diana maps

Mapping Road Rage

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

From Audi, a website that lets you monitor a Road Frustration Index. I’m not sure how you’d keep track of this driving info as a driver yourself, unless you had your navigator checking for you. And their beta version doesn’t seem to draw any live data. I’ve read the same “my butt is falling asleep” tweet from Los Angeles each time I’ve checked. But I always like the idea of using maps as one element of information graphics and visualization.

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Posted in data & visualization, web mapping

a new effort at geocoding from the Peutinger Map

Posted on September 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

Some maps were never meant to be georeferenced, and the Peutinger Map is one of them. Here are some nicely scanned versions of its sections.

But I do respect the efforts that some have made to scrape off the locations, do some creative and researched geocoding, and provide scholars with a digital tool that may provide an insight or two. This is a new one that I just learned about, the Omnes Viae. Locations are based on Richard Talbert’s work.

via Neatorama.

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Posted in humanities, maps, web mapping

French Wine map, ala Underground style

Posted on September 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

A “Metro Wine Map of France” done by David Gissen. Nicely designed and reminds me that I’d rather be there than here.

from Edible Geography.

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Posted in food and drink, maps

supposedly digital native students have no real information literacy? unfortunately no surprise.

Posted on September 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

A recent study looking at the intersection of college students, librarians, and research questions. Maybe the internet just further complicates things, but was there really a time in the past when students did know how to do this well? Or when librarians had the magic lesson that was the effective teaching of this that somehow isn’t being done now? I can’t recall ever really being “taught” these skills in a specific sense. Instead they were things “learned” over years of school (mostly graduate school) and practice and then learning to (try to) teach other students?

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Posted in higher education

Spatial Literacy for Educators program at the University of Redlands

Posted on September 4, 2011 | 1 comment

It’s almost time to launch our first online cohort of students in our School of Education’s program in Spatial Literacy for Educators. This term’s first class, EDUC 617 – GIS & Mapping as Instructional Tools – will be taught by Kristi Alvarez. It’s the most geography and GIS focused of the four courses. My contribution to the program, EDUC 616 – Foundations of Spatial Thinking – will be offered in Winter Term this year (starting in January 2012). Though I am the guest speaker for the first week of Kristi’s class! The other two courses involve curriculum development and assessment.

In July I was interviewed by Jesse Rouse of Very Spatial about the program, and you can listen here to the podcast.

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Posted in geography, GIS, higher education, spatial thinking

watching the VA earthquake spread

Posted on August 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of the most interesting things to me about the Virginia earthquake is how wide-spread its waves were. Though I didn’t feel it here in Ithaca (NY), others in town did, and we’re hundreds of miles away from the epicenter. In contrast, during the four years we lived in Southern California, there were events relatively close that I never felt. Thinking about how the bedrock and faults affect wave diffusion was a new idea to me.

I like this visualization of the spread of the waves.

via Neatorama.

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Posted in data & visualization, geography

airplane patterns into carpet

Posted on August 10, 2011 | 1 comment

Turn your airplane views into flooring. Lovely “land carpet” patterns on these designs from Florian Pucher. I love the way he’s using satellite images as inspiration. I’m sold.

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Posted in design

GIS and Spatial Humanites in NYT article

Posted on July 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Some classic spatial history projects made the headlines in the NY Times today. Many of these works can be explored in more detail in two Esri Press books (Placing History and Past Time, Past Place), both of which Anne Knowles edited.

NYT hat tip to Brett Bobley.

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Posted in GIS, humanities

GIS / info vis job for Congress

Posted on June 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Congressional Research Service is hiring one (1) Geographical/Geospatial Information Systems Analyst. This person will design and generate maps that will be used by them, and presumably members of Congress and their staff, to “anticipate and illustrate complex public policy issues.” No small task there!

In another parallel lifetime, I would love to have this job. It could be wonderful, deeply rewarding, and hugely challenging. I wonder if it’s part of a team of other GIS Analysts? Surely the range of tasks that Congress takes on would warrant more than 1 Analyst?

Good luck to the eventual job holder! Be brilliant and help us out!

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Posted in data & visualization, GIS