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I've recently written a Python app that selects a random location in an area defined by a user-supplied shapefile [1], grabs corresponding aerial imagery from Google Maps, and posts it as a geotagged tweet:

https://github.com/doersino/aerialbot

I've built this tool because satellite imagery can be extremely beautiful [2], and I was looking for a way of regularly receiving high-resolution satellite views of arbitrary locations such as the center pivot irrigation farms of the American heartland [3] in my timeline. Plus, for obvious reasons, it's nice to see the world without actually having to go outside right now.

Currently, I'm running four Twitter bots based on ærialbot:

* @americasquared, which posts one randomly selected square mile of the United States every 4 hours: https://twitter.com/americasquared

* @placesfromorbit, which analogously posts a 5×5 km square anywhere in the world every 6 hours: https://twitter.com/placesfromorbit

* @baekmanpyeong, which similarly posts a 1.818×1.818 km square (that's a million (i.e. baekman) pyeong, an old-fashioned area measure) somewhere in South Korea every 8 hours: https://twitter.com/baekmanpyeong

* @nihonmusuukei, which posts a square kilometer of Japan every 12 hours: https://twitter.com/nihonmusuukei

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[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile

[2]: https://earthview.withgoogle.com

[3]: http://www.thegreatamericangrid.com/archives/1441



This is amazing, great readme.


Thank you – approachable readmes are really important to me, so this is validating!




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