This is pretty darn cool. I saw it at Geekologie.

At gigapan.org you can see an an amazing picture of the inauguration that you can manipulate almost endlessly.

You can scroll, drag and zoom to an extreme degree, going from as far back as this:

To as close as this:

The technology that makes this possible is explained at the site if you're interested. Basically this panoramic picture is really a series of many, many pictures all stuck together. Super powerful megacomputers and lasers and voodoo are all employed, I'm sure.

I found myself crawling all over the picture for a long time, first noticing some of the famous people who had roles to play that day...

...and former Presidents and their wives...

I'm a big fan of Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas, and I don't blame him for taking the occasion of Obama's speech to grab a quick nap...

And then I started scanning the crowd for celebrities. And I found a few!

Check it out, it's TV and cinema's Michael Chiklis...

...and hippity hoppity rapper extraordinaire Snoopy Doggity Dog...

...then I saw radio talk-show host and vigilante Curtis Sliwa with a big-ass camera...

...and boxer Mike Tyson and his date, cleverly disguised as Eskimos...

...and a real legend from the world of cartoons, Elmer Fudd...

...and, look! It's Ruben Studdard and the late Ossie Davis, elbowing each other as they chuckle over one of Obama's "promises," har har har...

...then things got really freaky. Imagine my surprise when I saw the hideous, haphazardly constructed Frankenstein's Monster...

...and Bilbo Baggins, only a millisecond after he slipped on The One Ring to disappear into the crowd...

...and what's a view of a panoramic crowd without an appearance from Waldo?

Labels: Humor, Links, News