News You Can Bruise

Are you in the market for a really big map?

The problem with splitting California into two culturally symbolic states, North and South, like you were planning to do in your post-cyberpunk novel, is that there's this great big valley running right down the middle of California. You can't really split it down the middle, nor can you split around it without creating a jigsaw puzzle. You're stuck!

This has been The Problem Is.

(Here's #1)

"Well, if I'm driving to New York I should be able to stop by Massachussets and see Jake. Right? Well, let me check the map. Hm, I don't... seem... to be able to read... a map."

(The map wasn't even right.)

Here's a map of all the countries whose country codes are the same as a US state code, and vice versa.

So the road trip was pretty fun. We went through Nebraska instead of through Colorado, mainly so I could add more states to my map. Not sure if there's another reason to visit Nebraska.

Demonstrating that that visited-states map thing is a general, flexible tool, here's the result of Brendan and I playing the license plate game (Bonus Canadian addendum). And here's the map of all the BART stations I've visited, where the list of BART stations has been ASCIIbetically sorted and mapped onto the similarly sorted list of states.

The Alexandria Digital Library's Map Browser has an awesome interface that lets you find a spot on the world and search for maps and photos of that region, then indicates which parts of the selected region are actually covered by the maps. It's a shame that all the satellite photos are hard-to-decipher black-and-white things that look like the moon after a bit of terraforming.

Incidentally, they built a new Library of Alexandria. Unfortunately, their website requires Flash.

PS: Check out this cool, FreeCiv-esque map from medieval China.

Regarding the foreign countries of the barbarians southeast of the South Sea, and northwest of Mongolia, there is no means of investigating them because of their great distance, although they are continually sending tribute to the court. Those who speak of them are unable to say anything definite, while those who say something definite cannot be trusted; hence I am compelled to omit them.

From everyone: the California Coastal Records Project is a very well-designed site with gorgeous photographs of the California coastline (eg. 1 2 3 4 5; also note the location of the CollabNet retreat). The reason everyone's talking about this site is that Barbara Streisand is suing to get them to take down the picture of her earthquake-defying house (for those not in the know, Barbara Streisand is in the celebrity business). I'm not so socially conscious; I'm just talking about it because I love maps.

Because today is apparently North Korea day here at NYCB, let me share an observation I made during my recent map obsession, on a nice map site I found via m14m. Among many other interesting maps, the Library of Congress has a very detailed 1969 map of the Korean DMZ and surrounding environment. It turns out there's a city called P'yonggang just on the north side of the DMZ, which makes me think it's some kind of decoy city.

"Success! We've taken the capital!"

"Wait, let me see that map. We went northeast? This is P'yonggang!"

Fortunately, it turns out countermeasures have been in place for years.

An international team of losers has wasted countless man-hours drafting imaginary maps for a made-up planet. Thousands of population centers and geographical features have been named; elaborate cultures and complex political boundary rules devised; and no place on the planet has been neglected, from the polar regions to enormous cities right down to tiny islands ("BAY OF WRECKS (very dangerous)"). Ancient maps have been forged, as have all sorts of thematic and demographic maps. I don't know why I keep making stuff up the way I do. What I should have said is that there are lots of great maps of Earth at UT Austin's Perry-Castañeda collection.