Andy Woodruff

I’m here arguing with an “AI assistant” that a $5 credit isn’t sufficient for the $17 item missing from my food order, and am beginning to suspect that it’s distracted by doing some war crimes on the other line.

Photo of a child lying on the floor drawing on a piece of paper.

Littlest cartographer drawing a map, either of Spain or Cambridge, Mass. (Always hard to tell the difference between the two.)

It's still weird to me (from Ohio) that every school here (New England) has a week off in the middle of February, and now that it's Something I Have to Deal With as a parent, it's super rude that a crippling east coast blizzard is scheduled to make the school break even longer.

I’m not qualified for this rabbit hole, but the border following parcels looks specific to a couple of suburbs? Feels like there’s a story, though maybe a dull one.

Also, learned via Cleveland in 50 Maps that Shaker Heights blocked most of the streets crossing its southern border with Cleveland 🤨

I, a hero, tried this in December! It's a real godsend for people who like their tiny hamburgers to cost $8 and be dispensed in a sealed plastic bag from a black box.

Screenshot of the portfolio page of Axis Maps, showing thumbnail images of six projects: Recreational Bicycling Access Tool, MapMaster 3, CalSHARE Data Hub, LARC Dashboard, imagineRio, and Health Equity Illuminator.

I've done a bad job keeping in touch with my longtime colleagues at Axis Maps since leaving a few years ago, but it's nice to see that they've found some time to update the website with the good work they've been up to! www.axismaps.com/projects

It’s fun but we miss you both

When the Pats somewhat famously beat the Seahawks in 2015, we were in the midst of an insanely snowy winter in Boston. As the snow finally began to melt in spring, it was like an archaeological record, eventually revealing a confetti layer from the victory parade back in February.

Map of major sports victory parades in Boston along with a list of championships won since 2002

Silver lining—or if you’re not from here, some additional good news—from the Patriots’ loss yesterday is that my Boston maps book will not already be out of date when it’s published in May.

Preschool art “touch down!” with hand prints on a football and a New England Patriots logo

My kid came home from preschool with this the other day. These poor suffering 3 and 4 year olds have spent their entire lives without seeing the Patriots in the Super Bowl! 😢

😨

Things got less scary when I realized that this is all just a curiosity to people, that they won't ask any hard questions, and that they'll happily accept whatever you say. (That said, the last radio interview was on air live, which was a little nerve-wracking!)

January was a weird month of suddenly learning how to talk about stuff off the cuff without sounding like a total fool—very much not a skill of mine—between this and two radio interviews!

YouTube video by Chronicle 5 WCVB Meet the cartographer turning data into stories

Well, they put me on TV. youtu.be/vh1g-8HrUS4

I think she said she googled “Massachusetts cartographer” or some such—guess I’ve done well at making myself That Guy online. It was pleasing but not surprising to hear that cartografriends like you and BPL/Ian would anchor the rest of it!

Great lil segment; hope it drives some customers your way!

By the way I tried to recall your “I don’t sell information…” line to Nicole and she claimed you hadn’t said it to them, but no, phew, she was wrong.

Okay they made me sound like not too much of a fool, I got an order for the poster that they showed for a few seconds, and they put in a little plug for my upcoming book. Pretty successful first (presumably only) time being featured on a tv show!

I mean… yeah, I suppose it is how I spend most of my time lately. Probably could have chosen a more TV-friendly activity to pretend to do though.

If you’ve ever yearned for b-roll footage of cartographers pretending to work by moving a map label back and forth, you are in for a treat!

😬

A map with yellow-ish land and shaded relief, and lakes filled blue with some edge glow effects.

The same map without the blue lake fill, only retaining the glow effects on lakes.

Task at hand is a map that mostly copies @margot-carto.bsky.social's styles from a different map, and her work is so solid that you can accidentally turn off a major layer and it still looks great!

Thanks!

It's not really feasible for me to participate in things like Defeat ICE by Taking a Three Day Weekend or whatever. Usually more than time or effort, the thing I'm able to give to a cause is money. Are there organizations to which I can donate that, in any small way, might help stop this shit?

Sorry I don’t know if we’re allowed to post about meaningless things right now, but apparently in 2022 we had a top 10 snow storm here and I just… don’t remember it? Having young children is such a brain-wrecking experience.

A pair of snowfall forecast maps that are wrong in a way that I just don’t know how to describe. I think each one is actually two maps of different scale smashed together somehow.

The impending winter storm is so massive that it will wreak havoc on the geographical fabric of the USA. You’re gonna have Big Great Lakes and Little Great Lakes. States within states. Vast regions will shrink and vanish. Grab a shovel!

(Source: 🤷‍♂️ via some page that Facebook wanted to show me)

Nick and I are also scheduled for a different *live* radio program in a couple weeks, which, 😱😨

Two books explore Cincinnati in maps "Cincinnati in 50 Maps" and "Cincinnati's Foodshed: An Art Atlas" illustrate the past and present of Greater Cincinnati.

Hopefully they edited out all of my parts, but nevertheless it was fun to join this conversation about maps and Cincinnati. www.wvxu.org/show/cincinn...

Photo of a CD labeled “Big Map Andy”

I was a legend back in grad school. @pinakographos.bsky.social knows what’s up.

Indeed, good labels with consideration of the entire map context seem like a thing that human brains are good at! I don’t doubt that AI could be made to do a decent job of it in the somewhat near future, so maybe I’ll just hope that our field doesn’t attract the attention of the tech villains.

A map where only the text labels and point symbols are visible

Labeling maps is a peaceful practice, and often is half the job of a cartographer. I'm sure seas will be drained and skies will be blackened so that AI can do it in our stead in a year or two, but for now, I always enjoy looking at a "map minus map" version of completed work.