A while ago I decided I wanted to create something that looks like the surface of a planet, complete with continents & oceans and all. Since I've only been on a small handful of planets, I decided that I'd approximate this by creating something like the Earth on the computer (without cheating and just copying the real Earth).
Where should I start? Well, let's see what the facts we know about the Earth tell us about how to create a new planet on the computer.