Mapping The Surf

Malin and Mizen is a company that makes specialty maps like the California Surf Map 

 I love the wavy lines and details showing ideal wind and swell directions, coordinates, shark sightings, etc. The hand drawn details on the land are also very nice. 

The company is named for Malin and Mizen Head, the northernmost and southernmost points in Ireland. Here you can see North Malin from the Irish Surf Map. 

They make maps for different sports, history and beer and wine. Here is part of the Irish Pub Map. The x indicates where hot food is available. 

Here is some detail from the California Vineyard Map, the letters indicate grape types and the other symbols are for visiting and tasting information. 

There are also many swimming and golf maps. 

Other surf maps include Australia with its varied topography. Kangaroos and ostriches dot the land. 

Finally, closer to home (for me) is New Jersey. 

 

Witches and Ghosts

Here are some maps for your Halloween enjoyment. First, a clickable map of witches in Scotland. This is a map of the Witchcraft Survey Database, a list containing records of all of the recorded accused witches in Scotland from 1563 – 1736. There are maps showing locations of trials, deaths and detentions of accused witches.

The map can be filtered by gender, occupation and social class. You can also change the map for a more historic look.

 This Is Halloween is a project from Jonah Adkins showing locations of the two major pop-up Halloween stores in pink and green with a nice spooky font.

Zoom in and the circle become Pac Man ghosts - spooky!

Finally, Haunted NJ - via Reddit

Comparative Mountains and Rivers

Continuing last week's theme of comparative maps, here are a few examples of a genre of map that compares mountain heights and river lengths.

This map was originally published by Henry Tanner (1836) and modified by S, Augustus Mitchell (1846), both of Philadelphia.  Like last week's map, the geography is arranged to fit the space with the shortest rivers cleverly positioned atop the tallest mountains.

The peaks are numbered. On this and the other maps from this period the highest known peak was Dhaulagiri in the Himalayas, now the seventh highest. In addition to mountains, the heights of cities and lakes are shown. Below Quito, Ecuador is shown beneath Pambamarca.

Down at the bottom are some of the Pyramids of Egypt, the "Falls of Niagara" and lakes such as Ontario (42), Erie (36) and Superioir (32). Above that is Caracas and the limit (this is a guess) of where bananas grow. Also along the bottom are various cities and landmakes such as the mines of Huancavilica and the Philadelphia Shot Tower. More of this map can be seen on the David Rumsey Map Collection page here.

Here are a couple more variations on this theme You can click them to see enlarged views from the Rumsey collection. This one published in London by William Darton in 1823 has everything arranged on one side.

I like the treatment of the rivers here.

This one (Joseph Thomas, London, 1835) has the rivers at the bottom and the mountains in several rows.

Finally, for a local view, here are the rivers of Scotland.

Many more examples of this theme can be seen on this excellent blog post from the Rumsey collection.

Water: An Atlas

Guerilla Cartography is an organization that uses creative and artistic mapmaking to foster collaborative knowledge and promote cooperative ideas towards today's major problems. They created an excellent food atlas. Their second one, Water: An Atlas is being printed and should be ready to ship by the end of November. You can pre-order a copy here. They were nice enough to send me some sample pages. Here are a few details from some of the maps.

The map above is from a page titled "Water Availability for Food Security in African Cities" It looks at the challenges of a rapidly growing and urbanizing continent. City dots are sized by population and major cities have an outer circle divided into three colored sections indicating whether water and wastewater are separated and whether the city has a master plan for managing each.

There is also a diagram of the water cycle and a graph running diagonally down the page showing the availability of improved water (dark blue) wastewater treated (gray) and water consumption (the bars underneath) in daily liters per person.

Here is a small version of the page to show how these graphics fit together.

Another map was a commission from the Scotland Environmental Arts Festival by Andrew McAvoy showing the area with a focus on the water courses.

The hand drawn map is presented at three different scales. Above is the larger Southern Uplands region, while below is a detail around Morton Castle, the festival site with suggested exploring routes.

More maps and photos from the festival can be seen here.

Finally, "Pink Salt Lakes" maps out water bodies that are colored pink due to two types of reddish algae.

The map has a kind of checkerboard pattern with pictures of some of the lakes interspersed. Below is a picture from California's South Bay Salt Ponds-I once flew over these and wondered why they looked so weird.

Australia has many pink lakes including one named Pink Lake.

Whiskey Business

Celebrate the New Year with a Scotch map of Scotland.

Scotland's Independence Vote In Maps

Tomorrow Scotland votes on independence. I don't have a "dog in this fight" though there is a "Duggy Dog" starring in a pro-independence video.

This map does a nice job of illustrating the political situation in service of the Yes campaign.

The Yes campaign also has a video titled Scottish Weather Forecaster Loses It Live On Air with some good map content. Here are a couple of still frames.

On the "No" side there's this map from The Economist full of typically snooty Economist cliches.

We get it. They're a buncha moochers!

Finally, there's the cover of The Battle for Britain by David Torrance...

... and its copycat images.

Unfinishtstan-A Kitchen Wall in Edinburgh

Collins Geo, formerly Bartholomew (whose World Atlas I featured in a previous post), has a map blog. On that blog there's a "Map of the Month." They sent me this month's map, a rendering of imaginary countries on a kitchen wall. The map's boundaries and features have been determined by an uneven plastering job. Click the map for the story, map details, pinxits, Badley Smooved Mountains and an enlarged image of this "wall map."