Weird Large Numbers and Other Miscellany

This excerpted from Josh’s blog-thingy with his permission.

I was playing with some numbers the other day wanting to see what kind of data it would take to texture a model of the entire planet in photographs of the Earth’s surface with your average 7-mega-pixel camera. The numbers may be screwy, but here’s what I got: There are 1,597,675,918,771,730 (quadrillion) sq. ft. of planet Earth x 2 MB (average 7.1-mega-pixel JPG) 1 sq. ft. photograph = 3,195,351,837,540,000 (quadrillion) MB (megabytes), or 3.2
ZB (zettabytes), with 1 zettabyte equaling 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424 bytes, or approximately 1.2 sextillion (21 zeroes) bytes, or 4,564,788,339,342 (trillion) compact discs, or 679,862,093,093 (billion) DVD movies, or 6,390,703,675 (billion) average 500 GB external hard drives, or roughly one of these 500 GB hard drives for every person on the planet. 1,597,675,918,771,730 (quadrillion) photographs.

I found the fact that he did this fascinating (A) because it’s really interesting (B) because it shows he’s got even less of a life than me, and (C) the numbers are enormous. Any comments should be directed to his blog. You should surf over and read the whole thing.

Also, if you’re a pet owner, please read this before you feed your animal any more food. There’s a recall on a number of brands that may cause kidney failure in your dog or cat.

I’m sick and can’t talk. My voice has gone AWOL. I’m sure I’ll get over it, but I hate being sick. My mother must be a natural blonde who doesn’t listen based on my conversation with her moments ago.

I’m trying to pawn off my tickets to tonight’s hockey game but have found no takers so far.

I went to Publix, where shopping is a pleasure, and it damn near wore me out. I think I’m home for the rest of the day (and night).

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