Author: Ralph Straumann

Ralph is a world-citizen, a geoinformation specialist by profession, and interested in many topics. Here, he'll confine himself mostly to things geo-visual.
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ZIPScribble Map: Switzerland – Part II

Having seen a visualization by Robert Kosara of EagerEyes a loooong time ago, I wanted to try to reproduce it for Switzerland using Processing. This is the second installment of a two-parts post covering this project, in which I will describe how to arrive at the final result, the ZIPScribble Map. I’ll do that in some detail, maybe this is helpful to somebody.

In the first installment of this series I explained my process up to an intermediate result: a map depicting all the postal code locations in Switzerland, like this:

This involved creating a basemap with TileMill, using Till Nagel’s MercatorMap class in Processing, finding and downloading postal code data from Geonames and writing a Processing sketch which makes use of all these. In this second installment I will explain how to arrive at a ZIPScribble Map for Switzerland from the above intermediate result. So from the first part we have many things in place already. What is missing are basically three things: Continue reading “ZIPScribble Map: Switzerland – Part II”

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When mapping is political

Maps chart territory and can thus be used and abused, for example, to convey one’s own interpretation of a territorial dispute. In such cases maps exhibit their considerable potential to invoke political disputes. With the advent of online mapping and the gripe very few large companies have on it (think Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and very few … Continue reading When mapping is political

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ZIPScribble Map: Switzerland – Part I

Having seen a visualization by Robert Kosara of EagerEyes a loooong time ago, I wanted to try to reproduce it for Switzerland using Processing. This is the first installment of a two-parts post covering this project, in which I will describe how to arrive at an intermediate result. I’ll do that in some detail, maybe this is helpful to somebody.

The visualization is called the ZIPScribbleMap: “ZIP” for postal codes, “Scribble” for rather obvious reasons (as in “it looks like what I doodle while on the phone!”): Continue reading “ZIPScribble Map: Switzerland – Part I”

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Terminology is a beast: The many names of visualization

Nathan Yau of Flowing Data has a blogpost about the many terms floating around visualization. It’s worth reading! But, in my opinion, not complete without Robert Kosara’s sometimes constrasting view. Terminology is often flourishing in thriving disciplines where people seek to differentiate themselves and find their niche. It’s probably not that bad, but while potentially adding … Continue reading Terminology is a beast: The many names of visualization

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“What was there” project: More geocoded old photographs

While the news on Historypin is still fresh, the next project made its way onto my radar. Like Historypin, the “What was there” project crowdsources photos from times past and has them geocoded by users/contributors a.k.a. produsers. You can browse the collection on their website or using their mobile app – provided you’re living in … Continue reading “What was there” project: More geocoded old photographs

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Some GEarth tips

While Google Earth is still around, it makes sense to maximise its usefulness. The Google Earth Blog shares some nice pointers how to tune your GEarth installation in case you experience performance issues. They’ve also recently covered a company called KMZmaps.com which offers a set of custom KMZ overlays for use in GEarth. Honestly, I … Continue reading Some GEarth tips

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Timelapse video lets you ride the ISS – Canada to Chile in a minute

Behold this HD timelapse video of the view aboard the International Space Station (ISS). I can’t find first-hand information on its author, but PopSci claims that it was created by a certain James Drake, who stitched together 600 publicly available images shot from the ISS. The cities’ lights look great, especially together with the frequent thunderstorms lighting up the clouds (watch in HD and full-screen)! Continue reading “Timelapse video lets you ride the ISS – Canada to Chile in a minute”

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A GEarth challenger from Iran

Apparently, Iranian officials have decided to build a service to counter the success of Google Earth, which is described as a website that “was designed and built by the global arrogance for espionage purposes and to gather information from other countries” (Brigadier-General Mohammad Hasan Nami quoted in a Mehr news agency report). The new website … Continue reading A GEarth challenger from Iran