MAPS FOR AFRICA

I laughed heartily at my clever title for this week's blog entry... and now I've written about myself laughing at my own humour (Yes, times are tough at Choice Map Tuesday, but what'cha gonna to do? - It's Christmas, get a life people!)
Click on the link to see a larger version of this Africa map if you've got nothing better to do, or if you're still not satisfied - this history of Africa in map form is really informative.

RETRO, GET IT YO!

Forget trying to impress people with your flash 64bit computer - where its at is 8bit baby!  I'm telling ya, if you want to be the envy of all your cool friends; you'll rush out and represent your so-called

'cartographically precise' modern spatial data sets with the lo-fi styles of 1980s role-playing and adventure games.
Do it - be popular!

YOU DISRESPECT A MAP, YOU DISRESPECT ME

On any other day, if I'd spotted you folding a map all messy you'd have to face the very real and very unfortunate possibility of being taken out hitman styles. No warnings. No jury.  Blam! Straight to execution! 
Today is your lucky day though.  Today I'm going to assume that what you've just screwed up in your clumsy hands is a legitimate crumple map.
Im not happy about it but I'll let you live... for now

PROJECTION MAPPING

Imagine, if you will, your average mapping canvas - most of the time its probably an A1 sized piece of paper.  Sometimes though average doesn't cut it, sometimes you need a dynamic canvas the size of a building - sometimes you need yourself projection mapping.  Unlike the rickety old projectors your parents used to show their lame holiday slides on, modern projectors can display slick computer animations (and of course maps) at such larger-than-life scales that when seen live is simply astounding.  I know if I was a town planner I'd want people to see my ideas this way.  Heck, if i was a town planner I'd want to see any ideas this way.

MAPPING MATRIX

Vistas flow around me, smells permeate my nostrils, yet the geographic image I checked out before-hand on google maps is etched into my mind like no other sense.  A virtual homing beacon bleeps enormous in my brain. I can't shake the haunting feeling that I'm still in the map... I begin to ask myself if my senses are real? Is the map real?...

Am I real?!

LENTICULAR MAPPING

Prepare to marvel my friend as mapping voyages into a freaky inter-dimensional holographic realm.  This voyage utilises an idea that you've probably already seen exhibited in science museums.  But far from the ghostly retro images you're probably used to, these lenticular maps are slick and useful.  Check out these fine examples from New York and Seattle

YOU'VE GOT MAIL

Where did you come from?
Where do you go?
Where did you come from...envelope yo?!

In case you need more of an introduction / explanation than that; a couple of peppy young designers have come up with an interesting idea to personalise our postal service deliveries;  When you send a letter to someone, the route the mail will take is pre-mapped onto the envelope. Seeing a physical route/footprint presented like this, one cannot help but feel a 'real world' connection with the other person.  Logistically though there are few things that would need to be considered so, click here to ponder such an undertaking.

BUILDING BLOCKS OF A HAPPY LIFE

Look into my eyes.  You are feeling very slee-p-y.  We're going to go back in time now.  Back to a happy childhood.   Your parents are there, and they're proud of you.  As you obliviously play with your Lego they ask: 'what do you want to do when you grow up?' you reply:  'I want to make maps!'. 

Ok, when you wake up you're going to feel very relaxed and energised about your mapping passion. You are going to remember your childhood dreams....and as we drift back to the present...1...2...you start to awaken and...3...you're awake!   Your life has changed and you are now obsessed with Lego maps and projecting those into 3D Lego globes 

A DISCOURSE ON MAP PINS

In a time when men were men and mapmakers were men too, the humble map-pin unselfishly went about its business of symbolising history's epic moments. Newly explored lands, for example, were celebrated by most not by reverence of the vista itself but by the minute trophies gleaming forthright on a virgin spread of map paper. 
In this discourse on map pins and pinnage we avert our lascivious gaze from the metaphorical pin-up girl and focus instead our refined eyes toward the edge of the poster and we notice there; the most pragmatic of mapping saints... the pin
.

GREAT BALLS OF MAPPING

Lets not over complicate this.
All Im going to say by way of an introduction for this week's entry is...
balls,
balls,
and more
balls

WE'RE GONNA NEED A MONTAGE

Wouldn't it be great if someone could pull together a montage of some of the random funky development patterns that all those oddball town planners & all those kooky urban designers are coming up with these days? Especially in the Florida area?
Yeah, it would be great and you already know its ready and waiting for you.

STEREOTYPICAL MAPS

I've never claimed to be especially politically correct, but there is something sad about the corruption of sweet innocent maps to bigotry biasness. When stereotypes get laid bare against benevolent ol' terra firma it just feels extra raw somehow.  So why then do I find these maps so funny?  Perhaps they're too ridiculous to be true or perhaps they expose my ridiculous thinking too truly.  Judge (for) yourself, what these maps really reveal.

ARCADE MAPS

I love reminiscing about the days of my childhood and my favourite places.  I also love maps. Music is pretty cool sometimes too.  - Wouldn't it be great if I could somehow combine all these loves?
Wait, whats this?...
The excellent band Arcade Fire have created a killer interactive music video clip utilising Google Earth?

I must try it !!!

JELL-O, IS IT MAPS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?

Whilst artist Liz Hickok may indeed have once said of her own colourful cartographic work;

"It perhaps comes down to us locating ourselves in an inconceivably vast universe on one hand, and in our own complicated lives as well"

...all I can really say is;

"Wahoo, jelly maps!!"

SUBVERSIVE

It seems ChoiceMapTueday has become so popular that it has sparked a whole new mapping off-shoot; an off-shoot all about choice subway maps!  Maybe just in my dreams - the subway maps are actually just one entry in the cool blog Crookedbrains (definitly check out some of their other entries) but its a nice little collection of mapping coolnesses, so I say; well played sir, well played!

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

Imagine you're a chilled out alien, sitting on a rock somewhere in the galaxy, lazily watching planet earth.  As the planet revolves, you ponder the swarm-like simplicity of those tiny little 'Aeroplane' bugs. What are they polinating when they fly from place to place?  Do they know they have a hive-like mind or do they think that they are individuals? ahh, how relaxing to be obliviously human.

FACE THE MUSIC

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but; your music collection has become squalid and uninteresting! I realise it can be tough sifting through the murky mire of a million musical mishaps, but like any sensible person, if you're lost you should look at a map!  Specifically, you should look at Gnod's interactive music map. Go on, give it a try - its really very good.  The closer a name is  to your search the more likely you'll like it. Once you're done there you can do something about your literature and movies collections too!

FLOWER POWER

What do you do if you're the environmental agency of a region and you want to raise awareness about biodiversity?  Well, if you're the European Environmental Agency you grow a massive map on the side of your building, if however you're the environmental agency of any other region you just wallow in your own bad case of FOMO (fear of missing out) 

TOURISTS VS LOCALS

Do you ever think its odd that as you go away on holiday you're often passing by tourists in the airport or on the highway who are coming in to holiday?!  Perhaps if you look at the world through their eyes (or equally, through locals' eyes if you're the tourist) it might alter your outlook on life.  But how to do this? where to go? Well, how about investigating these cities' maps of tourists vs locals Flickr photos (the blue bits are locals' photos and the red bits are tourists' photos)

THE GOOGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!

Ok smartguy, how many nuclear explosions have there been in the world, and where have they been? Would it surprise you to learn that there have been over 2,000 of them scattered all around the world?!

This video artwork by Isao Hashimoto presents every nuclear explosion  as a light explosion on a map (accompanied by a cool 80s retro noise).  The first two minutes are pretty boring I admit, but its kind of mesmorising once they really get going (sadly).

FUN AND GAMES

If you're looking for a mapping related distraction, consider a game of aerial alphabet eye spy.  Apparently there is a whole forum of peeps out there playing if you wanna join in. But I prefer this addictive little geography game myself!

HAND-DRAWN MAP ASSOCIATION

If you've ever scribbled a map for somebody - perhaps the directions to a keg party, the location of an amazing cafe, or the sexiest way home (?), you'll appreciate The Hand-Drawn Map Association.

As budget and probably embarrassingly poor as they may well be; these humble maps are quietly celebrated as necessary parts of a vibrant life...
life, oh life, ooooh life
doo, doo doo doo
doo, doo doo doo

EMERGENCY EMERGENCY

The USA Department of Homeland Security sure do know how to make maps that resemble a scene from Donnie Darko!  ....no, not really (I wish) but in this 4min video clip you get a sweet glimpse of the future of real-time mapping and information dissemination techniques.

How can you not click here to watch?!

MOUSE MAP

Do you ever wonder what a map of all of those tiny little computer-mouse movements of yours would look like over time? Do you ever wonder why exactly you've developed Repetitive Over-use Syndrome in your wrist? No?  Well, don't not wonder no more!... At IOgraphica.com you can download some sweet software to see a map of every little compiled movement!

FRACTAL ROYALE

In yet another of my random fossikings on the Internet, i stumbled across these sculptures of wind direction, and intensity and I was greatly satisfied for some inexplicable reason.  I think I know now the answer to that glee - you see, one of my secret pleasures in life is investigating fractals (recurring patterns in nature) and I was reminded of the similarity between these patterns of wind movement (albeit human generated) and other patterns found in nature. Which patterns? - You decide in this little game I call fractal royale!  (mouse-over the image for the answers displayed in the bottom bar of the screen)

This little guessing game may seem inconsequential at first, but the human ability of drawing similarities between (usually) relatively random things can lead us to use one tool for another task - and potentially advance human development.  Does the medical profession know about the advances in the mapping world and vice versa?  If this fractal world offers scalable answers perhaps one day I'll know if its possible for the grooves of a fingerprint to be played like the grooves of a record!

GOAAAAAAAAAAAL

The football world cup is on at the moment so what better way to provide a beautiful insight into the beautiful game than with some choice interactive mapping visualisations (Cool if you're into soccer, probably lame if you're not)

And...

Next time you're watching a game of football perhaps you could ponder the supposed pinnacle of human acheivement...  in 1969, two astronauts landed on the moon and managed a light jog around their own half!
click here to look at this map in more depth

CRAPPY MAPPY

Ok, dont ask what inspired this week's theme...
Oxfam's poo mapping project is a simple little idea that is directly helping local people.  I like this tangible humanitarian story - maps helping people, thats what this mapping malarky is all about really.

Penguins need help too, and if you're into monitoring penguin habitats (like your hero Mogan Freeman) but you're not into actually braving the sub-zero temperatures to do it, you may want to consider remote sensing poo mapping.

And, in much lighter news... Some say these particular crop circles were created by aliens, marking good spots in the galaxy to 'touch down' others say its a hoax - but if its on google maps its worthy of inclusion here.

By the way, this has nothing to do with maps but did you know in Mexico City they have sewer divers?!  Crap-ola!!!

SCRIBBLEY DOODLEY

I'm not too sure what to say about these really..are they valid? are they maps?  I don't know! but the website Fake is the new real is putting them down so I'm picking them up.

These three links are probably my favourite bits from the site:

Click on this link to see subways from around the world all presented at the same scale.  They remind me of spiderwebs or perhaps even aliens.






The elegant doodle to your left is the result of tracing one year's worth of cycling and walking around New York.  Pretty simple, but who needs complicated?!













And if you're still with me (good for you!), these selected cities have had their streets split out and then piled on top of each other at their centroid points - creating star-like oddities.

FUNNY - HA HA

If someone from the future had come back in time and told me that quite a few of the maps featured on ChoiceMapTuesday would turn out to be humourous, I would have laughed (ironically) at them. Yet, for some reason that I cant fully explain, the seemingly vapid cartographic form can quite often be.. funny ha ha.  These fanciful maps created by Christoph Niemann conveniently back me up. 

PS If there is anyone from the future out there, I'm also hoping you could tell me where I left my Swiss Army knife?!  I really miss it!  Though I  guess you could probably only tell me that its still lost?!  rats!!

THE REAL OIL

Aghast and somewhat ignorant at the specific extent and impact of the current Gulf of Mexico oil-spill, I took to fossicking around on the internet for answers.  In this quest, I rummaged through a plethora of emotive photos (like these) until I honed in on this relatively unassuming photo of protective oil-spill booms that surround a few small islands off the coast of Louisiana.

The photo seemed to me to be eerily similar to an iconic work of art from the early 1980s whereby a couple of industrious artists created amazing large-scale sculptural installations.  These bright pink installations were intended as a sort of a visual metaphor for the way in which we live between the ocean and the land. The seemingly abstract work conceptualised a very real conservation desideratum (thank you thesaurus!)

(sorry if all this is boring, my interest in buffer zones is possibly more piqued than most through my work in GIS where I mundanely buffer objects on a computer screen - to see them in the wild, so to speak, is nerdishly exciting for me)

If all this arty rhetoric is too obscure for you, just play with this interactive oil-spill model. It maps potential spill events near Vancouver, but in general terms it helps visualise fluid movement (and the black plague of human destruction upon this fair planet)

Lastly, I don't want to overload you, but you really should check out this little Google WebApp that overlays the oil slick with a location of your choosing.