Gary Gale

Posts about earth

Countries That Cry; Countries That Don't (100% Mercator Free)

the lack of royalties on this and so I felt compelled to use a projection for my next map which wasn't Mercator's.

March the 5th 2013 marked the 501st birthday of Gerardus Mercator, whose map projection appears on virtually every web map you'll find on the interwebs today. It appears he's none too happy about the lack of royalties on this and so I felt compelled to use a projection for my next map which wasn't Mercator's.

mercator-tweet

I've been using a lot of Natural Earth's vector data to make maps recently and so Tom Patterson's rather beautiful Natural Earth projection seemed fitting and avoided the wrath of Gerardus into the bargain.

crying-countries

Continuing my dabblings in Mike Bostock's D3, reworking the Countries That Do And Don't Cry For Me map that did the rounds on the internet some years back took up a couple of spare hours last night; making maps is addictive it seems.

The full map is here, hosted on maps.geotastic.org ... and for those who don't get the cultural reference, this song from a certain 1970's musical might help.

Gravity Sucks But It Sucks Variably (Also Available As A Map)

As children we all learn the hard way that gravity sucks though a succession of scraped and bruised knees and elbows. We probably also learned in physics lessons that there's the gravitational constant, denoted by a capital G.

0f36df929ac9d711a8ba8c5658c3bfee

But what I certainly didn't learn was that while gravity sucks, it doesn't suck consistently. In fact, gravity sucks variably, as this 2010 map from ESA's Goce (Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite shows.

goce_gravity_field_786map

So it should come as no surprise that not only does gravity suck variably on Earth, it also sucks variably on the Moon.

PosterFrame2_1024x576

This map comes from two NASA probes, Ebb and Flow, which formed part of the agency's GRAIL (Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory) project. Ebb and Flow spent 351 days orbiting in formation around the Moon before crashing to the surface at the end of 2012.

So gravity still sucks; it just sucks variably.

Image Credits: Wikipedia, ESA and NASA.

Deliciousness: megalomania, logos, Tube map, paper abstracts, location, Freud and tech mistakes

Delicious along the way. Here's the pick of the last few weeks. * Today I was caught red handed trying to blow up the world ... mwah hah hah hah. * A well known Irish budget airline found that its blue and yellow "harp" logo had suffered an, unasked for, logo makeover. * The London Underground Tube map regains the River Thames and gets a version for tourists. * Are you the sort of person who shouts at the screen "that's not right" when watching a film? You're not alone. * Looking for a nearby wifi hotspot? A low tech approach can help. * Microsoft's new Windows 7 OS has inbuilt location services; but are they up to the challenge of managing location safely, securely and with sufficient flexibility? * Submitting a paper abstract for a conference? This might help. * You've probably heard of a Freudian Slip; now you can wear suitable slippers. * If Jack The Ripper was alive today, would he use Twitter?

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

It's been a while but odd, weird and even occasionally interesting stuff continues to fall down the back of the internet and gets captured in Delicious along the way. Here's the pick of the last few weeks. * Today I was caught red handed trying to blow up the world ... mwah hah hah hah. * A well known Irish budget airline found that its blue and yellow "harp" logo had suffered an, unasked for, logo makeover. * The London Underground Tube map regains the River Thames and gets a version for tourists. * Are you the sort of person who shouts at the screen "that's not right" when watching a film? You're not alone. * Looking for a nearby wifi hotspot? A low tech approach can help. * Microsoft's new Windows 7 OS has inbuilt location services; but are they up to the challenge of managing location safely, securely and with sufficient flexibility? * Submitting a paper abstract for a conference? This might help. * You've probably heard of a Freudian Slip; now you can wear suitable slippers. * If Jack The Ripper was alive today, would he use Twitter?

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

Deliciousness: bacon, Protect and Survive, outing the paleotards, Fake Carol and crop circles

two weeks since one of these posts; I've been pretty much conferenced out, with FOWA London taking up a sizeable chunk of last week and the AGI's GeoCommunity mopping up any spare time the week before that.

The hallmark of any successful tech conference is appallingly bad wifi which, despite the best protestations of the conference organisers, always buckles under the strain around 30 minutes into the opening keynote. All of which has meant that my Delicious account has been on a bit of a diet recently, but here's what did make it through the wifi ...* Yet more bacon products make it to market. Most of them are novelty value only but surely there's scope for bacon flavoured mayo, for those moments when the perfect BLT is just out of reach? * Twickenham Fire Station tested its' air raid siren last week and memories of the Protect and Survive public service announcements on British TV at the height of the Cold War came flooding back. * My talk's at the AGI GeoCommunity conference seemed to get people talking; both seriously and somewhat tongue in cheek and I also managed to out the (neogeographer) Geoweb chair as an old school paleogeographer. * The CEO of the company I work for finally managed to achieve the accolade of being faked on Twitter. * And the source of all the crop circles was finally found in a town in the US with a strangely familiar name.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

It's been almost two weeks since one of these posts; I've been pretty much conferenced out, with FOWA London taking up a sizeable chunk of last week and the AGI's GeoCommunity mopping up any spare time the week before that.

The hallmark of any successful tech conference is appallingly bad wifi which, despite the best protestations of the conference organisers, always buckles under the strain around 30 minutes into the opening keynote. All of which has meant that my Delicious account has been on a bit of a diet recently, but here's what did make it through the wifi ...* Yet more bacon products make it to market. Most of them are novelty value only but surely there's scope for bacon flavoured mayo, for those moments when the perfect BLT is just out of reach? * Twickenham Fire Station tested its' air raid siren last week and memories of the Protect and Survive public service announcements on British TV at the height of the Cold War came flooding back. * My talk's at the AGI GeoCommunity conference seemed to get people talking; both seriously and somewhat tongue in cheek and I also managed to out the (neogeographer) Geoweb chair as an old school paleogeographer. * The CEO of the company I work for finally managed to achieve the accolade of being faked on Twitter. * And the source of all the crop circles was finally found in a town in the US with a strangely familiar name.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous