James R Macdonald

The geography of American aircraft production, according to a Japanese map from Feb. 1943

I spoke all things cartography with my colleagues in the ‘DK Where to Go’ podcast. A less than ideal media choice to discuss a visual topic.

I discuss my favourite map, why maps lie, how we make maps and how a cartographer’s map joke created a town.

shows.acast.com/where-to-go/...

The Thames in Kingston looking unfortunate this morning.

Bushy Park during this morning’s run

Waiting for a bus home from Kingston town centre last night.

Two global maps. Map on left is projected mercator, showing the distortion at the poles. Map on right is of globe showing distortion based on "distance" from point on ground.

Maps are artistic scientific expressions, which is why I chose a career studying and making them. Here are some lemon-yellow Tissot's indicatrix brighten your day. Since all maps involve distortion, exploring these distortions can deepen your understanding of the map's subject.
#datavisualization

I love early spring walks/runs through the royal parks

Come work with the amazing Travel team building amazing travel titles.

Good morning, 25th January edition.

Winter morning exercise in the park.

Outside cafe in Esher collecting croissant crumbs in the pouring rain.

Waiting for its Christmas gift of half an apple

Wonderful Q&A at the BFI Southbank today for Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Hello! The Atlas of Design shows off some of the world’s most beautiful and intriguing cartographic design. Every two years, we publish a new volume of full-color maps, selected from worldwide competition and judged by an expert panel. Happy to be part of Bluesky!

#maps #cartography #books #design

A quite monstrous Christmas map effort from @TfL. There's nothing redeeming about this whatsoever.

Good morning

Two hemispheres of the moon in yellow against a black background. The title text in the top-left reads "Lunar Albedo" with the subtitle below it reading "Surface reflectance indicated by small moon symbols", Above the second hemisphere to the right is the subtitle "'Dark' side of the moon". Each hemisphere is made up of small yellow dots that when zoomed in are revealed to be small images of the moon at different phases, When grouped together this gives the impression of a continuous variation in lightness, revealing the craters and 'seas' of the moon.

Zoomed in portion of the previous image showing the individual yellow moon symbols in more detail revealing that the lightness of each is determined by the moon phase. Darker symbols appear as thin moon crescents, lighter symbols as 'full' moons.

#30DayMapChallenge Day 22: 2 colours

I thought I'd make life difficult for myself with this one by being strict about only 2 colours. No grey scales; no 2 colours + background colour. Just 2.

Halftone dots made up of mini moons to map a big moon:

observablehq.com/@jwolondon/t...

Video showing the carpark of the Blue Lagoon in Iceland being eaten by lava....

Via: MBL on X

Leaf retrieval next October will be immense

After 5 months the pond liner is down and the rain can do its thing to fill over the next few days

Pretty certain the neighbour’s cat hates me

2025 is another not great year for the Severn Bore.

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If, like me, you're increasingly disinclined to pay Adobe's significant annual subs, here are two affordable lifetime-license alternative options I'm seriously looking at:

(1) Affinity Designer (recently bought by Flourish-owner, Canva) - affinity.serif.com/en-gb/design... - has a 50% discount

Ursula K. Le Guin's home will become a writers residency The former home of the late Ursula K. Le Guin is being readied to become a base for contemporary authors.

We're delighted to announce a new future for Ursula's home in Portland, Oregon. The Le Guin family will donate the house to Literary Arts as a site for the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency. apnews.com/article/ursu...

The BFI Imax only has storage space for one more Christopher Nolan film.

Yes! Thank you.

I was there from 94-97 and have been trying to remember the name of the Scottish cartographer who looked after the carto parts of the course and was based at Kingston College, can you recall?

Goodyear Europa. Fairoaks Airfield, Surrey 1984