Thirty Day Map Challenge - Part 2

Here are the next batch of maps I've posted for the #30DayMapChallenge. The first ten maps are here.

Day 11 - Theme: 3D

For the 3D theme I attempted to recreate an exercise from my first cartography class back in the 1980's. That exercise was done using a pencil and graph paper. Unfortunately, I do not have my notes or remember the exact procedure. I did this one using GIS software instead. The map shows murder rates by state. Back then North Carolina was #1, now it's Louisiana. The map is "upside down" so that the higher southern states don't block the view of the lower northern states.

Day 12 - Theme: Population

This is a map of Arctic settlements done "firefly" style, which is fashionable these days in cartography circles.

Day 13 - Theme: Data Challenge 2: Natural Earth

Natural Earth is a set of publicly available data. It is a collaboration involving many volunteer NACIS members and cartographers around the globe. Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso and Tom Patterson led the effort. They have produced some beautiful topographic images of the world. The map was also inspired by a NACIS talk on indigenous place names. The topography and streams are from Natural Earth, while the place names came from Canada's Open Data site.

Day 14 - Theme: Map with a new tool

This one is a bit of a mess because I started doing a tutorial using R, a new tool for me, but I ran into some technical difficulties and then ran out of time. I never expected that Sunday, a non-work day might be the day that I run out of time. I had seem some recent Excel maps and made a blog post about this one. At the last minute decided to try one. Last Spring I tried my hand at a cross stitch map of Rochester, New York. This seemed like a natural fit for an Excel map since it is very grid-like. Instead of doing land use though, I tried doing one of those HOLC redlining maps from the 1920's. 

Lack of time forced me to go very low res. so the map ends up looking like not much at all.

Day 15 - Theme: Map made without using a computer. 

Several of the previous maps were hand drawn but I decided on a different approach here. This is a souvenir Pennsylvania cutting board stacked with coins representing the GDP of the metropolitan areas of the state. One cent = $1 Million. It's a nice, even formula but does not make the stacks high enough to really show the pattern well. Since it is helpful to see multiple angles, I created this mediocre video.

Day 16 - Theme: Urban/rural

This was mostly just an exercise in image manipulation to tease out the urban and rural areas by land cover. I picked Charlotte after looking for cities that might have an interesting looking pattern.

Day 17 - Theme: Land

While waiting in the San Diego Airport a few years ago, I noticed a display of Kumeyaay culture. I was unaware of these people as I suspect many are. There were a couple of maps which I later found copies of on a website dedicated to Kumeyaay culture. I find it interesting that their territory predates the US-Mexico border which has been imposed on their land. This is what the area looked like pre-border.

Day 18 - Theme: Water

This was just a fun exercise in grabbing some water data from northern Quebec and overlaying it on top of a cheesy tree pattern that I made just for this purpose. More art than map. The large lake in the west is Lac Couture, an impact crater.

Day 19 - Theme: Islands

I've always been fond of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Surrounded Islands installation so I decided to map it. Buffering is one of the most common and basic GIS functions (ie. is this property within 200 feet of the river?), here was an example of a real world buffer.

More to come (I hope).

Google Pac Man Cartography

The Google Maps Pac Man April Fool's map has been up for a while now and has been mentioned all over the web. They have transformed the world into a giant Pac-Man maze. I decided to take a look at some of the more interesting and/or well-known places on earth to play. Some of them look fantastic even if the street patterns are a bit vague at that close a zoom level. Enjoy!

I have always been really bad at Pac-Man. Here I am about to get eaten by Pac-Man bullies on the suburban Rochester, New York street where I spent much of my formative youth.

Getting mugged in Queens Park, Toronto, Canada.

The Battery, Manhattan, NYC

 Chased by Putin's thugs outside of Red Square, Moscow

Climbing up the mountain to get to Machu Picchu in Peru.

The Ginza area, Tokyo, Japan

Stupidly chasing my tormentors in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

 Circling the Arc de Triomphe, Place de L'Etiole , Paris

Finally, getting a measure of revenge near the Royal Residence in Central Marrakesh, Morocco.

March Hot Dog Madness

Several years ago I featured the West Virginia Slaw Mapping Project, showing the regional pattern of hot dog preferences. As an update, the West Virginia Hot Dog Blog claims to have won last years National Hot Dog and Sausage Council March Madness style regional hot dog tournament.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt but I could not find the above image or a winner listed on the Council's facebook page. They did make the final against the Coney dog. I used MapBox to create some geographical context for the contestants:

New York - As far as I can tell New York hot dogs are pretty ordinary but since New Yorkers think everything that comes from their city is special, it had to be on the list.

 Seattle - I don't know this for sure but I think this is a hot dog with cream cheese. They put cream cheese on everything up there. No wonder they lost in the first round.









     The famous West Virginia Dog. It is a "heavenly creation" that is topped with onions, hot sauce and usually cole slaw, though as the slaw mapping project shows, not in every county.

Georgia - I don't know this one but Delish, my source for this and the
Sonoran and KC dogs, describes an "Atlanta" dog. It's a hot dog with cole slaw. Sounds like they're copying West Virginia who they lost to in the first round. Nice Atlanta Flames logo in the poster =>

The Coney - This bit of geographical confusion is actually a Michigan thing. If you go to West Lafayette Boulevard in Detroit you will find a Coney Mecca of sorts. I know this is true because I've seen it with my own TV. The Coney (Coney Island style?) is slathered with chili, onions, mustard and cheese.

The Sonoran is a southwestern inspired dog from Arizona. The dog is wrapped in bacon and has jalapenos and pinto beans among other stuff. I've never had one but it has possibilities.

The Kansas City is a Reuben sandwich hot dog topped with caraway seeds to mimic the rye bread. Supposedly these are served at Royals games though I went to that stadium several times in the 1990s and never saw such a thing - maybe it had not been invented way back in the days of yore.

The Chicago dog. Basically you empty the contents of your refrigerator onto a hot dog. I had one of these at O'Hare airport. When I saw someone I knew from Chicago I asked whether the airport experience counted. After telling him the brand of meat served on the dog he assured me I had the real deal.







Oops, they forgot to include the famous Rochester White Hot and probably many other deserving regional varieties.