Inspired by the beautiful maps Geoff McGhee made for the Lane Center-KQED California Delta project, I spent some time this weekend playing with GIS software. I haven’t done any hackerly projects in ages, and a friend who’s a GIS professional had suggested QGIS, a free software project. (ArcGIS is pricey, and I’m a Mac guy …
Some fun with the newly released USGS historical map collection – here’s Albuquerque circa 1893: update: Ooh, I missed this. From the top left corner of the map – U.S. Geological Survey, J.W. Powell, Director:
Rick Anderson on the rich life and untimely death of the Seattle P-I: It was different after the P-I packed up its globe and moved to a new building on the waterfront in 1986. Newspapers were evolving—less fun, but more respectful work. No more would a beleaguered reporter likely need to drop acid to get …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Obituary for a Life I Never Quite Lived’ »
This is one of my favorite views of U.S. climate, providing a quick and easy way to squint and get a feel for what’s going on across the entire continental U.S. It’s the USGS streamflow map, with color showing today’s flow relative to the long term mean for this date. Red’s dry, blue and back …
Some smart person at NOAA’s climate prediction center has done a lovely mashup of two maps I regularly look at to track drought: the weekly drought monitor and the USGS streamflow map.
Via Strange Maps
View Larger Map Indeed, this is way easier than the way I’ve been doing it.
Via Google Maps Mania, word of a new tool to make it easier to embed a Google map in, for example, one’s blog. Let’s give it a try: View Larger Map
walkscore Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Via the Google Maps Mania blog, the entertaining (and potentially useful) Walkscore web site. Input your address and they score your neighborhood’s walkability and tell you about bookstores and libraries nearby that you’d never heard of, and bistros that are closed.
Jim Belshaw recently linked to Strange Maps, a blog that is what it says. My interest in maps involves the intersection of the aesthetic with the cognitive, and the way the decisions about what you put in and what you leave out goes a long way both toward communicating and circumscribing. Today, a map of …