I don't want to get rusty

Because I don't want to lose the mapmaking skills I've gained, I created this map of the Rowan journalism majors. It's not totally final yet -- I need to work on some of the aesthetics -- but it ain't half-bad.

Holiday gift for the map lover in your family

The author Vincent Virga was featured during a segment of NPR's "Talk of the Nation" today, Wed., Dec. 12, talking about his new book, "Cartographia." Here is the link to the show, where you can listen to the program and view some of the maps from his book.
He made several interesting points, one of which really struck me. He said mapmaking is about power -- those in power get to make the maps. Why else, he said, would Europe -- a peninsula smaller than India -- be a whole continent, while India is not? Food for thought!

My final Nike missile map

With the Rowan public folders being their typical fussy selves, I have stored my final map at this location.

Final project nearly there

Nearly there: Everything I want to do from here on out involves aesthetics, design, etc. Maybe changing the symbols (again!), realigning the main map to center it, etc. But I will be honest: I think this will work, if necessary.

Working on my final mapping project

Here are some early snapshots of my final project, as of Friday, Dec. 7:
This is an ArcGIS map of the .kml data imported from Google Earth of all 250 missile locations across the United States.
This is a close-in shot of the East Coast/New Jersey area
This is my tentative layout, using the default Layer Labeling.
This is the same look, but with my own labeling. I removed the names of the counties I do not want, and I capitalized the county names, so as to use Upper/Lower style for the missile sites.
This one adjusts some of the positioning, such as the off-center title, and adds a compass to the larger image.

The map is not the territory ...

I came across this blog item from my work inbox. I subscribe to the daily feed of the San Jose Mercury News (they provided the best info when Knight Ridder -- meaning us at the Daily News and Inquirer -- went on the auction block in 2005-6), and this is from their tech writer, about Google Maps' new features.

NatGeo cartographer takes to the airwaves

I didn't hear the segment in question, but apparently the folks at NPR's "Talk of the Nation" erroneously discussed that the Nile is the only river that flows south to north. To respond to their error, they invited Allen Carroll, Chief Cartographer for National Geographic, to talk about "why people tend to think that rivers run south." The discussion came at the end of Hour 1 today, 11/28, which is located at this link. Not every day that a cartographer appears on the radio. He talked a little about map layout, and our perceptions of which way North is. It was cool to hear his comments after taking this course.

Exercise 10, all four maps here

Here are the four maps for Exercise 10:
New Jersey population density
New Jersey physio-geographic features
Geologic hazards of the Western United States
Rainfall, South Asia cities
These could change between now and Monday, when they are due, but will be updated at these links.
Please note, there was some printing trouble with the South Asia map on Wed., 11/28, which I will try to rectify by using a different computer in the geography lab.

Vendee Globe, less than 1 year to go!

Here's a nice little animated (and slightly interactive) map of the upcoming around-the-world solo sailing race. Just a nice, quiet race -- all by your lonesome -- on the high seas for a few short months. No pressure: One foot on land or one foot on another boat, and BAM! you're out of the race.

New mapping link from UPenn

Thanks to my colleague Ed, for passing on this mapping site from the University of Pennsylvania. Looks like GIS for regular folks!
Here is the home page of this site.

Proposal for my class project on Nike bases

Here is a link to my proposal for my final project. I also will hand it in on Monday.

Exercise 9 (subtitled, Overcoming Cartographer's Block)

I had trouble coming up with something creative from the data presented for Exercise 9, but remembered seeing something in our text that I thought could be applied. I found a county-by-county chart from USA Today on how New Jersey went during the 2004 presidential election between John Kerry and George W. Bush. The Garden State is assumed to be a Democrat stronghold -- a blue state -- but examination of the data, as presented here, shows otherwise. Not the most original creation, but I think I did what was necessary, including playing with fonts (I like Arial, for the most part, though I had to tweak to get it to work well), color and placement of type, colors of the counties themselves (I wonder if the person who decided on blue and red got a patent), locating symbols, and other things. Many thanks, as always, to Dr. Hasse for his help on the legend.
I was unhappy with the scale bar; I just knew it was not right. I went over things in my head and determined that perhaps putting on a scale bar early, before I blew up the map, rendered it inaccurate once I did increase the size of NJ. Sure enough, I deleted what I had, and inserted a new scale bar, and Voila! Accuracy!
Now, who wants this info for 2008 ... Rudy? Hillary?

Putting the "urban" back in "New Urbanism"

Here's an interesting article about a new "development," Spring Arts Point, um, springing up in Philadelphia.

Navajo seek remedy for uranium sites

Here is an interesting map about uranium sites in Indian country out West.

Maps are stored in Yahoo, too

Because I seemed to have some problems with my H drive -- a few things disappeared for a while -- I've also stored everything in this Yahoo! Briefcase file.

Exercise 8 Final Map

Here is my latest final version of my page of four New Jersey maps. Everything is becoming more uniform and looking more as I want it. If time allows, I still want to work on my patches, maybe even some of my category numbers! This version slightly differs from what I am turning in, because of the difference in patches, classes, etc.

Exercise 8

This is my first draft of the New Jersey maps for Exercise 8. I probably will tinker with some of the legends and color bands, and I want to make them more uniform. It cannot be identical, because there are different numbers of classes, but the type and patch sizes can be more uniform.
Many thanks to Dr. Hasse for clearing up the legend "chatter" problem!

What is a data-delivery editor?

Here is a link to a new kind of online GIS specialist.....The data-delivery editor:

Class notebook missing

There is nothing life-altering or earth-shattering in it (nothing I cannot recreate), but my class notebook has gone missing. I was in two places on Monday, Robinson 306 and the Geography Dept. conference room. If it shows up, I'd appreciate being told. Just leave a comment here, and I will let you know how to get it back to me.

Shocking but true

Hard to believe in this day and age that we still have to keep track of things like this! Scroll down to the interactive map and see for yourself.