Pinboard (blech)

Hubmap | Heathrow

blech — 2014-05-30T16:35:42+00:00

Heathrow Airport now has a slippy map

Crime Doesn't {{Insert Variable}} | GeoSprocket Community Jive

blech — 2014-01-28T06:35:01+00:00

“There’s no citywide relationship between crime rate and elevation in San Francisco.” Other factors are at work.

Portland’s Bridges | extent(PNW)

blech — 2013-12-01T23:39:05+00:00

"The bridges in Portland are not only plentiful, they are also beautiful and hard working… I was gripped by the idea that I had to map the bridges. So I did, and here is what I have done so far."

A shapefile of the TZ timezones of the world | efele.net

blech — 2013-11-06T22:12:36+00:00

"The tz_world shapefile captures the boundaries of the TZ timezones across the world, as of TZ 2013b. The geometries are all POLYGONs, and a TZ timezone will sometimes have multiple polygons. There are about 28,000 rows."

Making data sensible with a Bayesian analysis | Data Muncher

blech — 2013-11-01T19:45:23+00:00

"Here I investigate the murder rates (number of arrests by population of 100,000) in 2010 and show that a Bayesian approach gives more sensible results than a simple approach."

Vignelli Transit Maps | RIT Press

blech — 2013-08-26T20:28:28+00:00

"Vignelli Transit Maps describes the history of the New York subway maps and follows this city’s transportation growth from separate, independent lines to one large system. Peter Lloyd uncovers the history of the Vignelli map that includes the legacy of the people who created and promoted this New York icon—as well as those who hastened its demise. The book includes a first glimpse at original, early development sketches of the famed map and of its recent successors." I have been waiting for this book.

Home | ISS Photo Locations

blech — 2013-03-25T16:40:50+00:00

"Since the first mission to the International Space Station over 12 years ago there have been over a million photographs taken by astronauts looking out from four hundred kilometers above Earth. Nearly all of them have been archived on NASA’s servers. I’ve crawled that archive, pulling down the location for each of the 1,129,177 photographs taken from the ISS." A fairly simple visualisation (although at reasonable scale), but it looks very good.

Watercolor Textures | stamen design

blech — 2012-03-29T16:18:46+00:00

'@stamen's Geraldine writes about "a mix of the hand and the computer" behind creating textures for the watercolor maps'. There's been a whole week of posts about the various maps that's fascinating.

A Fantasy Transit Map for San Francisco | The Atlantic Cities

blech — 2012-03-27T05:50:52+00:00

"SPUR asked Stokle to draw two transit maps for them (full disclosure—I edit SPUR’s monthly magazine, The Urbanist), with the intent of demonstrating how a single, unified transit map might provide greater accessibility and ease of use and to stimulate conversation about how transit decisions are made." The maps are interesting but I think flawed. More later, perhaps.

London Blitz Map | Mapping London

blech — 2012-03-26T21:24:25+00:00

"The image above is a photo of part of a large map of London, created just after the Second World War and showing buildings that were damaged or destroyed in the Blitz. The map is the centrepiece of a small free exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archive in Finsbury." Nice, but a scan online would be nicer (please?)

Fold It | Pen & Think

blech — 2012-03-23T21:35:27+00:00

"Using a special PNG as a mask for an img element with a background-image property, you can turn flat-looking static maps into nifty skeuomorph-ized paper objects."

Why We Need Another Mapping Framework | vis4.net

blech — 2012-03-16T05:24:51+00:00

"Most notably Kartograph allows to select and fine-tune the map projection, which is like the fundamental equipment for telling stories with maps" If that doesn't already make you excited, this introductory blog post should do the trick. Lovely.

The Greatest Grid | Museum of the City of New York

blech — 2012-01-09T18:36:50+00:00

"The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011 celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, the foundational document that established Manhattan’s famous street grid." Closes 15 April, 2012.

The best American wall map, by David Imus | Slate Magazine

blech — 2012-01-03T10:32:01+00:00

"So what makes this map different from the Rand McNally version you can buy at a bookstore? Or from the dusty National Geographic pull-down mounted in your child’s elementary school classroom? Can one paper wall map really outshine all others—so definitively that it becomes award-worthy? I’m here to tell you it can. This is a masterful map. And the secret is in its careful attention to design."

Don’t Zone-1 It When You Can Boris Bike It | Suprageography

blech — 2011-12-06T18:33:36+00:00

"Ever thought what the tube network would look like if you took out the expensive Zone 1? Me neither, until this morning, when I was wondering if it was possible to utilise my current “Boris Bike” bikeshare 24-hour membership to save a bit of money on commuting in to work."

Dencity | Fathom

blech — 2011-11-30T18:49:30+00:00

"What does seven billion look like? Dencity is a map of global population density as the world reaches this important milestone."

Visualizing Data at the Oxford Internet Institute | Mapping Flickr

blech — 2011-09-30T18:34:44+00:00

"Our program downloaded the count of geotagged photographs in every 0.5 x 0.5 degree latitude-longitude square on the Earth’s surface."

Missing Maps and the Fragility of Digital Information | O'Reilly Radar

blech — 2011-08-03T00:12:09+00:00

"Because it was very difficult to get the big picture on the phone's small screen, I thought to pick up a paper map at a gas station. To my dismay, the spinner racks were empty, with only a few maps of other parts of the state available. I immediately regretted throwing away my paper maps in a cleaning binge a few years back - I can easily imagine futures in which they will be worth their weight in gold."

A New Subterranean Map of London | LT Museum

blech — 2011-05-18T21:00:07+00:00

From Stephen Walter, who drew The Island: "When London Transport Museum came to me for a new idea, I thought of it straight away – An Underground map of London where I could finally include those lost rivers and develop my own tube map. I am currently developing the ideas for this subterranean map of London and entries to this blog may contribute to its development." Possibly worth watching.

Free Museums and Culture | I Heart NY Museums

blech — 2011-02-24T02:57:31+00:00

A table of hours and prices for museums in New York City, complete with sortable columns and a map. Could be handy.

Sunrise and sunset directions | SunCalc

blech — 2011-02-03T01:06:55+00:00

Oh, this is nice- it shows the range of positions of the sun during the day. Handy for plotting when you want to take architectural photographs with particular lighting.

Conductor in progress video | Alexander Chen

blech — 2011-01-24T02:26:29+00:00

"Tentatively titled Conductor, it recreates the New York subway system as a musical instrument. It’s currently built in HTML5 + Javascript. SVG was very useful, as I could create the design in Illustrator, then import the coordinates into Javascript." "I decided to use Vignelli’s beautiful 1972 subway map as a starting point for the design."

Euromap | t-reichling.de

blech — 2010-11-01T14:40:03+00:00

A Lego map of Europe, complete with notable buildings in the style of the Architecture series. Impressive.

A map for every day | Phil Gyford’s website

blech — 2010-09-02T12:09:33+00:00

"Eighteen months ago I wrote about redesigning my site’s front page and mentioned in passing that I’d also created a page for every day which aggregated many things. I’ve now taken this a step further and added a map for every day which aggregates various pieces of location-based information about me." I've been thinking about doing this, but Phil actually has. Interesting musings about privacy in there, too.

London Tube Flows | Oliver G O'Brien

blech — 2010-04-28T19:25:37+00:00

Transport for London's Underground station entrance and exit numbers plotted onto a map. I'm not sure why this is concentrating on differences rather than pure numbers, but it's interesting.

Knots and geography | Eye blog

blech — 2010-03-22T11:19:07+00:00

Subtitled "A psychologist challenges the Beck gospel of Underground octolinearity", this is a short introduction by Maxwell Roberts in Eye magazine to the ideas he explored in his underground maps exhibition in Southend. (Must do something about getting that to London...)

Knots and geography | Eye blog

blech — 2010-03-22T11:19:07+00:00

anti-mega: the informational city | Chris Heathcote

blech — 2010-01-15T12:28:02+00:00

Notes from a previous talk from Tim Fendley, this time with the addition of Erik Spiekermann of Meta fame. Some repeated points but also some other ones.

North doesn't matter | Tom Roper's Weblog

blech — 2010-01-15T12:25:52+00:00

A very good writeup of a Tim Fendley talk about Legible London, which is slowly spreading from its West End trial area. I should keep an eye out for this chap speaking again; seems like it'd be an interesting talk.

radicalcartography

blech — 2010-01-14T20:41:55+00:00

"I'm not convinced that subway maps need to be "abstract," with massive distortion and nothing but forty-five degree angles, especially for small systems like Boston's." Well, no, but this unofficial design has a crowded central area which needs a pull-out (precisely what Beck's London diagram and its successors avoid). Meanwhile, details like the forced change at Ashmont is badly conveyed yet arguably useless information (neighbourhoods? distances? travel times?) is squeezed on. Still, maybe that's what suits the Boston psyche. (Jonathan Laban spends a good part of Soft City talking about how important neighbourhood is in that city.)

A Makeover for the BART Map | Design Observer

blech — 2010-01-14T20:37:30+00:00

"Like a child drawing, the old BART map could take you on a flight of fancy, but wouldn't get you to and from work." However: "If I consider the old BART map in the context of the visual culture of the San Francisco Bay Area, I am no longer certain of its inferiority." An interesting piece touching on the cultural links between subway maps and the cities (or areas) they depict. (I prefer the new map, but then, I'm a Londoner.)

End of the line for the tube map? | guardian.co.uk

blech — 2010-01-14T20:35:16+00:00

"an Oyster-generation map will need to show all the routes available to card users, the design has become too limited in its scope. Mapmakers have had their work cut out trying to fit all the information into a legible sheet of paper. For years, there have been maps on platform walls of the Overground mixed up with the Underground, yet these are scrappy – even ugly – things in comparison with the classic tube-only map." Slight ahistorical (it doesn't mention Beck's all-London maps, or the fact the Connections map dates from 1976) but Glancey still has something of a point.

You are Here | Nick Thompson

blech — 2009-10-12T08:12:38+00:00

"You are Here is an interactive map of the universe, as seen from the user's current location in space and time. The user holds a flat-panel screen which behaves like a magic window, allowing them to see continents, rivers, stars, constellations, and planets that are invisible to the naked eye." If you don't like video, read this instead.

Nick Thompson’s first-person map | Infotropism

blech — 2009-10-12T08:11:22+00:00

A five-odd minute long video about a custom tablet that shows you the heavens and earth from where you are, complete with the planes of the ecliptic, projection of the equator, local streets and distant continents (through a wireframe earth). Amazing. Any chance of a port to a standard mobile device?

Mayor orders Thames back on map | BBC News

blech — 2009-09-17T12:42:37+00:00

Well, there's a surprise. Boris Johnson finally gets wind of the minor press flap over the Tube map reworking, and blows a fuse. "I hope Londoners will imagine the Thames in place until it reappears on the maps, and will not forget their beautiful river."

Pocket a work by Turner Prize winner Richard Long | TfL

blech — 2009-09-14T13:07:37+00:00

"Acclaimed British artist Richard Long has designed the next Pocket Tube map cover for Art on the Underground" Bizarrely, there's nothing about the actual map redesign in this press release. Maybe this is a kind of large-scale A/B testing?

it's out | diamond geezer

blech — 2009-09-14T09:45:36+00:00

An exhaustive, well-written and readable look at the new poster and folder versions of the London tube map, complete with a comment thread featuring Max Roberts, author of Underground Maps After Beck.

What if the Eagle had landed on Earth? | New Scientist

blech — 2009-07-19T12:56:15+00:00

The series of images overlaying the Apollo astronaut tracks to scale on London, from Apollo 11 up to Apollo 17, gives an idea of how much further the later missions could explore - and how much there still is to examine.

“Nearest Subway Augmented Reality App | Release Candidate One

blech — 2009-07-17T11:05:54+00:00

"There’s no denying how cool this is, but it seems that none of the app’s functionality would be lost if you replaced the video feed with a picture of Miranda Kerr. It’s a subway compass—a subway divining rod, even—so I have to wonder what good the “augmented reality” part really does." The AR sceptics are coming out of the closet, a bit.

Sometimes all you need is data. | Dear Diagrammary

blech — 2009-05-18T20:28:52+00:00

Using the NYC subway station usage data: "I wanted to be able to scrub back and forth in time, so I started working on a ModestMaps-powered map with a time slider. After getting the data into the right shape, it was pretty quick to get something simple but interactive and visual up" This is really rather excellent - the UI has lots of neat touches (like animating on clicking the slider). It's only a shame that the chances of getting similar data out of TfL are so close to zero.

Where? | Hackney

blech — 2009-04-23T10:05:24+00:00

How long have Hackney Council had this not-bad-actually mapping + local data app? It's the sort of thing I would have expected Up My Street to do, if the smart people who set it up had still been there when the Google Maps APIs matured. Ho hum.

Random planar graphs and the London street network | arXiv

blech — 2009-04-09T22:42:59+00:00

"we find that the streets of London form a self-organising system whose growth is characterised by a strict interaction between the metrical and informational space." via David Cantrell on (void)

New ways to get around with transit | Google LatLong

blech — 2009-01-13T21:28:08+00:00

An overlaid tube map for London (and other transit options elsewhere) is now available on Google Maps.

On A Bus | Hublog

blech — 2008-12-17T14:20:21+00:00

This was really great, before NPTDR forced it down. Of course, TfL pimp their travel tools on their site with lovely pretty iPhone icons, but when someone else does anything that's actually useful on the web, or for a mobile device, and which doesn't rely on crap Java servers with dodgy session tracking, and where all the information isn't spat out in PDFs, then licence trauma ensues. Bastards. TfL run the bus routes. The people who get the data from them should be as open as possible.

London A-Z | Visual IT

blech — 2008-10-03T11:31:24+00:00

It's an A-Z, on an iPhone (or iPod touch). Handy especially for the latter (where you can't rely on a data connection), and of course it's far more detailed than the Google map tiles. On the other hand, £6 would buy you a paper copy: £4.80 (or whatever nearest App Store increment is) would be far more reasonable.

London from the Air | Google Maps

blech — 2008-08-30T08:23:25+00:00

Everyone is, not without reason, very excited by the photos of London from the Air that Justin Hawke took, featured yesterday on boston.com's The Big Picture. I thought it would be nice to show where they all were, so here's a quick map. (Yes, I do evil client image sizing.)

Google LatLong: Sky: The final frontier

blech — 2007-08-22T12:14:51+00:00

Here's the official Google Earth blog and the post describing the launch of what seems to be accurately, but longwindedly, called "Sky in Google Earth".

WikiMapia: United Kingdom / England / London, 1km from center

blech — 2006-07-18T10:39:13+00:00

I love WikiMapia- it's full screen and the URL dynamically updates, for example, which are both nice. Also, it has this wonderful location note.

Putting Transport On The Map (PDF)

blech — 2006-03-03T14:56:29+00:00

Proposed 2016 Tube map. Also includes trams and some overground service. As used by the BBC, with alterations, on its story about the tube map being a design icon, despite it looking awful compared to the current map. (PDF)

BBC NEWS | UK | England | London | Top three 'iconic' designs named

blech — 2006-03-03T14:34:30+00:00

"The London Underground map, the Spitfire and Concorde have been voted Britain's three favourite designs of the last century" but what's up with that thumbnailed tube map? They've ruined the Paddington corner of the Circle and the Central line!

Google Maps Transparencies

blech — 2005-07-06T15:23:36+00:00

Ripping off the Multimap feature, but with lag, and a horribly UScentric list of cities in a dropdown that doesn't work in Safari

Global Observations - Cloudiness & Rain

blech — 2004-12-03T14:25:38+00:00

dots!

Design Observer: Mr. Vignelli's Map

blech — 2004-11-11T09:44:13+00:00

On the 1970s diagrammatic New York subway map, and why it failed to catch on

Multimap's Aerial Photo (yeah, like it's the only one; sigh)

blech — 2004-10-08T09:02:08+00:00

Nothing like watching people stumble on a three year old (minimum) feature and doing mindless link propagation

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Devil is in the detail as OS maps out the future

blech — 2004-06-01T23:00:07+00:00

Interesting, if press-release-sounding, UK map stuff

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Devil is in the detail as OS maps out the future

blech — 2004-06-01T16:00:07+00:00

Interesting, if press-release-sounding, UK map stuff

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Attention to detail

blech — 2004-05-17T16:56:50+00:00

Saw this in the magazine, but didn't look for it online, because I thought they'd lose the pictures. They haven't.

London Topographical Society

blech — 2004-05-17T09:59:57+00:00

London maps (possibly the first time my "extended" and "tags" are identical) (until I normalised my tags thanks to mattb)

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Attention to detail

blech — 2004-05-17T09:56:50+00:00

Saw this in the magazine, but didn't look for it online, because I thought they'd lose the pictures. They haven't.

pasta and vinegar: [Space and Place] Distorted map: anamorphosis

blech — 2004-04-24T10:26:56+00:00

Interesting. At some point I need to draw iso(times) across a London map- show the Tube as "wormholes"