Map Exhibit in Baltimore

Yesterday we went to the Map Exhibit in Baltimore and I have to say I was both impressed and disappointed!!

--I will start with why I was a little disappointed...they didn't have anything really cool for sale. The maps and books and stuff they did have were boring to me or REALLY expensive.

And what no prints of one of the best maps there? The Land of the Make Believe?? This is a really cool map based on all the fairy tales and children's stories you heard growing up. I posted a pic of it...you can buy it from a third party for way too much money at this link http://www.jarohesslomb.com/

--oh and the Hubble telescope pics weren't all that impressive...even the ones within that room.

now for why I really liked the exhibit----

-It was cool to see all of those maps that you only see in books....like Caroline said in her blog (Damn she beat me to it!) Seeing them in real life is much different than in a book!

-The exhibit was setup really nice with both chronological as well as subjective themes. The religious ones I found to be fascinating! A lot of the older maps had vibrant colors and artistic details....not your GIS plots of today!

-It was good that they only allowed so many people in there at one time...while I certainly didn't read every word on every display...I sometimes had to wait or move out of the way for others to see...or if you wanted to get up close, it would have been harder if more people would have been there..and most of us GMU folks were in there at the same time.

-I really am a map geek...(without as much passion as people like Jill)...and it was great to have her and fellow students there to point things out to each other. THANKS Jill and the GMU GEOGRAPHY Department for sponsoring this trip and thanks to my fellow students who took the bus with us. I even got time to spend talking with Jennifer Maloney from the department staff!!

-The use of different media over time...from sticks, to stones and clay tablets, to linen to books, to a cotton glove...it was cool to see the world through the various cartographer's eyes! I didn't know the Cholera Map was bars instead of dots and it was actually a foldout page in a book....so yes I can now say...I have seen the original John Snow Cholera Map....as well as the many other original maps that were there.

What would have been really AWESOME would be to have someone turning the pages of the books that had maps in them. It is amazing to me that these wonderful treasures have been preserved and that we were able to see them....and did I mention it was FREE to enter the exhibit and museum that day and the bus trip too?!?!? See the museum would have gotten more of my money if they would have had anything cool for sale.

-The Walters Art Museum was impressive and I had some time (as Ryan told me 14 minutes to be exact!) to see more of the permanent collection...the Islamic, Byzantine, Baroque and Gothic art and artifacts were AWESOME!!

--and FINALLY something totally unexpected and really cool was that for Saturday only there was an NGA booth there.....shout out to NGA!!

Lab 10 GoogleEarth Overlay---WOO-HOO!!!

Okay, so here it goes....it is down to the last lab and I am actually EARLY in posting this....still behind in other things, but figured get this out of the way. Like Kevin said in his blog you need to find good maps FIRST!

I thought that the lab instructions said find 2 maps of the SAME location and overlay them....well my first image is just that....the Subway and Bus network in Berlin, Germany. I worked hard to get the actual subway and bus lines to match up....so the boundary of the city may look a little off.

But I realized that these were boring and Jill wanted us to see the 3D draping effects....so I also did Great Falls, VA...hoping to get some extra effort points for this! I would liked to have had a topo map...but couldn't find a site to download them for free...

I have included pics of both and you can find my KMZ file at the following link....

http://mason.gmu.edu/~mpickar2/Lab10.kmz

Lab 9, Part 2

Please follow the link to my KMZ file....as usual, if it tries to save as a zip file, just change the file type and give it the .kmz extension.

The buildings don't line up well in GoogleEarth...I think the import into SketchUp was too large of an area....no time to fix right now.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~mpickar2/Patriot_Center_etal.kmz

Lab9 GoogleSketchUP - GMU Bldgs

Here is a JPG of my models in Google SketchUP...I was unable to load it into GoogleEarth in the lab today. I will try at home later.

Like others, I had some buildings that were not on the image....such as Potomac Heights. I had the Patriot Center, University Police, Aquatic and Fitness Center and Potomac Heights. I tried to make the fancy roof line of the fitness center, but wasn't having any luck. I couldn't get the alignment correct...so it is a boring flat roof.

I stumbled upon another site....maps.live.com which uses pictometry imagery and you can see the buildings from a lower oblique angle. I will do another blog entry and show a screen capture.

weekly blog post ---Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370

The above link takes you to the New England Journal of Medicine Article that studied Obesity rates within a social network. Read below for the "legend" of the colors in the image. The title and authors are listed in bold.

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The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D.

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Figure 1. Largest Connected Subcomponent of the Social Network in the Framingham Heart Study in the Year 2000.
Each circle (node) represents one person in the data set. There are 2200 persons in this subcomponent of the social network. Circles with red borders denote women, and circles with blue borders denote men. The size of each circle is proportional to the person's body-mass index. The interior color of the circles indicates the person's obesity status: yellow denotes an obese person (body-mass index, 30) and green denotes a nonobese person. The colors of the ties between the nodes indicate the relationship between them: purple denotes a friendship or marital tie and orange denotes a familial tie.