Schmap of the Week

Schmap is a Widget you can add to your website to post info about your team, band, city, or other interests. Better to show then tell.



Below you can see the latest exploits of my favorite pathetic hockey team - the Flyers. Click a puck and see how they did in that location - you can also look at the arena - this works better in baseball when you're not looking at roofs. If you don't like them, which you probably don't, you can change the team or even the sport by clicking the buttons up top. Above, for a more international perspective is everyone's favorite French league team Paris St Germain.



You can also put up a city tourist guide - I picked Baltimore in honor of the Baltimore Festival of Maps.



Or you can follow your favorite musician such as Avril Lavigne - well she's not really my favorite but I sure like that heart-bone logo.

Map of the Week 116-Baltimorrific!

For those of you like me who were foolish enough to miss the Chicago Festival of Maps, life has given you a second chance.
The Baltimore Festival of Maps begins Sunday with the opening of Maps: Finding Our Place in the World. This is the same exhibit that appeared at the Field Museum in Chicago, now making an east coast appearance at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The Walters chose the London Glove map to represent their various mapping exhibits (there are several other exhibits and events going on at the museum).

As a fan of maps made by non-professionals, I'm really looking forward to seeing the Maps on Purpose exhibit. Art on Purpose, a community arts organization led various neighborhood map making workshops. Below are a couple of samples. Unfortunately the resolution on them is pretty coarse.













Of course I was curious to see where these neighborhoods are so I located them on yahoo maps. I used yahoo because I'm partial to their "micro-neighborhoods" even though they're often wrong. The map on the left is in Sandtown-Winchester, in the top right (NW) part of the map. The map on the right shows the Hollis Market-Union Square neighborhoods at the southern edge of the map.
One thing I have not found on the festival site is a map locating the events. Maybe someone (her majesty?) knows something I don't. I took the map below from yahoo and outlined in purple the area of the neighborhood map above and marked the Walters in a red asterisk. Now you know where to go and what to do. See you there?

Map of the Week 115-The Oak Park Continental Divide

Continental Divides usually bring up images of snowy mountain peaks but sometimes the mountains look like this:


Yes the suburban folks of Oak Park, Chicagoland, Illinois have their own continental divide and they're proud of it! They even have a web page to showcase it. The map below is proof for skeptics - stand at the corner of Division and Elmwood with a cup of water and watch some of it flow to the Gulf of Mexico while the rest goes to the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence Seaway.

<- This is a detailed map showing the approximate line of the divide. My guess is that the storm drainage system adds a layer of complication, making the map approximate at best.
The map above can be further subdivided - if you do this enough times you will eventually find your own local continental divide that you can brag about!

Map of the Week 114-Happy Leap Day!

You've been given an extra day on the calendar (why does it have to be in February?) so what crazy thing are you going to do with it? Four years ago you could have romped through the streets of Berkeley pelting chain stores and banks with styrofoam bricks and spilling coffee grounds outside of Starbucks. Here is the map from their 2004 poster showing the locations of all the chain stores-written sideways upside diagonal for your reading pleasure. I assume that none of these stores are still in business given their actions last leap day.

Map of the Week 113-L(a)titudes Exhibit

Tonight is the opening reception for L(a)titudes - a multimedia exhibit at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center where artists "explore mapping borders and boundaries of Israel and Palestine". Among the artists featured is MOTW fan favorite Nikolas Schiller who made this map quilt from a CIA map of Israel - the image on the right is zoomed in.











Unfortunately the JCC web site does not provide much information about the artists so I had to do some digging to find other materials such as the map below from Karey Kessler. I guess you just have to go to find out more. The exhibit will be open until June 2nd so if you're in the neighborhood it's probably worth a visit.

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 111- Anchors Away!

Last Wednesday off the coast of Egypt, a ship's anchor severed some cables limiting internet access to 75 million people, primarily in Egypt, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This has had significant impacts on the high tech economy in India and on western companies that have outsourced their tech support there. This story appeared in the Guardian along with the map below of undersea internet connections and lots of hand-wringing about the world's fragile infrastructure.


If you want an even more detailed map of the world's internet infrastructure and feel like spending $250 then take a click on the map below.