state of the art: blogging on maps

I found a lot of good examples of blogs... I specificlly liked http://blog.mazop.net/ because they have a lot of pictures and print screen captures that is cool because then you get to see exactly what it would look like on your screen.

Over all though there is not a lot of graphics in some you can tell they are purely intellecutal conversaions without examples or pictures of any kind. I like out blogs the most and think that a lot of people in class did a great job with their blogs and got a lot of good examples. However, there are still people that have NO GRAPHICS at all! Some people only have 1 or 2 of the blogs even finished. This is very irritating

It was cool to see youtube videos!

mapping games

http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/toolsforadventure/games/index.html
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.htm

There are many websites for mapping games I have listed some at the top of my blog but while I was searching the internet for some cool websites I obviously had to play some of the games.... This graphic to the left is a "print screen" of one of the games and the questions that are asked. "Locate and Click on the Columbia River" needless to say I got the wrong twice lol. I did learn something while I was playing though.

A lot of big gaming brands are coming out with games that are created around maps and streets and planning. The new Monopoly is all about buying land and setting up buildings. It is still in the production process so I could not actually play the game but my step mom works for Hasboro so maybe I can get some inside info lol

Mapping Recreation

I have found some cool websits about recreation navigation sites....http://www.backcountrynavigator.com/ This website mapped out how to get to almost any outdoor recreation uploaded to your phone or PDA.

There are also websites that show the mapping of certain parks. They map out the recreation on the certain public land. To the right is a map of Hells cayon where Oregon, Washington State and Idaho meet. It shows camp grounds, airports,state lands, scenic walk ways along the river.

This is a map of the Westfield River recreation and state parks along the river. There are many of these maps and brochers for this river in this area because it is so close.

bucket pick

Mapping Politics is a very common thing in the U.S because we put a lot of emphasis on political issues. The easies and most common polictical map is mapping votes, here is a graphic showing the electorial votes in the McCain v. Clinton campaign.

You can also have something a little more literal like and actual diagram of the the Senate heiarchy, which in itself can be depicted many different ways:

When I started getting into this topic furthere I realized that political cartoons are also a large part of the so-called political mapping world. One that is actually very amuzing after spending about 10 mins reading through some of them I knew they had to be included in this blog I would highly recommend taking a gander at them just type "political cartoons" in to google, i gauartee no matter what you political views are you will enjoy.

Granville

Looking at Granville in three different states the first thing that comes to mind is why are they all called "Granville" so I looked at demographics and Granville Oh and IA both have large amounts of Germans 17 and 51% In Granville MA German didn't even make the top 5 on the demographic ladder the largest demographic was Irish at 17%. The next thing I noticed was that Granville OH has the largest income and is by far the largest out of the three.

This is Granville Ohio it is very close to a college and looks like it is a pretty weathy area. This is also the best set up in my opinion there is a a very nice downtown area show below.

Granville Ma is much older and more historic then the other two.

As you can see from this picture it is much more rural than the Ohio version with a lot more heritage in my opionion but they do have a lot in common seeing how the Ohio Granville is branch broken off from the original MA Granville.

After georeferencing my map and the railroads and buildings from 1918 and today I uploaded the map onto Google Earth and found some very interesting things:

A lot of the old buildings look to have been torn down and new buildings and pavement would have destroyed any footprints of the buildings or the railroad downtown.

One of the largest depots now looks to be a business buildings of some type. There is one rail that ends at a building in the middle of that "Y" which is probably just a coincidence but it was interesting

The only footprint remnants might be where the red building is. There is a faint outline left in the dirt. This is one of the only buildings that was not paved over.

Even though we were using data from a hand drawn map created in 1918 as you can see my railroad match almost perfectly with the dirt path left from the railroad.

I thought this was interesting you are able to see where the tunnel would have been and how and where the railroad goes threw the mountain.

I am not sure if the dirt paths to the right of the old rail road lines were once the actual track because our map was hand draw there is definitely going to be some inefficiencies and one could be that my drawings were shifted to the left a little.

Mapping the history of Dalton

I would like to talk about mapping history, this is a very useful research area. Everyone should know their roots and mine are here in New England but I don't know too much about what this area looked even as little as 50 years ago. I think it is very interesting to see how this area has changed demographically or physically over the years. One of the websites we looked at in class was oldmaps.com, I like this one because I was able to see a print of my house town in 1884 which was awesome. The street ( at least the ones that were created in 1884) are still named the same today and it looks like there was a pond or lake along with a river that does not seem to be there now so I am assuming it was filled in or drained for some reason. I have enloarged the picture in the top left hand corner to show this.

The whole area where my house is today is undeveloped farm land in 1884. Another main structure that seems to be unchanged is the churches they are still in the same area and same building today as they were in 1884. It is so fascinating to me that the drawings are so good and detailed right down to the windows and doors. It must not have been easy to draw the houses in 3D the way this artist did. I only wish I could see them in person or in better resolution so I could read the owners of the houses.