Meh...I couldn't wait...

I changed a few things around and I think it looks MUCH better now...at least on paper and on the LCD monitor in front of me. I'll see what it looks like on the laptop when I get home!



Again, if your reading this let me know what you think...Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!!!

Pre-Final Project Proof...

Yeah, the Final Project "Proof" isn't due for like two weeks, but I had a few extra hours today so I figured I'd take a shot at starting my final project. Here's how it turned out...any comments, what you like/don't like, suggestions, advice, are welcomed.



I'd like to see ArcMap spit that out!

Ok well it sort of did spit it out...I pulled the basemap along with the roads off ArcMap. I'm really pleased with the way some of it turned out, I really like the layout for example. Looking at it on my laptop now though, there are several things that I notice that I need to change, like the road network needs to be a little darker. One thing I'm not so sure about is the size of my symbols. The seem a bit small, but at the same time I don't want them to be too much bigger because then I'll end with problems like the symbol for New York City/Newark completely covering New Jersey.

Lab 10...aka...What happens when you sleep through your alarm and miss 95% of class...

Here is my Lab 10 Bivariate map. From the USDA's website of all places, I found data at North Carolina's county level on poverty levels in each county and the level of education of each county.



Now that I've finished my map, I go back and look at the power point that I missed, and realize there are numerous problems with my map. First, the powerpoint says the data can be 2 different variables at the same point in time, or it can be 1 variable at 2 different points in time. Mine is two variables in two different points in time. At the end it also says that for this lab for a chorpleth proportional symbol map, use chorpleth for one variable (standardized data and proportional symbol for raw data. Mine didn't quite follow that I don't think...or did it? Also the spatial relationship patterns between the two variables turned out almost the opposite of what I was expecting/aiming for, I think because I used raw numbers instead of a percentage of each county's population for education levels. Thus the areas around Charlotte likely have larger symbols simply because theres more people there. I think had I done it by percentage of population it probably would have turned out different. Despite all this the Lab handout says...

"For this lab, the design will be key. Spend some time playing with the layout and positioning, eliminating white space, adding background fills and neatlines. Look for examples from printed maps, online maps (and any maps your classmates have found for the blog map posts). The map you turn in will be graded on aesthetics even more than the prior 9 labs…"

...and I think I did a pretty damn good job with that aspect regardless of my data flaws. So I'm just going to leave it as it is because this took long enough.

Cartotalk...

Hey I just wanted to share with the class this forum site I just found on the web. It's called CartoTalk and its basically just like any other online forum where people discuss Cartography and other GIS related issues. I haven't explored it much yet but it seems like a really good source of information. I added it to my links...check it out.

--Kevin

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...Lab 9!

Finally we get some color!



For this lab I tried to optimize my map so that it would look best in digital form. In addition to adding color I made several changes to the map from its original form from Lab 6. I changed the title so that it all fit on one line and shortened it so that income in dollars is displayed in the legend instead of the title. I think it looks cleaner this way. For the most part, the layout of the map is the same, but I did several things that I think make the map look much better digitally, i.e. shrinking the neatlines and using ones with rounded edges. I also used thicker lines for the state borders in order to try to make the main subject of the map more pronounced.
As far as color goes, I think the green color scheme I used works well for this map. Green = Money/Income. Plus I just like green (in case you haven't noticed). I selected the colors from one of the color legends from the all too easy, www.colorbrewer.org (hmm...I should add that site to my links). I actually changed the darkest color to make it a bit darker than what was originally given on the website because it was hard for me to tell the difference between the two highest categories. It is pretty dark but I think it works. I played around with different background colors but I found the grayscale gradient to work for me.
Looking at the differences between the map in digital and paper forms, the colors on the paper map seem a bit more...saturated maybe? The jump in darkness from the second highest to highest category doesn't seem as big on the printed map as it does on the digital map. I probably wouldn't make any major modifications to the map in trying to optimize it for either form. I might have made the scale bar a little bit thinner but thats about it.

So much for 3 or so sentences...and...We welcome you to Munchkinland!

Lab 8 - Dot Density Map...

Here is my Dot Density map for Lab 8.



I chose to map the dataset of the houses in West Virginia which were built in or before 1939. I arranged the dots so that they followed population patterns in each county.

Dot Density Maps...

Here's two examples of dot density maps that I've pulled off the web. The first one is a map of the acreage of croplands harvested in the U.S. in 1949.



The second one is kinda cool. Its a map of Facebook usage for the month of April this past year.