Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh; it’s the first week of college football! Thousands of players, far from home, are gearing up for their games this Saturday. Wait, how far from home? Since I can never fully silence the part of my brain that tries to extrude ideas out into maps, I’ll just revel in it. Here are the top … Continue reading College Football Air Mile Index, 2016
Here is a look at the “absolute” world record progression since 1960. Last night Bear and I stayed up to watch the Men’s Pole Vaulting event, where Brazil’s Thiago Braz da Silva and France’s Renaud Lavillenie battled it out in a terrific competition. Lavillenie is the current world record holder, which got me to wondering what the … Continue reading Men’s Pole Vaulting World Record Progression
*** This method has been used more recently to map the past six months of drought afflicting the southeastern United States. *** Maps This is a map showing over five years of drought data (285 weeks, combined into a single view) in the United States. The dots are proportionally sized by the amount of time over the past five … Continue reading Five Years of Drought
Ah the trusty old, well-worn, United States of [Thiessen Polygon] Map. But at least I was a relatively early adopter (the original version was made in…yikes!…2011). Sure, this post will show you how to make these boundaries, but more interestingly, it will show you how to make a chalkboard-style map! Now pay attention or teacher … Continue reading How-To: United States of Craigslist, Chalkboard Map
This is The Global Sharknado Threat Map. Created by an unprecedentedly cross-discipline team of nameless chain-smoking scientists in white lab coats, this map is intended as a resource to coastal communities regarding the nature and likelihood of a sharknado incursion. Right? This map was originally conceived by Drew Skau, and commissioned by Visual.ly. This is … Continue reading How-To: Sharknado Map
Here is a run-down with all the carto nitty-gritty on how to make the following map: It shows the locations of each recorded hurricane and tropical storm since the mid 1800s. When viewed in aggregate, the hurricanes appear to coalesce into a single great hurricane eye. It’s a basic map, with some cartographic punch. Super simple to … Continue reading How-To: Hurricane Map
http://vannizhang.github.io/blasts-viz-app/ Here are recorded seismic events since 1963 that have been deemed to be man made. One benefit of covering the globe in a network of seismic sensors to detect earthquake and volcanic activity, is that you also tend to pick up the rumblings of a not-so-natural source. What sorts of explosions could be big enough to … Continue reading Blast Map
To my eye, calm, clear, seas have a distinct look to them. A shallow aqua that deepens to blue. The gradual reduction of seafloor clarity at greater depths. A faint web-like reflective surface. But maps that I see of the oceans, or deeper waters, don’t really look like that. For all the efforts in getting brown-to-green … Continue reading Carto Hack: Mapping Water Depth with Opacity
I’ve been reading Randall Munroe’s What If before bed lately, which, in addition to even more bizarre than usual dreams, gives me mappy sorts of ideas. Recently I read the chapter about draining the world’s oceans via a hole in the Mariana Trench. Coincidentally, I’ve been playing with using additive opacity rather than deepening color to … Continue reading Draining the Challenger Deep
If you are the sort of cartographer who digs reading about other cartographers’ processes, then there is a narrow chance that you will find this how-to interesting. Hopefully in a helpful sense. Check it. It describes the steps taken to make map images for a story map about refugees, The Uprooted. Additionally, here is a … Continue reading The Cartography of “The Uprooted”
