If you happen to live in one of the countries¹ in which Pixar has chosen to release their latest movie before now, then you might already have seen their latest 3D rendered movie, Up; in which the protagonist’s home is the last remaining property that stands in the way of enormous modern building developments.²

Unlike in Up however, the real life properties that find themselves in this situation don’t just float away, and their refusal to be moved has earned them the moniker of Nail Houses.

Edith Macefield moved into her home in Seattle in 1966, and in recent years turned down many increasingly large offers from developers looking to build on her land. In the end the developers decided to build the complex anyway, leaving her home boxed in on three sides. In the Street View images we can see the construction underway all around her little home, with her distinctive blue car parked outside visible even from satellite.

Edith sadly died in June last year, but since then her home was actually used as part of a publicity stunt promoting Pixar’s movie, and remains for the moment, as a reminder of what can be achieved by refusing to be steamrolled.

In Washington D.C., a Mr. Austin Spriggs reportedly turned down an offer of 3 million dollars for his property as it was directly in the way of a massive new development. Mr. Spriggs was apparently seeking a loan to open up a pizza restaurant on the premises, but when the Street View car passed, this was clearly still some way from becoming a reality.

It turns out that there are people all over the place who have decided, for the sake of pride, morals, or plain stubbornness, to remain in their homes no matter what. Here’s the home of a man who lives in the car park of the St. Alexius hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota. I wonder if he gets free parking?

Not even the biggest of companies can always get their own way either. At Microsoft’s Redmond West campus there’s one solitary private property, which was apparently left alone under the agreement that the house could stay there until the present owners died.

The phenomenon of “homeowner holdout” isn’t just constrained to private homes either. At Tokyo’s Narita Airport, the proposed layout of the tarmac was completely ruined by several farmers, who steadfastly refused to sell their land to the airport. You can see how the runways weave around the various farms that get in their way, as well as being split into tiny, useless segments by other bits of farmland.

I’m sure that this post only scratches the surface of this topic, so do you know of any nail houses in your area, and what’s the story behind them?

Wikipedia has more info on Nail Houses, and we wrote a story in 2006 about The Man Who Lives in the Middle of the M62. Thanks to Boing Boing and Deputy Dog.

Yesterday Google finally announced the launch of some fantastic new Street View imagery, covering Portugal, Switzerland and Taiwan. This means we can now use Street View to see some great previously featured sights, such as the current title holder of “world’s tallest completed building”, Taipei 101.¹

As part of the same announcement, imagery was unveiled of some slightly less traditional locations, including Laguna Seca Raceway, and Thunderhill Raceway Park, where the Street View car actually raced round the tracks.²

The remaining locations to receive imagery yesterday were even more unusual, San Diego State University and Legoland California. Both of these are fully pedestrianised, and the imagery was captured using the widely publicised Street View Trike.

Using the trike, Google captured some excellent images of Legoland California, many of which we’ve been linking to on our Twitter page – but there’s still lots to be found.

On the other hand, the imagery captured of San Diego State University is slightly less interesting. You might think that it would help entice students to the admittedly utterly picturesque California campus, but as far as we’re concerned, this looks like the most boring University campus in the world.

Why does nobody wave at the camera? Why is it that nobody chases the bike? Why do none of the students flash any naked body parts at the lenses? Naturally, not all students conform to the rowdy stereotypes we have in the UK, but why does nobody really react to the camera at all?

You might guess that they were all instructed not to react in advance, but even the people on guided tours don’t look very interested in the passing camera trike.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that the private properties mentioned here have been brought to your screens through the Street View Partner Program, which allows property managers to request that Google record images of their properties.

What other private places would you like to be able to take virtual tours of?

Here in Canada, there’s a large scale windfarm known as Le Nordais, which as well as having 133 conventional wind turbines, also features one particular design of wind turbine with which you may be unfamiliar.

Le Nordais is split between two locations, and it is at Éole Cap-Chat on the Gaspé Peninsula that we find the Cap-Chat Wind Turbine, which at 110 metres is the tallest vertical-axis wind turbine in the world.

The “vertical axis” refers to the the main rotor shaft which runs vertically. One of the benefits of this arrangement is that the generators and gearboxes can be placed close to the ground, but more importantly, that vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWT) do not need to be pointed into the wind.

The Cap-Chat turbine is actually a Darrieus wind turbine, and the reason we don’t see many of them is that despite the apparent benefits, the constantly changing direction of the forces applied to the spinning blades causes poor performance and reliability.

For these reasons Darrieus designs are no longer developed, but the torque issues were eventually solved by using a development of the Darrieus design that features a helical twist of the blades.

Great shadow though!

Official site, Ground-level pic, VAWTs on Wikipedia. Thanks to Benoit and Eric.

By population, Mexico City is the third largest city in the world, sent into the record books by a massive greater metropolitan area, that has a population exceeding 19 million people.

The municipality of Xico is part of the Mexico City metropolitan area, marking the very edge of the city’s southernmost reach. It is at this point that the city has begun to make a slight detour, around Cerro de Xico (Xico hill).

It should be obvious that this isn’t just a hill of course – it’s a beautifully round volcanic crater; one that is in the process of being swallowed up by the ever advancing urban sprawl.

Looking closer we can see the interior of the crater has been given over to agriculture, and the far side of the caldera looks to be the site of a local graveyard.

What’s really interesting here is the juxtaposition of the urban and rural worlds, protected from one another by the crater wall.

I wonder if the little island of agriculture will stay protected in the future, as Mexico City inevitably expands around it?

Thanks to Virtual Globe Trotting.

It’s Volcano Week 4 here at GSS. Volcanoes, about a week. You know the drill!

Newberry Volcano is an immense shield volcano located in central Oregon. In addition to a main volcanic caldera, the system is composed of many domes, cones, craters and lava flows across an area more than 32km in width in addition to two large fissures which extend outwards a considerable distance.

The central caldera, known as Paulina Peak, was created over hundreds of thousands of years and many eruptions; it now contains a pair of lakes fed by hot springs – Paulina Lake and East Lake. Extreme temperatures have been recorded beneath the caldera, leading to exploration with a view to creating geothermal power. The lava flow to the south of the lakes is known as Big Obsidian Flow.

Newberry Volcano is noted for creating many different types of lava, with a corresponding variety of landscape features being created as a result. The entire system is protected as the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Apollo-era astronauts trained in areas of the volcano that resemble the moon’s surface.

Some of the most prominent features are buttes – tall cinder cones which result from a single eruption, including this cluster north of the lakes.

One of the most prominent is Lava Butte, which is approximately 150m tall, and has the Lava Lands Visitor Center at its base. Lava Butte is visible in a quite scenic Street View image from nearby Highway 97 … though it appears to have been so cold that one of the camera lenses froze over!

There are three large lava fields (mostly flat areas of volcanic rock) to the southest of the caldera – Devil’s Garden, Squaw Ridge and Four Craters. Extending from the edge of the latter is the imaginatively-named Crack-in-the-Ground, a 20m deep and 3km long fissure which is popular with hikers.

Equally creatively-named are the two nearby large maars, or explosion craters – Big Hole and Hole-in-the-Ground.