Sometimes called a Rubik’s globe, though Rubik had nothing to do with it, this Hungarian-made globe puzzle from the 1980s, known variously as the Földgöm, Globus Gömb or Varázs Gömb, sometimes shows up on the lists of collectibles dealers. Consisting of a plastic core and tin surface pieces, the puzzle operates on two axes; the eight corners do not move. Jaap’s Puzzle Page has details on its origins and how to solve it, and also shows a couple of non-geographical globe puzzle variants. Here’s a short blog post from the Retro Game Museum (in Hungarian). And here’s an unboxing video from someone who bought a globe (bundled with a Rubik’s cube) on eBay. [Harvard Map Collection]
Month: August 2018
New Ottawa Transit Map Goes Diagrammatic
Last week OC Transpo, the City of Ottawa’s transit service, unveiled a new network map (PDF) that shows the transit routes that will be in effect after the new LRT opens, which is (at the moment) scheduled to take place in November. From a cartographic perspective, what’s interesting is that OC Transpo’s new map adopts a diagrammatic, non-geographical design after years of their maps simply overlaying transit lines over a city map (see, for example, the latest, pre-LRT transit map, PDF). The approach allows the map to enlarge the more densely served core and inner suburbs and shrink the larger, but less service-dense outer suburbs—which is exactly what diagrammatic transit maps of sprawling cities are good for.
Studying How and Why Maps Go Viral
Geographer Anthony Robinson is studying the phenomenon of viral maps—maps that are widely disseminated on social media, many of which are terrible: superficial, inaccurate or deliberately misleading. One burst of virality occurred in November 2016, when there was an eruption of maps, some silly, others dead serious, showing the outcome of the U.S. presidential election “if only x voted” (where x was women, or people of colour, or some other demographic). This episode is apparently one of the subjects of Robinson’s paper in Cartography and Geographic Information Science, in which he sketches out a framework for evaluating viral maps’ design and the ways they spread. The paper is behind a paywall, but here’s a news article about it from Penn State, where Robinson works.
Previously: When Maps Lie; How to Circulate a Fake Election Map; What If Only … Voted?; Bad Internet Maps: ‘A Social Media Plague’.
The Woman Who Gets Lost Every Day
Developmental topographic disorientation is a neurological disorder that prevents people from making cognitive maps. People suffering from DTD literally get lost in familiar surroundings: their home, to and from work. As someone who literally cannot get lost, I have a hard time imagining what that could possibly be like. Enter The Woman Who Gets Lost Every Day, a short film about Sharon Roseman, a woman with DTD who shares how she experiences and navigates the world in her own words. [The Atlantic]
There have been a number of news articles on DTD since the Walrus article I told you about in 2011. See, for example, this 2015 article in The Atlantic.
Gatineau Park Recommends Paper Maps
Relying on your smartphone’s maps can be risky in places where cellular service is patchy. That goes for Gatineau Park, where, despite the fact that its southeast corner is surrounded by the city of Gatineau, Quebec (across the river from Ottawa), staff still recommend people use paper maps, CBC News reports. It’s a big park, after all, and not all of it is in the city. But it’s not just about dead zones and dead batteries: out of date trail information and lack of trail difficulty are also problems. None of these problems, mind you, are unfixable (except, you know, dead batteries).
The paper maps in question include general summer and winter maps, along with trail maps for summer and winter activities (all links to PDF files). They’re not total luddites: here’s an interactive map.
Smoke from the British Columbia Wildfires
Smoke from the British Columbia wildfires (previously) has blanketed the Canadian prairie provinces and can be seen from space, CBC News reports. The above image was taken by the Suomi NPP satellite on 15 August.
2018 UK Mapping Festival
The UK Mapping Festival takes place from 2 to 7 September in London: see their sponsored post on Londonist. The festival is a mix of exhibitions, talks, workshops and other events. Exhibition passes are free, but certain events are not. The conference part of the festival takes place over three days and costs up to £95 per day to attend, but as the program is a mix of geospatial, historical, cartographic and general-interest material, you might not need to go every day.
Humphrey Llwyd Exhibition in Wales
An exhibition celebrating Welsh author and cartographer Humphrey Llwyd (1527-1568) is taking place at the National Library of Wales: BBC News, press release. Among other things, Llwyd produced the first published map of Wales (rather than as a part of another map), the Cambriae Typus, which appeared as an addendum to Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1573. The exhibition runs until the 31st at the Library in Aberystwyth; admission is free. The Library’s digital version of the map is available here.
Equal Earth Updates
The Equal Earth projection is already getting some early traction: it was used by NASA in a surface temperature analysis map posted to Twitter (above) and Ken Field’s using it in a forthcoming presentation. Meanwhile, it now has its own proper web page, where it has links for developers and cartographers.
Previously: The Equal Earth Projection.
Carbon Monoxide from the California Wildfires
Carbon monoxide released into the atmosphere by the California wildfires is drifting across North America in concentrations sufficient to turn up on the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. A series of maps showing CO concentrations in the United States between 30 July and 7 August, using AIRS data, have been combined into the animation above.
Previously: Mapping the Northern California Wildfires.
The Changing Padma River
Landsat observations have charted the erosion of the banks of the ever-changing Padma River, a major distributary of the Ganges in Bangladesh. This is vividly shown in this animation produced by NASA Earth Observatory, which “shows 14 false-color images of the Padma river between 1988 and 2018 taken by the Landsat 5 and 8 satellites. All of the images include a combination of shortwave infrared, near infrared, and visible light to highlight differences between land and water.” More on the erosion of the Padma River here.
AP: Google Tracks Your Location, Even When You Tell It Not To
“Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to,” the Associated Press reports. Their exclusive investigation discovered that “many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.” Basically, turning the “Location History” feature off doesn’t stop Google apps from recording your location at various junctures: your location data may still be found in places like “My Activity” or “Web and App Activity,” for example. Google insists its descriptions are clear; critics are calling Google’s hairsplitting disingenuous, disturbing and wrong.
Mapping the British Columbia Wildfires
British Columbia isn’t having a very good year either, forest fire wise. For maps of the wildfires burning in the province, see the B.C. Wildfire Service’s interactive map, which shows active wildfires, fire perimeters, and evacuation areas. Evacuation maps are frequently tweeted by Emergency Info BC. Data journalist Tara Carman has posted maps of wildfires and evacuation zones, but they haven’t been updated in a couple of weeks and are now out of date, I fear.
Previously: Mapping the Northern California Wildfires.
Entrepreneur Magazine Profiles Bellerby
Entrepreneur magazine profiles Peter Bellerby, the founder of globemaking company Bellerby and Company. We’ve seen a lot of Bellerby profiles over the past few years, but this one goes into more depth than most. The story of the company’s founding (Peter wanted to make a globe for his father’s 80th birthday, et cetera) is retold, but we get some more detail about the size and volume of its business today: “This year, the company should turn around about 750 globes, compared to 500 last year—and the current wait list stands between six months and two years depending on globe size. Revenue-wise, the company will likely net about 3 million pounds (close to $4 million) in 2018.” That’s … that’s something. [WMS]
New Edition of Star Trek: Stellar Cartography
A new edition of Star Trek: Stellar Cartography is coming out in October, TrekCore reports. Like The Lands of Ice and Fire, it’s a collection of folded maps—10 of them, 24″×36″ in size—rather than a bound atlas. The new edition, authored by Larry Nemecek, corrects errors and typos and adds material from the various series, including season one of Discovery. (The first edition came out in 2013.)
Previously: Mapping Star Trek.