Boing Boing » mapping

Put a GPS on your cat

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:54:44 +0000

When one of Caroline Paul's cats disappeared for 5.5 weeks, it inspired her to find out what Tibula (the cat) was really up to when he left home. The process of this is pretty fascinating. The outcome is, well, kind of cat like. What was Tibula doing when he wasn't at home? Avoiding the house and staring at himself in windows, apparently.

Wind map shows Sandy's gusts

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 18:26:06 +0000

The surface wind data in this beautiful wind map from Hint.fm comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. It's basically an art project, not guaranteed to be scientifically perfect, but it's dramatic stuff today during Hurricane Sandy:

These are near-term forecasts, revised once per hour. So what you're seeing is a living portrait. (See the NDFD site for precise details; our timestamp shows time of download.) And for those of you chasing top wind speed, note that maximum speed may occur over lakes or just offshore.

If you're looking for a weather map, or just want more detail on the weather today, see these more traditional maps of temperature and wind.

There's a beautiful animated version, too.

Google's Hurricane Sandy crisis map

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:39:05 +0000

Here's an excellent resource to link and re-tweet: a crisis/storm-tracking map from Google, with shelter information, and updated data on Sandy's expected course.

LocalWiki Antarctica, a crowdsourced map of the icy southern continent

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:52:58 +0000

LocalWiki's Philip Neustrom says,

My non-profit, LocalWiki, has been working on this really incredible project to help document the continent of Antarctica. Most notable, at least right now, is this custom map we've pieced together from very-hard-to-find NASA aerial imagery and coastline datasets. It's probably the most beautiful thing I've ever worked on.

Check out the LocalWiki for Antarctica. The project "aims to document the full extent of human involvement on the continent," and for now is focused on a two-mile region surrounding Palmer Station.