In speaking with some of my fellow map-obsessed, I learned to my chagrin that my Lights On Lights Out map used a color scheme that was pretty much impenetrable to the color deficient. Sorry! It was a good reminder that good visualization should not needlessly alienate up to 10% of the population. Interestingly, I can count … Continue reading Brighter & Dimmer
Here is a woodcut bathymetry map. Why? I don’t know. But here it is. Here’s a version with Greg’s Cable data. Represented as various gauges of cord, or course. Here is a how-to, should you find yourself with nothing left to lose and the creation of a faux wooden map is your last best shot … Continue reading Woodcut Bathymetry Map
As a follow-up to last week’s visualization of Old Light and New Light, I wanted to make a single map, of the whole world, comparing NASA’s new 2016 Earth At Night image to the 2012 version. Using a simple pixel-difference math bot, this map isolates places where lights have come on (or increased) and where … Continue reading Lights On & Lights Out
This morning I saw the achingly beautiful set of “Black Marble” images of the Earth at night. Joshua Stevens, of NASA’s Visible Earth team, presented some fascinating comparative images of how some places have changed since the last comprehensive mapping of the Earth at Night, which was 2012. When looking at them, I thought it … Continue reading Old Lights and New Lights
Maybe you saw this ridiculous post, describing some fun, very manual, steps to make your maps look like they were assembled of 1×1 bricks on the wonderful vibrant Utopian plain that is a lego base plate. Vanni Zhang rightly saw a better way than all that manual tinkering, and assembled a robot to do the lego construction … Continue reading Lego-ifier
What we choose to watch on TV says a lot about who we are and what we’re into. Of course viewing preferences between different sports will have a strong regional pattern, but what about the more subtle difference of preferring the collegiate level or the professional level within the same sport? That’s pretty interesting, too! … Continue reading Bubble Madness
Daniel Huffman and I are asking map makers to share with their/our peers stories of a time when creating a map stirred something within them. It’s called A Cartographer’s Story. This is the invitation: Every act of creation is personal. Behind the cartographic theory, tools, and techniques, there is a human being who struggles, who … Continue reading A Cartographer’s Story
This is a map showing the beer vs wine preference across American counties. The brightness is based on how much we spend on beer and wine. Visit this story map to walk through the process and rationale leading up to this value-by-alpha map, if you dare! After sharing this map, a fellow map nerd helpfully pointed … Continue reading Beer vs Wine
This is a cross-post with the ArcGIS Blog You can wield the mighty mighty powers of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to create all sorts of practical, and impractical, or just fun, topographic effects. Why? Making interesting looking maps is awesome and we cartographers don’t always feel terribly practical. But that’s where some sort of … Continue reading Hacking a DEM Sunrise
Here is a look at the per-capita distribution of various top fast food franchises in the United States. The bubbles show the geographic trend of relative popularity across the country -each brand is brimming with interesting trends both in where they are popular and where they are conspicuously absent. The comparative layout allows for a quick … Continue reading Fast Food Frequency
