Archive for April, 2011
Space Map Palette
Inspired by the great colors in today’s Google image celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first human space flight, I made a palette of them over at Colourlovers. Here’s what it looks like. Click on it if you want to go to its colourlovers page and get the RGBs or HEXs.
These colors could form the basis for a pretty spacial map.
Nothing To See Here
There’s no real post for today because I’m bogged down trying to get the draft of the new typography booklet done. My aim is to get the draft done by Wednesday so I can send it out to reviewers and have it back by early next week for revisions. However, the list of things to complete before that happens just keeps getting longer, it seems.
The booklet is not just some hacked together piece of junk. I’m at least 30 hours into the implementation (that doesn’t count thinking and designing time). One decision I made was to showcase only 40 fonts. I was originally going to showcase 60 fonts but then I realized that that was not going to help people. The main aim of the booklet is to help a GIS person choose a great font to make their cartographic output more professional. A side bonus could be that the map will be more unique (if they decide not to use Arial!) though in many cases what we want from a map design is to ensure that the typeface will not stand out so uniqueness is not always part of the GIS person’s goals.
So, to ensure that I was actually helping things I decided to keep it to 40 fonts. I figure if I showcase 60 then I’m not really making the GIS person’s job easier as there will be that many fonts to wade through. Besides, with the 40 that I do show, there are plenty of great options to choose from.
Currently I’m doing those editing tasks that take more time then you would ever imagine. This afternoon, for example, was spent rounding up the necessary verbiage for trademarks and registered trademarks since many fonts fall under one of those categories. The next thing to do is run through my checklist of possible error-points including making sure that all font names are spelled correctly (as they can be very creative with their spellings) and that the correct designer name and spelling is listed under the fonts. I’ve got a check list going that could rival a pilot’s checklist so those are only a couple of the many things to do.
It is exciting to be closer to finished, however, and to see how the finished product is going to look!
How To Get Points Into ArcMap From Google Earth
I’ve had several clients ask me how to do this lately so I figured I’d write up a quick how-to. There are probably a myriad of ways to do this. Outlined here is just one of those ways.
Each time I’ve been asked about this the situation has been that a client has gone onto Google Earth, eyeballed some locations and jotted down the latitude and longitude pairs for those locations. Then they’ve tried to import these into ArcMap and had the points show up in very unexpected places. The issue is, of course, about getting the correct projection. Don’t forget that latitude is your y value and longitude is your x value.
Google Earth uses a Simple Cylindrical projection, WGS84 datum. Once you have your points in a table, import the table into your ArcMap project. Then…
2) Go to Tools–>Add XY Data, choose the table from the drop-down list
3) Put the x coordinate in the x field drop-down list, same with the y
4) Click Edit for the coordinate system
5) Click Select
6) Geographic Coordinate Systems
7) World
8) WGS 1984.prj
9) Click okay
10) right click the layer that it just created in the table of contents, click Data, then Export Data and save it as a shapefile. This makes it into a permanent shapefile.
Coming Soon: New E-booklet
Posted by Gretchen in News, Typography on April 6, 2011
I’m working on a new e-booklet. It was in the planning stage for a couple of months, then in the design stage for a few weeks, now it is in the implementation phase. The topic is:
Typography
That’s the first announcement of the topic though on Twitter I did post a few “teaser” pictures of the book layout. I was trying not to give too much away with the teaser pictures but some feedback was given that they gave so little away it was like nothing at all. 
The major thing I had to figure out during the planning stage was whether or not a booklet on typography was going to be even possible. It’ll be distributed as a pdf, which means the fonts will have to be embedded in the file, which means that any font that is under a for-fee commercial license would not be able to be showcased. I briefly tried to get one of the major font companies to provide permission to use their fonts in the booklet but this was immediately (though politely) declined. I am sure that if it were to be a print-only publication then this would have had a different outcome. This is because showcasing a for-fee font on paper would not then mean that the book owner had access to the font files as it has the potential to do with the pdf format.
However, that issue is now fixed and I’m now firmly in implementation mode. The two major goals that I’ve been keeping in mind in this phase is:
- Make it extremely useful
- No filler
I’m really hoping that the publication date will be either next week or the week after that but we’ll see how things go. In all, I’m very excited about this product as it’ll be a very handy reference for GIS and cartography types as well as for myself!
Daily Routines
Posted by Gretchen in Creativity on April 5, 2011
An interesting article on daily routines, How Mundane Routines Produce Creative Magic got me going on this subject again. I love the idea of routines. I have ever since realizing that having routines was going to be a virtually impossible feat for me considering the daily juggling act that I have undertaken for the past 9 years, which has been almost the entire time that I’ve been in business for myself.
I think that, for people who can’t have routines for one reason or another (mine is for the reason of the chaos that is family life with young children), we enjoy and appreciate learning about how we could maybe possibly some day have a routine in our lives as well. Until that day comes I will continue to learn how I will maximize my routine to gain the greatest productivity and creativity so that the minute I have a chance to enact one it’ll be perfection from the start. I only say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I really am a fan of routines and do want to start one at some point.
In the meantime, I’ll console myself with the quick 30 second type of routines that I always do before a big meeting or big project design session. Things like reading a couple pages of a tough book, doodling, and the like.
Do you have a routine? What is it or what would it be if you could have one?
Online Map Games To Encourage and Engage Your Geographic Awareness
*reprinted with permission from GISuser.com.
by Gretchen N. Peterson
This article showcases some of the interactive maps that are scattered around the Web. They aren’t known for their cartographic excellence by any means. However, they are simple games that everyone can play to increase their geographic awareness. Or at least their awareness of political boundary shapes and country and state names. There’s actually a big difference between geographic awareness and knowing these shapes and names, as a matter of fact, but these games at least give people a good nudge in that direction.
Before describing some good interactive map games, it would be prudent to point out that this was probably the most fun article I’ve ever researched (usually games are a means of procrastination not a means of getting work done).
While most articles like this will start with some facts about the woeful state of geographic knowledge existing in the U.S. and then go on to say how shameful it is that we are in such a state of ignorance, this one states some of those statistics and discuss them from a perspective that is not often heard.
Beginning with the statistics, a Roper poll conducted in 2006 of 510 people for National Geographic, and widely cited on the Web, states that: 33% could not locate Louisiana even though this poll was conducted fairly soon after Hurricane Katrina; 60% could not locate Iraq and 75% could not locate Israel on a map of the Middle East; and fewer than 30% feel it is important to know country locations that are in the news.
So here’s where the erudite readers are supposed to be appalled at all these ignoramuses running around claiming that this knowledge is not necessary. This makes me think about Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company. He was on trial once and was incensed at the prosecuting attorney who was trying to establish his general ignorance. To do so, the attorney asked him questions about U.S. history. After one of these questions Ford famously said, “Now, will you kindly tell me, why I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?” For better or for worse, the mindset that one can be highly effective even without certain knowledge by relying on others who do have that knowledge, is where many people are coming from when they say that geographic place names are not important to them.
There’s another argument to be said here, and that is the idea that knowing country names is not the same as knowing anything about those countries. A similarity can be drawn with that thought and physicist Richard Feynman’s evaluation of the Brazilian educational system of 1950. Feynman observed the Brazilian students and noticed that all they were doing was memorizing physics facts. When asked to solve a novel physics problem, the students were, for the most part, unable to use their (considerable) rote-knowledge to answer the problem.
So clearly there is more to geographic awareness than some would like to believe. However, learning place names and locations is a very good first-step toward gaining this knowledge. And to that end, the following online games are a great way to obtain it while having fun in the process. Enjoy!
1. MapDuel:
This one may give you a bit of vertigo with all the zooming around, but it is the only one I’ve found with a question / answer format. It covers the whole globe. I did find one glitch. In a bonus question it asked me, “What is the language of this country?” when it was referring to a U.S. state. Be sure to click on the “Where the h*** is Matt?” link too.
2. MapGame:
Not a competitive game but the fact that it focuses on Middle Eastern and Northern Africa countries makes it pertinent to current events in that region.
3. States:
To win this game you must type in the names of all 50 states in 10 minutes. It places the name of the state that you’ve just typed in its proper location. Don’t forget Alaska and Hawaii (or New Jersey).
4. 50states:
With this game you have to drag and drop a state shape to where it belongs on a U.S. map. It allows you to get it mostly right via snapping within a certain tolerance. You can compete with others for the best score.
About The Author…
Gretchen N. Peterson writes on the subjects of GIS analysis, cartography and ethics. Ms. Peterson is the owner of the geospatial analysis firm PetersonGIS. You can follow her on Twitter @PetersonGIS
Thanks to Tina Cary (@tinacary on twitter) for this topic idea.
-
You are currently browsing the archives for April, 2011
The Books
Recent Comments