Exploring Germany through Cartograms

Aug 282011
 

My inten­tions for this blog are to spur intel­li­gent and thought pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sions and to pro­vide some insight and/or help to those who may want to delve into var­i­ous spa­tial analy­ses and car­to­graphic trends/methodologies. Car­tograms are def­i­nitely one of the most trend­ing top­ics in dis­cus­sions on how to alter­na­tively geo­vi­su­al­ize spa­tial phe­nom­ena. The idea roots back more than half a decade and has evolved from a ‘pen­cil and graph paper’ skill to a geo­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion sys­tem (GIS) tool{box}. We can add… Con­tinue reading »

Earthquake in Virginia; also felt in Toronto

Aug 232011
 

An earth­quake mea­sur­ing in at 5.9 mag­ni­tude, hit Vir­ginia (epi­cen­tre) at approx­i­mately 17:51:03 GMT. I am writ­ing this post from my office at Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity, Toronto, Ontario, where we also felt the ground move beneath us.… Okay, to be frank, I didn’t feel any­thing. But my class­mates and col­leagues have reported that they felt the earth­quake. Now, the rea­son why I am post­ing about this, is not exactly because I think the earth­quake was that sig­nif­i­cant and worth men­tion­ing. I would like to share with you a lit­tle map that I cre­ated a few Con­tinue reading »

Typographic Maps

Aug 222011
 

An inter­est­ing form of car­tog­ra­phy to say the least! Typo­graphic maps have been around for some time, and only recently was I exposed to the con­cept. Per­haps my favourite (and quoted by many) are the maps pro­duced by Axis Maps. They pro­duce some of the most jaw-dropping typo­graphic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of cities that I have ever seen. I par­tic­u­larly like their use of white space (and by use, I mean there isn’t much white space left untouched!). Which leads me to the point of this post. I have been toy­ing with the idea of pro­duc­ing some Con­tinue reading »

Using OpenStreetMap Data - P.2

Aug 222011
 

Lets talk about QGIS for a lit­tle bit before we go ahead and install it on our sys­tems. QGIS is an open source GIS pack­age that is under the GNU pub­lic license. It offers enough func­tion­al­ity for some­one with a ArcInfo Stu­dent License (myself) to want to explore. The usage of QGIS in day to day tasks has me spend­ing less time Con­tinue reading »

Using OpenStreetMap Data - P.1

Aug 212011
 

I can think back and remem­ber strug­gling with being able to uti­lize Open­StreetMap (OSM) data in a project of mine. I wanted a free source of infor­ma­tion and geospa­tial data, where I was not bound to strict and lim­it­ing copy­rights. Open­StreetMap offered a one-stop-shop for free and open geospa­tial data. At the time, I was most inter­ested in uti­liz­ing their very detailed road net­work. How­ever, I ran into many hic­cups along the way, which ulti­mately deterred me from com­plet­ing the project. Some time has passed and I have returned to said Con­tinue reading »