A sunset on Mars: This picture been taken by NASA’s Curiosity Rover on the mission’s 956th Martian day (April 15, 2015). The colour has been “calibrated and white-balanced to remove camera artifacts” according to NASA. The colours are thus similar to what a human would perceive, although we might see a bit more blue. How amazing is this!? NASA sent … Continue reading Sunset on Mars
Sometimes people tend to mistake weather (a short-term phenomenon) for climate (the long-term average). I recently came across this video in which astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the difference between the two. I think it’s a brilliant example of conveying complex concepts using a simple analogy. In this case that of walking a dog on the beach: … Continue reading On weather and climate change
Recently, I’ve stumbled across Noah Iliinsky’s Where 2012 talk When To *Not* Use Maps. The title immediately intrigued me. As a geographer and data consultant I’m convinced, an important part of my work lies in the question what tools best fit a purpose or a goal I want to achieve. But this is only one side of … Continue reading When NOT to use maps
Geohipster or old-school cartography buff, all of you will enjoy The Globemaker, a Cabnine mini-documentary on Peter Bellerby, artisan globemaker and founder of Bellerby and Co. Globemakers. Takes 6 minutes of your time: View Peter and Co.’s products at www.bellerbyandco.com. Continue reading The Globemaker
The Atlantic Cities has a nice portrait of Eric Fischer: Mapmaker, artist, or programmer?. If you have been following information visualization and geovisualization news online over the recent years, I bet you have come across Fischer’s work. A few examples: “Ultimately, almost everything I have been making tries to take the dim, distant glimpse of … Continue reading Eric Fischer: Mapmaker, artist and programmer
From the U.S. National Park Service and Yosemite Conservancy comes this great short film about the skies above Yosemite NP. The distance to major cities and thus relative absence of light pollution makes for phantastic night skies. Astronomers and (time lapse) photographer and others take advantage of these conditions: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhgR3zVfo-0] For best enjoyment make sure … Continue reading Night sky above Yosemite
Recently, a friend of mine pointed me to GIS-related blog that somehow had managed to fly under my radar: www.mapbrief.com by Brian Timoney. Timoney is principal of a Colorado-based consultancy, but his blog is not what you might expect when you hear ‘consultancy’. Some articles which sprang to my eye and which will get you started on content and … Continue reading Blog: MapBrief
Skobbler produces apps and maps based on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. Under http://maps.skobbler.com they’ve released an OSM-based map. I’ve always had mixed feelings about how OSM presented their map online. While I like the project very much and on and off use OSM data in my projects, I don’t like many things about the visual style both of … Continue reading Skobbler’s OSM map
If you’re into creativity, you may have heard about Everything is a Remix. Its premise is that many things we consider original ideas are rather derivatives or combinations of existing ideas. It all comes down to COPY — TRANSFORM — COMBINE Everything is a Remix is a four-part video series which digs into the creative process. I’ve … Continue reading “Everything is a remix”, presumably also this title
I acknowledge, it’s been rather quiet in these regions of the web. Why, you ask? I have been rather busy with a sort-of spinoff project I pursue with two friends. After having published about the Twitter network of journalists here, here and here, I directed my interest towards politicians. With two friends, Tom Wider and … Continue reading Where was I?
National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo presents the “world’s first large-scale spherical OLED” and what do you think they display on it? Right! Cool! As soon as they can do that with bendable OLED panels and thus do away with the gaps in the globe’s surface, I’m sold! On another note: While … Continue reading Geo-Cosmos: Huge globe of OLEDs
Via the GIS Doctor (in itself a fun blog) I got introduced to NY Times’ Opinionator. The Borderlines category on the Opinionator is maintained by author/blogger Franc Jacobs who “writes about cartography, but only the interesting bits.” Borderlines writes about interesting stories around country borders. So far, I’ve read the superbly entertaining and well informed … Continue reading Where’s Europe?
