Similar to the application that allows one to listen to Wikipedia being edited, amended and improved in real time, the always excellent Maps Mania introduces us to the chimes and tintinnabulation of OpenStreetMap. As with the former whose collaborative success inspired the latter, because of all the contributors globally, the update process plays a continual and emergent tune. Learn more at the links above.
Friday 12 March 2021
cosmography
A devoted cartographer of Heaven and Earth, William Fairfield Warren of Boston University mapped out in 1915, his last work after earnestly sourcing Paradise Found to the North Pole, the Universe according to John Milton’s Paradise Lost (previously here and here), extracting, teasing the subtle cartography of Eden and Hell and empyrean Heaven out of the epic poem overlaid with terrestrial correspondence (see also) with a rigour that indeed makes the accounting of angels dancing on the head of a pin an academic exercise. Thinking that there a possibility for bias and that illustrations were imperfect and prejudicial, Warren paired his diagrams back for a straightforward T-O map (orbis terrarium) look but there are more elaborate depictions of Miltonic cosmology from contemporaries at Public Domain Review at the link up top for comparison.
Friday 19 February 2021
6x6
polar flare: examining every map projection and how it distorts our world view at once—see previously
simon says: a vast archives of electronic handheld and table-top games and consoles from decades past—via Swiss Miss
fabian society: capitalism coexists with constructivism in Czech city of Zlรญn
hello world: the newest Martian probe beams back its first images
Wednesday 10 February 2021
safe countries of origin
Saturday 6 February 2021
7x7
high dive: Casa Zicatela in the Oaxaca coastal region references Le Corbusier and the retro look of municipal swimming pools
rip: legendary actor Christopher Plummer (*1929) has passed away
polar flare: visualising the true size of terrestrial landmasses through cartographic distortion plus mapping countries as offworld coloniesgulf stream: lack of circulation during ice ages past may have meant the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans had fresh water
dataviz: sleek, informative infographics by the Great Grundini
rรฉseau pneumatique: an exploration of the pneumatic postal system of Paris—see also
hq2: a preview of the new Amazon headquarters (previously) building in Arlington, Virginia
Tuesday 26 January 2021
7x7
paradiplomacy: an intricate Tajik teahouse in Boulder, Colorado
nivotone: brilliant restoration of a 1930s Soviet optical-analogue, electronic music synthesis—via Things
❄️: a snowflake generator—see previously
soon may the wellerman come: more sea shanties—see previously
twitchable: discovering a drive for birding under lockdown
topographic prominence: an interactive version of Switzerland’s 1845 Dufour Survey Map from Maps Mania, see also
putin’s palace: a gallery of photographs and digital renderings from blueprints of luxury property that is allegedly the Russian president’s personal retreat
this day in colonial history
Commemorated as Australia Day, the First Fleet under the command of Admiral Arthur Philip arrived in Sydney Harbour to found the first permanent British settlement on the continent in 1788. This is also the 1841 anniversary of the formal possession of Hong Kong when Commodore Gordon Bremer arriving at a headland (since moved inland due to coastal reclamation) named Possession Point, the former park developed as a hotel and in the 1980s with the terminal for ferry service to Macau. Finally in 1855, the Point No Point was signed under considerable duress on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula (so named for its appearance from a distance as a promontory but receding as one nears it) in the territory of Washington, with the original inhabitants, the Skokomish, Chimakum and S’Klallam peoples, ceding their land in exchange for a small reservation, concession along the Hood fjord.
Monday 28 December 2020
like the back of your hand
We always enjoy a cartographical challenge round but of course don’t always excel with a random destination or especially remote outliers that do not really test one’s general or specialised geographic knowledge.
And so we appreciated this novel quiz from Maps Mania that lets you choose familiar environs and prove how well you know your neighbourhoods. There are no thoroughfare, street or road names (see also) until you check your guesses, and it’s not too forgiving if you are more than a kilometre off, taking me several tries to get my orientation correct. Cities and towns world-wide are available for exploration.Saturday 26 December 2020
psychogeography
Being a committed and rather incurable flรขneur myself, learning about the playful praxis that combines elements of anarchy and the surreal in urban exploration and understanding how built environments and pathways influence residents and guests struck me as engrossing and endearing for its vagaries of association and membership.
One central tenet—though more nuanced than I am describing it—is that of dรฉrive, drift, and how we’re attracted to those zones that conform to our neighbourhood and comforts and to let oneself go and take a penny-hike like I used to do (and still sometimes at an unknown crossroads) and flip a coin at a corner to decide if you’ll proceed right of left. Of course, proper reconnaissance admits more directions and apparently there’s an app for that too. Societies once dedicated to this movement that I could find seem to have gone inactive in the past few years but organised activities including loitering with intent, scavenger hunts, immersive challenges and workshops that called out gentrification, overtourism and eroding public transportation schemes as well as unearthed the legacy and vestigial signs of the architecture of exclusion. It seems like a good time to revive interest and start our own psychogeographical chapters.
catagories: ๐บ️, ๐ง , architecture, labour
Sunday 20 December 2020
8x8
before times: one narrative of 2020 as told through fifteen objects and artefacts—see previously
marsha, marsha, marsha: Trump acknowledges months’ long cyber-attack on US government networks for first time—oddly defensive about Russian involvement
systemic bias: when bad decisions are blamed on algorithms, bad actors are exculpated and trust in science erodesbreakthrough listen: musing on the nature of signal detected from Proxima Centauri by the Murriyang Radio Telescope
tape/slide newsreel group and friends: brilliant early 80s photo archive showing Hackney to Hackney—via the splendiferous Things Magazine
engineer, agitator, constructor: the visual vernacular of utopian graphic design
creek and culvert: the movement to resurface and revive long buried urban waterways—see previously
off-limits: virtually visit nine sites not accessible to the public in Washington, DC
a modern hanukah miracle: there are extra doses of vaccine in each vial—stretching out supplies to inoculate twice as many individuals than expected
Thursday 17 December 2020
5x5
kankyล ongaku: the ambient music (see also) of Hiroshi Yoshimura
solstice sun: locate where and when in your locality where the streets align with the sun’s path at dawn and dusk as they do for Stonehenge—see also
star with royal beauty bright: afterwards, check the skies for the Great Conjunction where Jupiter and Saturn appear as one celestial body
solarwind: a look into the extensive cyber breach of US government networks and what information may have been compromised
blob opera: a fun experiment with a musical quartet—via Boing Boing
Friday 11 December 2020
7x7
repetition: an exploration of built-environments as an audio-visual landscape of infinite regression
a pigment of our imagination: the illusory nature of colour
nationally determined contributions: European Union agrees to more than halve its carbon emissions by 2030—via Slashdot
awesome sauce: a safari-pak of canned-meats from 1967
road gritters: track Scotland’s fleet of snow-plows in real time by name
training a generation of future karens: this scholastic kids books series are clearly coding adults as happy and confident with their life choices as monsters and misfits—via Super Punch
a universe of imagination: revisiting a classic and inspiring documentary (previously) on cosmology on its sixtieth anniversary
catagories: ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐ช๐บ, ๐ก️, ๐ฝ, ๐ฌ, ๐ณ️๐, ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ, ๐ญ, ๐บ️, ๐ง , antiques, transportation
Monday 7 December 2020
oconus
Striking us as in the same spirit of the Scottish law prohibiting the use of inset maps to portray the nation’s widely scattered archipelagos—or as one commenter related, the omission of New Zealand altogether, we appreciated being directed to this latest xkcd comic from Randall Monroe (see previously) on the non-conterminous parts of the United States, weary of being excluded or forgotten, have begun to publish maps with mainland states missing too. Can you find all seven missing ones out of this otherwise accurate-appearing map?
Thursday 26 November 2020
6x6
surrogate: Trump issues pardon to former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pled guilty twice to making false statements to the FBI involving his Russian connections
thermochromic: windows go from transparent to tinted while generating electricity
l’atlas: an intriguing new approach to mapping France’s natural glory—via Things Magazine♚: reimagining the Queen’s Gambit as a MS DOS PC game
fry guys: one intrepid connoisseur revives a long lost recipe
stonks: only pausing to take credit for and praise the teetering high of the Dow Jones, Trump presents a very abbreviated brief
Wednesday 11 November 2020
8x8
langue and parole: a poly-lingual whistle-stop tour illustrating what foreign languages sound like to non-speakers
a critical tourism map: whilst most visitors’ guides are irrepressibly positive about their attractions, this revealing map of the Norwegian capital hopes to make people think about the darker side of the past—via Big Think
in this world: an hour of cool Soviet era jazztest pilots: first human passengers take a ride in the experimental, levitating hyperloop (previously) in the desert of Nevada
ohrwurm: you’re welcome—see previously
mnemosyne: an iterative technique to vastly improve recall (see previously)—from the illustrious Mx van Hoorn’s curio cabinet
the ephemeralist: selecting random pages from archives of thousands of old publications, this bit of coding seems as good a substitute for social media as any—via Kicks Condor
the word rooster is an eighteenth century American invention to avoid saying the word ________: an educational and invigorating swear quiz from Helen Zaltzman
Friday 6 November 2020
8x8
photos veritables: antique pre-prepared vacation picture albums
necessitous men are not free men: FDR’s 1944 second, more equitable Bill of Rights
conformal cyclic cosmology: Nobel winning astrophysicist Roger Penrose shares his Universe origin hypothesisla sape: Tariq Zaida documents the fashion of the sapeurs and sapeuses of Brazzaville and Kinshasa—reminding me of this other subculture
author, poet, composer: the amazing virtuosity of Gordon Parks
das neue europa mit dem dauernden frieden: revisiting an early proposal for the European Union, divided into Kantons converging on Vienna (previously)
dss43: Deep Space Communication Complex re-establishes link with Voyager 2
scarfolk & environs: a road & leisure map for uninvited tourist
Wednesday 21 October 2020
take the a-train
Wednesday 7 October 2020
ibฤซdem
Wednesday 30 September 2020
plus codes
Thursday 24 September 2020
6x6
hollands venetiรซ: revisiting the enchanting village of Giethoorn—previously here and here
youtube enthusiast: Ruben Bolling (previously) illustrates a day in the life of Trump’s America
the colour of pomegranates: Lady Gaga’s visual homage to the Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov
kirie: artist Lito experiments with the ancient Japanese art ofๅใ็ตต, cut pictures
flattening out: an illustration of how map projections distort our view of the world—see previously