If you like looking at maps of imaginary places, you should take a peek at the
Fantasy Atlas, a German-language collection of maps of literary fantasy and sci-fi worlds. For a more obsessive (but just as interesting) take on maps of imaginary places, you can check out
the work of Adrian Leskiw, who's been creating road maps of non-existent places since the age of 3.
(Previously on Metafilter.)
posted by dersins
on Aug 1, 2007 -
31 comments
Wired presents an extraordinary look at "
one of the most ambitious search-and-rescue missions in history," after one of Microsoft's researchers,
Jim Gray, and his boat, the
Tenacious, went
missing in the Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco in January 2007. Cartography meets law meets
2.0 technology. "First the Coast Guard scoured 132,000 square miles of ocean. Then a team of scientists and Silicon Valley power players turned the eyes of the global network onto the Pacific." Eventually, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, the US Navy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium jumped in – "as did astronomers from leading universities." To this day, Jim Gray has
never been found, and his disappearance
cannot be explained. Read
Wired for more.
posted by BLDGBLOG
on Jul 22, 2007 -
35 comments
Bugaboo Daytrips is a gorgeous site featuring 22 strollable daytrips in major cities worldwide (not just US Only), all laid out on beautiful artistic (yet still helpful) maps with downloadable PDFs for taking with you on your wanderings.
For those terrified of being marketed to, it should be noted that Bugaboo is a baby stroller company, although the site is by no means of restricted interest to parents only, and bugbaoo's presence on the site seems confined to the URL. Also note that unfortunately for those alergic to it, the site is designed entirely in Flash. On the other hand, the maps & art are really awesome, so you should do yourself a favor & get over it this time.
Via.
posted by jonson
on Jun 26, 2007 -
16 comments
For anyone with even a passing interest in Islamic history or cartography,
'The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes' site at Oxford University's Bodleian Library will provide a thoroughly interesting timesink. This recently discovered 13th/14th century copy of an 11th century Egyptian manuscript was partly based on Ptolemy and includes the oldest rectangular map of the world...not to mention the famed human-bearing
Waq-Waq tree.
[via]
posted by peacay
on Apr 5, 2007 -
7 comments
Imaginary places in detail: Start with a wonderful
overview of megastructures in science fiction and examine a
dictionary of 76 locations from recent fantasy novels. Then move on to the interactive maps:
Mordor,
Narnia, the Simpson's
Springfield,
England as seen in many stories,
New York in fiction, Lovecraft's
New England, maps from almost
any video game,
Star Trek, the
Marvel Universe, and the
DC Universe.
posted by blahblahblah
on Feb 21, 2007 -
29 comments
Do you know where you are? With
Google Maps and
Google Earth so commonplace now, GPS everywhere, and with websites such as our own Metafilter making use of latitude and longitude did you ever stop to think about how all this latitude, longitude and height above sea level works? The UK's
Ordnance Survey explains it all in
A Guide to Coordinate Systems in Great Britain. Discover that different coordinate systems might differ by as much as 200m, and that your house may be moving as much as 1m up and down each day relative to the centre of the Earth, and many other bits of geographical interest.
[more inside]
posted by edd
on Sep 6, 2006 -
4 comments
Places and spaces is an exhibit which aims to compare and contrast the first maps of our entire planet with the first maps of all of science as we know it.
posted by dhruva
on Jul 27, 2005 -
5 comments
Is a "virtual" Philly even better than the real thing? Well,
GeoSim Systems thinks so. Except for the aroma of freshly-grilled cheesesteak, at least. Their "Virtual Philadelphia" is the most detailed urban imaging system I've seen yet, and you can read about the monumental process of turning photographic images (taken from both aircraft and street-level) into this incredible rendering in a February 17 NY
Times article (reg req). And - as expected - Google wants to get in on the action and
do the same thing in San Francisco.
via BB
posted by luriete
on Jun 10, 2005 -
29 comments
Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it
wasn't always
so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.
How things have changed. (Yours now,
$110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of
two planets and
one moon (with a
second in the works). Actually,
we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.
Maybe Not.
posted by absalom
on Jan 27, 2005 -
17 comments
Finally... something good has come from a newsfilter post! In a trackback to a recent
post on something-or-other (aren't they all the same?) I discovered a gem of a site dedicated to maps.
posted by silusGROK
on Jul 9, 2003 -
11 comments
A bunch of very beautiful
Old Japanese Maps has been put online. Java application Insight(tm) required to view and includes a nifty GIS application to overlay old maps on current maps with 3-D animated fly-throughs. State of the art in online map presentation "The digital images are even better than the originals because you can amplify them, rotate them to look at them from different angles," Mr. Zhou said. "In practical terms, this is a better way of using the material than actually coming here to see the pieces."
posted by stbalbach
on Apr 13, 2003 -
5 comments
Have you grown weary of the tiny, grayscale maps of Iraq and the Middle East accompanying most newspaper stories on the region?
TomPaine.com went in search of better geographic tools, and found them at the University of Texas' Online Library, with links to
dozens of maps—political, topographical, historical—of a region many Americans have never scrutinized geographically. More inside...
[via TomPaine.com]
posted by silusGROK
on Oct 22, 2002 -
7 comments
Maps. Recent events have sent me all over bookstores and the web to look at and learn from maps. This is the best, and one of the least known sites. For current events, try the
Middle East and
Afghanistan sections, but don't miss the incredibel
Historical maps collection.
posted by geronimo_rex
on Oct 4, 2001 -
7 comments
The Hereford Mappa Mundi (Map the World) is a remarkably beautiful and rare glimpse into the medieval view the world. It is the largest map its kind (54 x 64 inches) to have survived and dates from around 1295. It still resides at Hereford Cathedral in England just as it has done for the last 700 years.
The map depicts the world as a flat disk with east at the top. It shows all the features the then known world including Africa, India and China. Paradise is depicted somewhere east India. The Holy Land and its important sites expand to fill the middle the map. Jerusalem is placed at the centre the world.
It is a work of cosmology as much as a cartography. That is, it seeks to explain the world as well as merely depict its features. This was a time when the population was uneducated and provincial. In the Hereford map, people could revel in this vision of the outside world, which taught natural history, classical legends, explained the winds and reinforced their religious beliefs.
Here is a
simplified sketch which makes the details and country names easier to identify. Here is the
original and a very good
written description.
posted by lagado
on Oct 30, 2000 -
10 comments
![The World [Map] According to America](http://www.deevah.com/america.gif){kind=link}