There’s a nice story on Vanity Fair about how the author, Nick Tosches, spent more than a year attempting to track down the shot location of a desktop picture called Autumn that came with his copy of WIndows.

Eventually Nick managed to track the image back to the Corbis library, and in turn to the photographer, Peter Burian. With a little coaxing, Peter eventually remembered that he took the photo in the village of Kilbride, near his home in Milton, Ontario.

Of course once we had the address, we managed to find the exact tree-lined path and barn in a couple of minutes – thanks to Google Maps

And although these particular trees are still green, there’s thousands in this area that have started to turn a fantastic shade of orange!

Via Kottke.org.

The 2nd largest clock in the world is supposedly the Colgate clock, atop the Colgate-Palmolive factory in Indiana. The clock was built way back in 1906 when it originally sat on Colgate’s New Jersey facility, before being moved here in 1924.

The 1st largest clock in the world is also the Colgate clock. This one replaced the above clock at the now defunct New Jersey offices, but after Colgate left the area in the 1980s it sits alone on the waterfront.

The claims of “largest in the world” for each is disputable, and both clocks are facing an uncertain future as developers move into each area.

The similarities don’t end there – after the Indiana clock starred in the 1999 film The Insider, the New Jersey clock starred in the 2006 flick Inside Man. Spooky.

Thanks: Ironguts & James

Wikipedia: Indiana Clock & New Jersey Clock

Nestled within the trees of this suburban park is a crashed plane, that’s been there since 1985!

The story goes that the pilot ran out of fuel over the city of Sao Jose dos Campos and was forced to land in the small park. Then, for some unknown reason, the Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia was never removed.

Embraer’s headquarters are actually located just down the road from the crash site, but it’s not a very good advertisement for their products…

Updated: It would seem that this plane didn’t crash after all, it is a prototype model of the Embraer 110 Bandeirante on permanent display. You can see ground-level pictures on airliners.net and Flickr.

Thanks: Cerávolo & Marc

Whilst passing over the Atlantic, it seems the satellite has managed to capture an image of a huge patch of completely empty ocean! Yes, this high-resolution patch right in the middle of the Atlantic contains absolutely nothing.

Except a small cloud.

And its shadow of course.

Hmm. Okay, this is a bit of a non-post, but what did Google think they were going to find when they purchased this image?

Thanks to Tim, Vincent Ursem and adrian.

It’s still the 14th of February for another hour in some time zones, so we’d like to wish everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day with this heart-shaped swimming pool in Belgium!

Yes okay, that’s a stretch. In reality the only places to actually use UTC minus 12 hours are the uninhabited American territories of Baker Island and Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean (links are to Wikipedia).

As for the islands themselves, Baker has no coverage unfortuantely, but 68 kilometres to the north, Howland is captured with excellent quality imagery.

Not that there’s much to see of course. In fact other than using UTC-12, the only likely reason you might have heard of Howland Island is that this is where noted American aviator Amelia Earhart famously failed to reach during her attempt to make a circumnavigational flight in 1937.

Thanks to virtualglobetrotting.