing skateboarding from the outset there is the example of Bristo Square in Edinburgh. A public space within the University of Edinburgh’s campus which many people passed through and home to many skateboarders, as well as a few homeless people. This was a prime urban skate location for decades, skateboarding was never actively encouraged in Bristo Square before the refurbishment and it definitely wasn’t an activity that was considered in its design, but it was an extremely popular location and visited by many skaters from across Scotland.

Bristo Square nearing completion of the major refurbishment in 2017. (Image credit: Kaysgeog - Flickr Creative Commons licensed image)
Skate stoppers added to all of the steps in Bristo Square, a common method used to prevent use by skateboarders. (Image credit: Zeefoto / Dopezine)
Close-Up of a simple form of skate stopper (Image credit: Zeefoto / Dopezine)
Skate stoppers on the stone benches in Bristo Square. (Image credit: Zeefoto / Dopezine)
Skate stoppers on the wooden benches in Bristo Square. (Image credit: Zeefoto / Dopezine)
Skate stoppers were added to the old monument steps. (Image credit: Zeefoto / Dopezine)

Bristo Square underwent a major refurbishment in 2015 much to the dissatisfaction of the skate community. A local student is quoted in an article on the youth culture site The Tab:

“It’s a missed opportunity by the university. They could have included the skateboarders in their plans, combining the user groups. Perhaps the university was a bit narrow-minded with its approach. They didn’t even consider skateboarding. It seemed a little bit from their plans as though they were purposely going out of their way to prevent it.”

The refurbishment of Bristo Square was used as an opportunity to prevent various “anti-social behaviour”, among which skateboarding was specifically clarified in the planning application documents as being one of them:

“Skateboarders have been a problem in the past and regularly return to the area. Consideration should be given to materials such as tactile pavers and landscaping techniques that dissuade skateboarders from using the area. The position and design of handrails on either side of the pavilion should be such that it also discourages use by skateboarders and bikers”

These purposeful design decisions were taken despite the planning application documents also citing a report prepared by the Edinburgh Urban Design Panel in 2012 which considered skateboarding a contributing factor to what made Bristo Square a positive part of Edinburgh’s urban environment:

“The mix of different type of people, including people passing through, students and skateboarders and others that use Bristo Square mean that even though it presents challenges for clarity of pedestrian movement, community safety and so on, the space does contribute positively to the life of the city.”

Whilst this does acknowledge the potential issues of having pedestrians and skateboarders together in the same environment it appears to favour the approach of embracing all potential uses of the space, as opposed to actively trying to prevent them as the resulting redesign of Bristo Square has done. An approach that has worked well for Glasgow Museum of Transport.

Which approach for the V&A?

As the V&A Dundee is a museum of design there is a strong argument that the design of the surroundings and the street furniture around it should take into account the different ways that people might interact with it. As shown from the examples of Glasgow Museum of Transport and Edinburgh’s Bristo Square, people don’t just walk or sit in urban environments.

The creation of the Slessor Gardens open space and the planned waterfront “urban beach” shows some consideration of the need to provide ways to encourage people to spend time in the area. But are we going to end up with attempts to ban and discourage activities like skateboarding and excluding a thriving cultural activity, and an important younger demographic, because it doesn’t fit in with how the area was designed?

Artist rendering of proposed “urban beach” area in Dundee’s waterfront development next to the V&A Dundee. (Image credit: Dundee City Council – Planning Application Reference 18/00124/FULL)

A sure sign that these activities were not considered will be if we see some hastily added hostile design “skate-stopper” features added to all the benches and ledges around the V&A Dundee and waterfront areas.

Skateboard urbanism – rise of the intentionally skateable city?

In contrast to the anti-skate / hostile-design approach it is worth looking at the city of Hull, a city with a similar rising cultural heritage and renewal to Dundee. Hull, the 2017 UK City of Culture, is the UK’s first “skateboarding friendly” city and plans to design “skateboard-friendly” areas in new projects for public buildings.

Hull joins other cities around the world like Melbourne, Copenhagen and Malmö who have also declared that skateboarding, and other urban sports, are a key aspect of their cultural heritage, embracing and encouraging the use of city architecture and spaces for these activities rather than attempting to ban and confine them only to dedicated skateparks.

Iain Borden, Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at University College London, was one of the first to explore the relationship between the urban environment and skateboarders in his book “Skateboarding, space and the city: Architecture and the Body”. Rather than just being places where people go to work or go shopping the urban environment is a place to be explored and experienced in its own right. In a Kingpin magazine article Iain Borden had this to say about Hull’s plan to become the UK’s first skateable city:

“And so even more welcome is Hull’s plan to provide “skateboard-friendly” areas around public buildings – integrating skateboarding into the everyday public arena is a hugely positive step forward, and follows the example of places like Malmö, Innsbruck, Cologne, etc., who have all made ambiguous spaces which aren’t outright skateparks but are still open to skating. It remains to be seen, of course, exactly what Hull will provide in this area, but the intention is admirable. And if Hull can have a go, why not other UK cities?”

Dundee – skateboarding friendly, by design?

As a city which is the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design there is a great opportunity in Dundee to embrace “skateboard urbanism” and to see how it can benefit the regeneration of the city as a whole. Two of Dundee’s aims as a City of Design are:

  • “use design as a cornerstone in addressing both social inequalities and opportunities that exist in the city”
  • “focusing on social design, redesigning public service and community engagement”

With these aims in mind, it would seem that it’s time for a conversation about how skateboarding, and other urban sports such as parkour, BMX etc, fit in to the V&A Dundee, the surrounding waterfront space and the city as a whole.

Earlier in this article I poised a question regarding whether the “skateability” of the V&A and its surroundings was a consideration during the design process. Following on from that it just remains to ask one more question: Will those involved in the development of the V&A Dundee and regeneration of these areas take the skate-friendly approach of Glasgow’s Museum of Transport or the hostile-design approach of the Bristo Square redevelopment?

References & additional information for further reading:

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Touchgrind (A short history of skateboarding games)

Anyone who is into skateboarding and owns a games console has no doubt played at least one of the many games in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series. This game defined the genre for several years and had no equal. In recent years EA’s Skate presented the first game to seriously challenge its place at the top. One of the things that set Skate apart from the Tony Hawk games was that there was a learning curve more closely resembling the real skate experience. Skate was also helped by the capabilities of next generation consoles like the Playstation 3 and the XBox 360 which offered amazing graphics.

In the area of hand-held consoles however, the Tony Hawk franchise offered the only skateboarding games for Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS. Skate was never released for either of these hand-held devices perhaps largely due to the selling point of their high-end graphics. The sequel, Skate 2, will also only be available for the PS3 and XBox 360.

Nintendo’s DS and Wii consoles represented a new approach to gaming. Instead of focusing on photo-realistic graphics like the PS3 and XBox 360 these consoles used a combination of unusual interfaces and input devices to create a unique and new gaming experience. The release of these consoles brought a slew of games making use of the DS’s two screen / stylus input and the Wii’s highly-physical Wiimote / accelerometer based controls. A follow-up title ‘Skate It’ brings the gameplay of Skate to these consoles, although it’s not so much a sequel to Skate but more of a game in its own right. ‘Skate It’ for the DS and Wii makes use of the unique controls of these consoles to offer something even more akin to the real skating. The Wii in particular offers something new with gameplay being controlled with the Wiimote, nunchuk and also the Wii Balance Board enabling game control with hands and feet.

In regards to hand-held consoles the DS is the only platform offering the mixture of unusual interface / input and the unique game play of the Skate It games, although the Tony Hawk franchise is currently regrouping and planning a new wave of games to make use of these types of unique interface so presumably this will include the DS.

However there is also one other unique gaming platform on the scene, one which has kind of slowly crept in under the radar without, intially at least, any kind of fanfare or hyped launch as a gaming platform:

Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch: a gaming platform

The iPhone and iPod touch platform offers an awesome touch screen interface allowing input such as an onscreen keyboard and finger gestures for scrolling and resizing. Since the launch of Apple’s App Store third party developers have been launching games by the thousands making the iPhone platform a hugely popular and financially successful platform for many game developers both small and large.

As I said before Apple really seemed to kind of just sneak in with the iPhone as a gaming platform, although many saw the potential of the iPhone as a platform for mobile applications I don’t think many realised just how capable the platform was especially in the area of graphics performance on such a small device.

Interestingly this isn’t the first time Apple has considered developing a gaming platform, the Pippin console had limited release back in the 90’s but was eventually shelved. Since then many people, including myself, have pondered as to whether Apple, like Microsoft, might make a new attempt to enter the gaming market.

The iPhone and iPod touch are the proof that Apple have indeed entered the gaming market, but like they have done before it is on Apple’s own terms by creating a unique platform unlike anything else on the market.

iPhone + skateboarding = Touchgrind

Ok, we’re up to date with the history lesson. As you might expect such a powerful hand-held gaming platform as the iPhone / iPod touch has some great games available for it, Super Monkey Ball, Crash Cart Bandicoot, Cro-Mag Rally to name a few. But, what about skateboarding games?

There have actually been two skateboarding games to date, the first to launch was called iSkate (iTunes Store Link) but wasn’t really much more than a proof of concept, it lacked any real game play and was poorly received (especially as people paid for it).

Touchgrind (iTunes Store link) by illusionlabs however is a different story. Built on the same basic principle of iSkate, the idea is that you see the skateboard from a top-down view and you control the board with two fingers. A combination of finger gestures allows you to flip the board in various ways. It’s a bit like playing with a virtual fingerboard, and if you’ve ever messed around with one of those you’ll know it’s hard to do tricks with your fingers!

The interface for Touchgrind is nice, you spin a skateboard wheel and choose from one of six sections on the wheel: Options, About, How To, Warm Up, Jam Session and Competition. Options lets you switch off sound effects and About gives you a link to the developer’s website. The next option gets you into the nitty gritty, How To is the first thing you need to check out when you first try out Touchgrind as it explains the concepts of how to maneuver the board and do tricks.

Warning: Learning curve ahead

I have to admit that when I first tried it I found it pretty hard, like the Skate and Skate It games I mentioned before there’s actually a fair bit of a learning curve in getting the techniques down. At first it was a bit frustrating and I ended up coming back to it a few times before it really clicked with me. That element of frustration is actually quite cool though as it’s a pretty realistic skateboarding learning curve, it’s not uncommon to experience frustration learning tricks for real!

After working your way through the How To section and you’ve managed to get to grips with the basic controls then the next section to check out is the Warm Up. This section lets you just go and cruise around, there’s a few ramps and a rail that you can try and grind. There’s not that much to skate but the point is just to get familiar with skating around, trying out the various tricks on some real obstacles as well as in the large amount of empty space around the obstacles.

It soon becomes apparent that with the top-down view that Touchgrind uses it’s quite hard to see where you’re going. Because of this there are icons that indicate what type of obstacles you are near and which direction they are in. This at least gives you some indication of what’s near you and allows you to steer in the right direction. However, it’s still a little tricky knowing exactly when you’re going to be near enough to an obstacle to jump on to it.

To help you know how near you are to obstacles there is also the ability to zoom out by clicking on the magnifying glass in the lower-right hand corner. The view then zooms out and you can see a larger area of the park, not the entire park but a larger section so you can get a better idea of what you’re trying to skate towards.

You can drag around with your finger to see all available obstacles (or in the case of the Warm Up park lots of empty space!). This certainly helps when you’re trying to line up for an obstacle, and is especially useful when trying to gauge how far away from an obstacle you are.

Warmed up? Let’s jam…

After the Warm Up section you can then move onto the Jam Session where you get to use the full skatepark with a lot more obstacles. The main object of the Jam Session is to see how high a score you can get with a single trick or combination of tricks on an obstacle, there’s no time limit so you can just skate around for as long as you want trying to get that flip-to-grind flip-out combo down perfectly!

Competition is the final section and this gives you a 100 second time limit in which to skate around and build up as many points as possible. As you get higher scores new boards are unlocked which can be selected when starting the Competition or Warm Up sections. I’ve managed to get to over 400,000 points so far but still have a way to go to get over 1,500,000 points to get the highest board! I’ll need to practice a bit more :)

Finishing off… Last run…

So, that’s my quick-ish overview of how Touchgrind works, the best thing to do though is go ahead and buy Touchgrind yourself and check it out. It’s only £2.99 from the App store but the quality of the gameplay in Touchgrind, like many of the apps in the app store, is worth more than its price tag. The developers of the game, Illusion Labs are keen to get feedback from users so try it out and tell them how you think it could be improved. I’m sure some kind of multi-player mode is likely to be added in future, playing over wifi could be an interesting experience although I’m not quite sure how that will work due to the challenges already present with the top-down UI that Touchgrind uses.

I think Touchgrind is a great example of how powerful a platform the iPhone / iPod touch is, the touch screen interface offers a completely new control interface for a skateboarding game. As yet Touchgrind doesn’t make use of the accelerometer in the iPhone / iPod touch, perhaps this could be made use of in a future version? Or perhaps in some other skateboarding game?

I’ve included a few more screenshots from the game just to give a bit more of a taste of how it looks, go ahead and check it out.


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Go Skateboarding Day

I already added a short post about this over on DundeeConcrete.com but I thought I’d add it to my own blog as well.

Today is “Go Skateboarding Day”, check out the website at www.goskateboardingday.org. On the site it says:

On June 21 skateboarders around the globe will celebrate the pure exhilaration, creativity, and spirit of one of the most influential activities in the world by blowing off all other obligations to go skateboarding!

Skateboarders everywhere will hold fundraisers, contests, protests, demo?s, they?ll skate across cities, gather in skateparks, stream into their local skate shop and some will even revel in the solitary act of skateboarding alone, all bringing together the skateboarding community in the grind heard around the world.

This has been running for a couple of years now and there’s events happening all around the world. Except here, because we forgot! Ah well. People will be skating anyway I guess, but if you haven’t skated before or haven’t for a long time then maybe it’s time to go ‘burn some calories’ (or use some other excuse as to why skateboarding is a worthwhile activity other than just being awesome fun!).

I’ll be at the skatepark later if you need to find me, presuming it’s not raining!

~Rick

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Bored? Why not ‘Blog Spam’ yourself?

My own blog’s comments got spammed this week with 11 posts linking to a website trying to sell some drug. I thought it’d be funny to ‘Blog spam’ myself, rather just wait for someone to post comment spam in my blog I’d just post random spam’ish comments! I’m not going to, maybe another time!

Well, what’s new? I’ve had a funny idea for a way to raise money to add stuff to the new outdoor concrete skatepark, not that the park isn’t gonna be awesome to skate but there’s plenty of scope to add things to it. Also there’s no floodlights for it at the moment so it’d be awesome to be able to get cash for that, plus adding things like grind ledges is possible too.

So, what’s the idea? Heard of the Million Dollar Homepage? Well, we’re gonna do the ‘500,000 pixel homepage’ instead!!! Basically the idea is to sell blocks of 20 x 20 pixels for £25 a pop, if we did happen to sell them all it would actually raise £31,250 which would be amazing.

So, if you’ve got something you want to advertise online or you know someone that does, or you just want to support and help improve this awesome skatepark then give me a shout, I have some pixels for sale!!!

On a family note Natalie is a bit sick this week, she’s been home from nursery all week (although she went on Monday but was sick), she’s been waking up a bit at night so Mommy and Daddy’s sleep pattern has been a bit disrupted, hence I woke up at 9:48am this morning! Good job I’m my own boss.

Oh yeah, Google Maps has updated some of the satellite images for the UK, my house is now very visible! And, no that’s not a real space shuttle beside my house (These satellite images are 2 or 3 years old as the shuttle is no longer there). You might need to click on the zoom tool (left hand side) as it seems to come up one step out when you follow that link sometimes, my house is just below the red pointer – black roof white yard with white walls.

~Rick