Here is another week of work for this month’s 30 Day Map Challenge.

Day 10 - North America

I’ve been looking at a tree identification guide and was inspired by the map in the book. I also thought this would be a nice time to get out the watercolor pencils. The colors didn’t blend as much as hoped-I probably didn’t use enough water or the right kind of paper.

 

Day 11 - Retro

Going for the 1950’s geography textbook look hopefully with some success.

Day 12 - South America

These animals have overlapping ranges so I highlighted the ones with the smallest ranges. Alpacas (in the wild) live mainly in the high mountains. This map features my first ever llama north arrow.

Day 13 - Choropleth

Choropleth is a somewhat map jargon-y term referring to discreet areas, usually classified in some way. For example, election maps. Usually there would be many areas classified into categories so choosing a state with only three counties and one for each category doesn’t really make this a true choropleth.

Day 14 - Europe

This was an experiment in playing with a space theme and showing some discreet countries that don’t have much in common other than being at the edges of the continent.

Day 15 - OpenStreetMap

I went with my default Openstreetmap mode of finding some random item (gas stations) and picking a random location. This could have been a much better learning opportunity as there are many other ways of working with this huge data set and I really do need to learn more about it. However, life intrudes and I didn’t have the time so I chose a quick subject and location. The logos are from the six most prevalent gas station brands.

It turns out Paraguay has the most per capita gas stations of any country in South America for various reasons (source) so this map is almost unreadable. I also learned that Petropar is the country’s national oil company while Petrobras is a Brazilian company.

Day 16 - Oceania

 Every other continent gets a day this year so why not Oceania? Here are the roads via the Globio Roads database. I’m not sure why the network in New Zealand is so much denser than anywhere else but there it is. I like the way you get a basic population and country shape map by showing roads and nothing else.

 

 

Thirty Day Map Challenge - Part 1

 Several years ago Finnish cartographer Topi Tjukanov began the Thirty Day Map Challenge and it has run every November since. The idea is to create a map every day of November based on a theme he posts at the start. These maps are posted to Twitter using the hashtag #30DayMapChallenge. There have been some wonderfully inspiring maps created in this process. I had never participated before this year, correctly assuming it would take up a major part of my time and energy. 

As in other years, I had no plans to do this but on November 1st I suddenly found myself making a map and it took off from there. At the risk of being a self-indulgent show off here are the first 10 maps. As of right now I don't have an online portfolio so here is a place for me to post them. I'm hoping to continue on this challenge but time will tell if I make it to the 30-day mark.

Day 1 - Theme: Points

I'd been working on a general "where I've been" map and I got to thinking about places I've spent the night. I looked at a few states that either didn't seem interesting or had too many uncertainties when I settled on Ohio. I've been working on my weak artistic skills. This was drawn in watercolor pencils by hand while looking at a map of the state.

Day 2 - Theme: Lines

 I don't really like the song "Every Day is a Winding Road" by Sheryl Crow, but somehow it got stuck in my mind and I set out prove it. I used various mapping services such as Google, Bing, Apple and OpenStreetMap to illustrate examples of streets around the world named for the days of the week. One of the tricky parts was finding streets that are in fact "winding."

Day 3 - Theme: Polygons

Points, lines and polygons are the main building blocks of maps so each one gets a day. DC seemed like a good polygon city. I used Opendata DC to get my points. I removed some tiny triangles and it's possible I missed a few circles and squares. There are many rectangular parks that I didn't include because they don't have "square" in their name. I almost forgot about the Ellipse! 

This was a mixed media project. I made and printed a map using QGIS annotated it with pencils and put a little watercolor into the rivers.

Day 4 - Theme: Hexagons

Hexagons are a popular way to represent grids these days. Studies show that certain patterns are easier to detect with a hexagon grid than a square grid. They are particularly popular with election maps but I was looking to do something a little more creative. Not many things in nature are hexagonal. Bee hives use that shape but that kind of map has been done by many others.  While looking for inspiration, I discovered that some of Annie's Snack Crackers are hex shaped, including their saltines and cheddar crackers. I decided to use them as my hexagons.

    So where is a place that has both salt and cheese production? I settled on upstate New York, knowing where some of these places are located. The salt areas are mostly based on an old map I found showing salt deposits, mostly in the southwest. I also know of a couple of salt facilities from my travels so I put those in. I used the term "more likely" to cover the uncertainties but some of those hexagons in the southwest should probably be cheese. The cheese areas were determined by a combination of dairy farm maps and places I know that make cheese.

Day 5 - Theme: Data Challenge 1: OpenStreetMap

For the uninitiated, OpenStreetMap (OSM) is like Wikipedia meets Google Maps. Content is all user generated and it is freely available to use. Despite having contributed to OSM in the past, I don't have a lot of experience using the data so this was definitely a learning exercise. I knew that you can get things like businesses out of it so I tried a query on business names. For some reason, the first word that came to me was "monkey" so I grabbed all businesses with monkey in the name. After seeing an empty South America, I decided to add Spanish and then to make it a bit more objective I grabbed the other three of the world's top languages. In the process this became as much of a linguistic map as anything. 

There are many translation issues here. French and Spanish have different masculine and feminine words and the Spanish words (mona, mono) are contained within many other words and names. My Hindi translation must have been especially off since all my results came from outside of India. Anyway I did what I could here.

Day 6 - Theme: Red

Getting personal here. This is a map of the town where I was born. I was nervously waiting my turn to perform some music on Zoom and parlayed that energy into drawing. Like #1 I tried this completely freehand, while looking at Apple Maps. I've only been through Red Bank as an adult on a train so I don't know the place at all. Someday I hope to visit. The river west of downtown is very wrong and there are other mistakes. Also the map monster and train station were poorly done.

Day 7 - Theme: Green 

Staying in the realm of the personal, Rittenhouse Square is around the corner from my grandmother's former building. As a child I enjoyed playing here, especially with the goat statue. I also lived in the area briefly as an adult. I'd been thinking about how the same places look in different map services so I made an animation of the square using Apple, Google, Bing, Mapbox, Carto, Esri, Stamen, Mapquest, OSM and the philly.gov web site.

Day 8 - Theme: Blue

I started out trying to get a list of blueberry names using the Day 5 OSM theme but the results were not great. Next, I tried using the Google Maps API but also had issues with that. Finally, I found an embedded Google Map from travel-mi.com. I wasn't planning on a Michigan focus but because the data set was there I went with it. I already had a blueberry symbol from my What They Drop on New Years Eve map so I was good to go!

Day 9 - Theme: Monochrome

I thought one of those solar potential maps would look good in monochrome but I'm not sure it works. I also thought that light should be more sun but usually darker means more so this ends up being a bit counterintuitive. I also was not really able to get the subtle gradations of grays with a watercolor pencil. I probably should have tried charcoal instead. I don't trust my drawing abilities to do a complicated outline like this freehand. I traced it right off the computer screen. The rest was done freehand, making it "charmingly inaccurate". 
 

Day 10 - Theme: Raster

I made a very low resolution version of a satellite image of Australia. Then I made a fuzzy version. I couldn't decide which I liked better so I made an animation: blocky vs fuzzy

Though this challenge has taken up way too much of my time and thinking process, it has also been a creative inspiration and a great learning experience so far. I'm looking forward to some of the upcoming challenges with a touch of dread but also excited to take them on.

Mapping the Dream

For many years I had a recurring dream where I am exploring a non-existent neighborhood in Philadelphia. Despite its non-existence, it had very clear geographic parameters within West Philadelphia's University City area. I would take the subway westbound to approximately 33rd Street, walk through the area passing all the interesting urban things (coffee shops, clothing, book and record stores) that mostly don't exist there and get back on somewhere in the 40-something streets to go home. The picture in my head is clear enough that I decided to draw it.

I left the street names off of the drawing because they were not in the dream. The area breaks free of the grid pattern in interesting ways, revealing my anti-grid bias. Also in the dream I'm taking an underground subway whereas in reality it comes out of the ground and becomes a surface streetcar. This is what the area really looks like via a SEPTA map. The Baltimore Avenue trolley line is the closest thing to this subway. 

Using some photo manipulation I altered the map to the dream reality. I moved Baltimore Avenue northwards because I pictured the subway line as a direct continuation from 33rd Street.

Here is an animated comparison of reality vs. dream

Keep on dreaming!

Schematic Newton

I have worked in the City of Newton, Massachusetts for almost two decades creating maps of the City. As part thought exercise and part learning project for using Inkscape, I decided to try a very schematic map.

Newton's geography is very complicated. There is no downtown, rather 13 (or 14 depending on who's counting) villages, each with some central downtown or at least crossroads. The city outline was extremely simplified. The diamond shape I went with made it hard to fit in some major roadways in the far eastern (Hammond, Hammond Pond) and western (Grove and Lexington) parts of the city.  
The EST. and INC. are from the signs at the borders.

This evolved quite a bit after finding some mistakes (this was all done from memory) and some comments from city residents and even elected officials. I like simplicity of this early version, though there is a major mistake in not showing that Commonwealth Avenue crosses Interstate 90 in the western part of the city. Still there's always a level of accuracy that gets lost in the name of simplicity.

The Secret Life of a Highway Interchange

Living in Eastern Massachusetts means for many people trudging up and down Rt 128-Boston's dreadful (but necessary?) beltway. Much of it is also part of I-95, an interstate highway that I have lived within a few miles of for most of my life. To get to most places by car or bus from my home requires traveling eastbound on MA Route 2, then heading south on Rts 95/128. I travel the northwestern leaf of this cloverleaf exchange on a regular basis (more often as a passenger than a driver) and have often wondered about the life within - so I drew a map.

Drawn with colored pencil, I made a separate overlay of the text for fear of ruining it. I used various sources of aerial photography such as Google and Apple as drawing aids. Most features are real but I'm not sure about the swamp. I have vague memories of seeing it (maybe on a wet day) but am not sure it's still there. Fairy shrimp are a species that live in vernal pools, a subject I've mapped in a past job. These are swamps that are dry for much of the year. A swamp trapped inside a highway junction is what inspired this project.

As I've looked more over the years, I have found many other points of interest. The concrete pad at the north end seems to grow and shrink and change configurations. There is a sign for Outfall 1 (though it might say 11, it's hard to read at highway speeds), some raised beds with no obvious purpose and abandoned tires seem to come and go. There are also a few stands of mature trees, even more extensive than what I've drawn, that may harbor some very interesting life within.

If you click on the map, you can see a larger, more clear version. If you click on "Location" below, you will get the Google Maps view of the place. What's hiding in your local highway interchange?

What They Drop on New Year's Eve

I made  a map of objects that are dropped on New Year's Eve. It is based on this Wikipedia page. Click for a more readable version 

The density of points in Pennsylvania made it necessary for two inset maps - one focused just on the Harrisburg area, the center of dropping things according to Wikipedia. The high density of points in various locations made this an obvious candidate for an interactive map, so I created one - click the image below to see it. You can zoom in and click on an object to see the town or city and what the object is as that is not always clear. Beware - sometimes the interactive map does not load all points on the first try. If only a few appear, refresh the page.

Here is a zoomed in view of Harrisburg.

The static map was made mostly using QGIS, the interactive map is via Leaflet using a basemap from CARTO.

Notes about the data on the map

The Wikipedia page that was the source for this map is subject to changes at any time and may have already changed since this map was created. Some of the items listed on that page were either one time events or have been discontinued. These were not included on the map. There are two locations outside of the United States (Bermuda and Canada) that were not included but may be added at a later time. There is an obvious Pennsylvania bias in the results as much of this came from an article in Penn Live - this is also where I first saw some of these and got the idea for the map. See map notes below for how this was handled cartographically.

Mapping Notes

Most points are from canned US cities data sets and are not accurate when zoomed in too far. The locations reference cities or towns and are not meant to represent precise locations of the towns or drop events. In some cases they may be several miles away. The Key West locations were moved slightly so both objects would be readable. There are (at this time, December, 2018) no objects listed in Alaska or Hawaii. This allowed me to zoom the map in and not need the inset maps commonly seen for these states. Instead, I was able to use those spaces for Pennsylvania, which has such dense data that it needed two separate insets, one just focused on Harrisburg. A couple of other areas, particularly northern Georgia are also very dense. The interactive version was created for this problem.

Ghastly Halloween Poster Maps

What, where, why? It all started with a software tutorial using data from upstate New York. GIS software packages tend to open with random color schemes. When I brought the data into GlobalMapper, it gave a nice orange and black Halloween palette - the orange below got browned a bit when by Twitter.

Don't use default colors-unless its October and you get some cool, creepy Halloween effect like this. New York's "impaired" waterways. pic.twitter.com/iDkngaCYac

— Map of the Week (@MapOfTheWeek) October 1, 2018

Looking around the area I decided that the Syracuse street pattern provided nice, creepy look for a Halloween poster - I will put some boring technical details about the process for these at the bottom so you can skip that part if not your thing.

Next, I thought about spider webs and looked for a city with a nice, webby street (or highway) pattern. San Antonio works-when looking at the regional highway network.

Here's a final one - another S city inspired by my childhood skeleton costume.

Enjoy!

Technical details:
Each map was done using a very different process. For Syracuse I downloaded data from OpenStreetMap, styled it in QGIS using a fiery pattern, then exported an image which I altered using a ridiculous combination of GIMP, Inkscape and Photoshop. If I knew those packages better I could have surely done all that in one but I used the bits and pieces I know from each. I used an online font generator for the title and then styled and altered it a bit in Inkscape.

For San Antonio, instead of downloading the data, I made a screen shot from OpenStreetMap and then used Photoshop to select and remove certain colors, then manipulated it in Inkscape with various spider web pattern fills.

Seattle was mostly done in Photoshop by manipulating layers and tracing the major roads from a screen shot with bones. The background is a knee x-ray image that I smudged to fill in the non-knee-like areas of the city like West Seattle and Magnolia.

Fantasy Map of Damariscotta (a real place)

I made this fantasy map of Damariscotta, Maine, where I've spent a week each summer for the last 17 years. This map was done for a tutorial on manipulating maps in Photoshop. It's not much and I could have done more to it but I'm on vacation!

I added a few viking ships and a longhouse at the last minute to give it a little life. Enjoy!

New Jersey Sidewalk Crack

Yesterday I found a crack in the sidewalk shaped like New Jersey. I couldn't resist taking a photo and adding some annotations.

I posted it on Twitter where it was promptly ignored. Afterwards I had an even worse idea - see what it looks like as a New Jersey Transit map. Enjoy!

Quest for Nevada Complete!

Here is one final self-indulgent post about the quest for my 50th state. After this I can get back to more interesting (to the rest of you) stuff.

The quest is complete! I reached my 50th state-Nevada late at night on Amtrak's California Zephyr. Although there is no "Welcome to Nevada" sign along the train tracks (at least not visible at night) you know you're at the border when you go through Wendover, Utah and then into West Wendover, Nevada. These are the only towns after dozens of miles of salt flats so it's pretty obvious when you've arrived.
The map above shows our entire route. It bleeds off the edge of the allotted space here but you can click to see the entire thing. We flew into Denver and spent a day and a half there, then took the train to Reno. Next we rented a car and drove down to Lake Tahoe via Virginia City. After a couple of nights in Tahoe we drove down to Yosemite National Park and then on to Oakland for a wedding, followed by a flight out of San Francisco. All in all it was way too much to try and do in a week but well worth it! A few more details and photos can be seen on Twitter-see the sidebar to the right.

Just to get really self-indulgent, here is my updated county map.

Fifty Years! Fifty States!

Some of you know that I just turned 50 on Tuesday. I have been to 49 states so this is a good year to get to 50. Here is the map hanging in my kitchen showing all the counties I've been to.

My last state is Nevada. In a couple of weeks my wife and I plan to go to Lake Tahoe. The #AmtrakResidency got us excited to get on a train. Rather than waiting for the unlikely event of being chosen out of tens of thousands, we will do our own #DIYAmtrakResdidency. We are taking a 25 hour ride from Denver to Reno followed by a drive to Tahoe. 

If or when I can I will blog and/or tweet the event. There is probably no Welcome to Nevada sign on the tracks and it will be the middle of night so it may not be as fun as posing with my wife at the North Dakota border for her 50th. However, it's still exciting to me. Stay tuned. 

Map of the Week - The Yard Sale Bonanza!

Our neighbors had a yard sale recently and I picked up a pile of maps for $2! Later on when they left the rest on the curb, my wife picked up another huge pile for nothing! Here are some of the spoils:

Grenada tourism map produced by the Ordnance Survey (U.K.)














Old City detail from"Nice et Agglomeration" by Plans-Guides Blay, Paris.















KLM/Shell map of Ghana - produced by the Survey of Ghana, Accra.


Berndtson & Berndtson (B&B) Map of Costa Rica (laminated!)


Detail of
San Jose
from the
B&B map.










"Pianta di Venezia" - Free tourist map.

The Daily Masshole Obstacle Course

I frequently complain about my commute. Yes it's "only" 8 miles but 8 miles of stress. It is much more stressful than my job and probably the main thing that leaves me drained at night. In addition to the usual problems of heavy traffic, construction, bad roads and "Masshole" drivers, the route itself is a crazy serpentine pattern-there is no straight line to get me there.
Below is a map of my route through eastern Massachusetts. I've generalized it a bit and left off place names to make it less obvious where I live and work. Green text indicates southbound issues, purple northbound and black means the problem is in both directions.

The 8 mile route takes me 25 minutes with no traffic, 35-40 minutes typically and can be up to an hour in bad traffic situations. I can ride my bicycle there in 40-45 minutes when I don't get whacked. Public transit is a 3 bus system and takes an hour and 20 minutes. Walking? I haven't tried that one yet.

Map of the Week 112-Happy Valentines Day from Egypt!

I was working on a google maps project for my job when I started drifting off to other areas of the world. I got mesmerized by the aerial view (bottom right) of a section of the Nile River near Luxor (Al Uqsur) near the bottom of the map below. I decided to try making a quilt a la Nikolas Schiller. The quilt came out OK but on further review, I decided it would make a nice Valentine's Day heart. So enjoy this content-free Valentine's card from Map of the Week!

Map of the Week #100 - Map of 100 Maps!

In honor of the 100th Map of the Week I have gone back, looked at the places I have mapped and made of map of these locations. This is based on the tags below which is not a perfect science since my tags have not been consistent. Sometimes I tag a state when a city is featured, sometimes I forget to (sorry Washington). Sometimes the state seems less relevant to the subject matter. The "USA"tag is also misleading because I tend to use it only for nationwide maps of the U.S. The map above shows all the countries that have been featured. Below are the cities, states and provinces. Yes I do have a pretty obvious bias towards northerly and familiar regions. I will try to look beyond my narrow realm at least a few times in the next 100 maps. Stay tuned.