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.

3D technologies and emgency managment in GIS

When people ask me what I want to do with my life next year it always makes me a little nervous because who knows what they want to do with the rest of their lives at 22. Yes I know that there are people out there that said they wanted to be a teacher at the age of 5 and actually become one and that is good for them...I am not like that.

After checking out these two websites: http://placeways.com/index.php?anim=no, http://placeways.com/index.php?anim=no I think I might have a better idea of what I am interested in. The technology is amazing "placeways" has created a virtural world that you can map out perfectly to the real world around you. This includes 3D houses and scenary.

This software does not only simulate houses but also trees and cars making it very life like! The uses for this are endless...almost any career could use this technology.

The ESRI website was very interesting because I got to explore emergency maganment techniques Which I have a strong interest in. They have apps for flooding which will project what areas will become flooded with heavy rains. I have found out that FEMA has its own software that has even greater possiblities when it comes to prediction and this would be awesome to work with. I would love to have a career with them in the future.

Social Explorer

I was messing around on the social explorer website and I thought it was very user friendly and I really enjoyed the slide show option! I am a very visual person and when I got to see the transition over the years one right after another I was fascinated.The most curious thing I noticed was the huge jump in race from 1970....

This clearly shows that the Southeast has the majority of black citizen in the 1970s, this is drastically different in the 1980 just 10 years later ....

In the 1980s there is a massive spread of the black race from the southeast through out the entire country. Seeing this on paper would not be as effective as looking at the pictures next to each other like we can with this social explorer website.

Back to the matter of if this website could be useful for examining the social,ethnic and cultural history of a place I think you can do all those things as long as it fell in the realm of 1790-2007 and was in the categories offered. Which it should be because there are many categories ranging from foreign born residents to veterans, education, even areas with the longest commute to work. The only problem I ran into was when I got the the more recent years (2005-2007) an error appear saying you needed the upgraded version. I have included a picture of the error below.

One other thing that might be an issue is a lot of the results are from the census tract and this is not always accurate. You can only take the data from people who will fill out the census questionnaires and not everyone does it. I am assuming the only truly accurate one is births because most hospitals log those types of things but I am sure there are still unrecorded births in the U.S.

mapping music 1/25/2010

Hello all today we are discussing the mapping of music,

Mapping music can mean many things so I started off typing it into google. I found sites that you could type in an artist’s name and then it would map out other artist in the same genre and whichever name was closest to your musician would most likely be a musician you would enjoy. I thought this was pretty good and I have inserted a map to the left of exactly that. I used Jason Aldean which is a favorite of mine.

There is also the technique of “mapping music through the musical performance.” This means the way that the music is preformed in a concert, things like lighting or set list. There should be a continuous emotional trip during a performance.

During this mini quest to figure out how to map music I started looking at the origins of music. I found many theories, one of which I found interesting to me. An Indian tale of how the Earth first got music: An American Indian Legend - Nation Unknown....

"A great medicine man, who studies the four quarters of the world and the skies, walked the Earth and, noticing how silent it was, cried out with great sadness and pity for the people of the world. He called out for the winds from the four quarters of the Earth, "Come oh Wind!" "Come oh Wind!" "Come oh Wind!" "Come oh Wind!"".... To find out the rest of the story check out this link.http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/HowMusicCameToTheEarth-Unknown.html

Other website say that the origins of music started with the Greeks (who actual thought that someo of their instruments were made from the Gods), ancient Egypt or during the biblical period with the Judeo-Christians, some even say Australian Aborigines started music. I am not sure what I believe but I am sure of one thing every culture/nation had its own version of music dating back thousands of years. However the instruments used have changed drastically so I decided to search for a "map of instruments" and low and behold I found one that maps out the major groups used to distinguish instruments predominately used today...(shown below) As I look at it I can picture things in nature that could have been used to make some of the different instruments and it is really fascinating. During this exploration I found out that human bone and hair were used in the instrument making process which made me thankful I was not around thousands of years ago.

http://sites.google.com/site/kyokomiuramusic/_/rsrc/1235342918067/assignments/Musical%20Instruments.jpg

Ok well that is all I could find for now