Music and Maps

By:
On:
In: maps, My Maps, News
Tagged: , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

Maps and musicians – the B-side Following on from part one from our look at musicians links to maps, comes the difficult second album, as we look at five more artists and their relationships to maps. Without further ado, let’s get going again… 5) M.I.A. Born as Mathangi Arulpragasam in Hounslow to Sri Lankan Tamil resistance activists, being raised in both Sri Lanka, India and back to London – the artist known as M.I.A., was perhaps always going to have unique geographical take on the world. The Grammy winning artist, is known for her unusual sound sampling, provocative lyrics and subject matters in her work –Read More →

Music and Maps

By:
On:
In: maps, My Maps, News
Tagged: , , , , , ,
With: 1 Comment

Maps – Wait, they don’t love you like I love you Music and maps. Geography and the arts. They may or may not seem like natural partners – music is about cultural and creative expression, and the general rhythm and tune to life; the other is about precision, accuracy and scientific understanding of the processes and reality of the world around us. However, as I’ve discussed in the past, there are very strong links between the two – the list is endless of number of songs that mention ‘places’ (e.g. London Calling, Born in the USA, Straight Outta Compton etc). That’s before we consider geography’sRead More →

By:
On:
In: gis, Map of the Month, maps
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

Vote for your Favourite Map! August for me has gone far too quickly, and Map of the Month has also come round again very quickly! Fortunately, as was the case last month, there’s been some great maps to explore over the dry summer spell. To follow up on last month, congratulations to Craig Taylor on winning the inaugural Map of the Month with his awesome #PlotmyPaws doggy themed data viz. From looking at recent activity, #plotmypaws is going from strength to strength. Back working on my #plotmypaws project this weekend, lots of #dog tracks coming in now! I want to believe they are somehow coordinatingRead More →

World Cup Quiz

By:
On:
In: Uncategorized
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

Let’s get quizzical So today I’m going to be doing something a little bit different to normal. Rather than rambling about a great map or geographical subject, here’s something a bit more fun. I’ve talked about geography and football before (see here and here) and particularly recently with the World Cup currently taking place in Russia. Some of you may have enjoyed the excitement of the tournament, while some may have no interest in football whatsoever. However, hopefully some sort of love of geography and maps brings us all together – therefore I’ve made an interactive quiz below. While it relates to the 32 countries takingRead More →

By:
On:
In: gis, maps, My Maps
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

Surpassing goals With a matter of hours to go before the month long football extravaganza begins in Moscow, it seems an opportune moment to look at the relationship between the beautiful game and the beautiful subject (geography if you were wondering). This is a topic I have looked at previously, examining the relationship between economic power (through GDP at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)) and footballing prowess (through FIFA World Rankings). On the eve of the World Cup, it is time to revisit the current state of play. With two web maps, we can look at those who have qualified, past successes of countries, travel distances, andRead More →

Eurovision 2018 - Jury - Public Vote Difference

By:
On:
In: gis, maps, My Maps
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
With: 1 Comment

Overcoming geography While dust settles in Lisbon, after another crazy night of Eurovision revelry, we can now take time to analyse the patterns of this most geographical of contests. Netta Barzilai won the contest with the song “Toy” for Israel, overcoming it’s isolated geography and lack of neighbours, to win the Eurovision Song Contest 2018. Maybe the best song really does triumph over geography and ‘political voting’. This is a topic I have covered in the past, and while it would be naive to think this is a solely music contest – one only had to hear the audible boos when the televoting came fromRead More →

By:
On:
In: gis, maps, My Maps
Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

The double act of Music and Geography Firstly, a very belated happy new year, as well as celebrating the first year anniversary of The Map Den! I’ve really enjoyed getting further involved in the geospatial community through this website, sharing interesting developments and content in social media, and hopefully contributing in my own tiny way on here. Geography, the study and the communication of this through maps, GIS and other geospatial forms is a great passion of mine and I believe is inherently relevant to the world around us – perhaps more than ever. Everything happens somewhere. Another strong interest of mine is music, aRead More →

Santa Claus Story Web Map

By:
On:
In: gis, My Maps
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

Santa Claus coming to town…via maps With Christmas coming soon and Santa preparing for his annual global delivery service of presents, I thought it would be an opportune time to investigate the origin of Santa Claus, using a story map created in Mapbox. To get the fullscreen version of the embedded map below click here, and hope you enjoy!   Finally and most importantly, Happy Christmas and have a Happy (mappy) New Year! Happy Mapping, DavidRead More →

Map of knowledge of Celtic language

By:
On:
In: maps, My Maps
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

Croeso! Fáilte! Degemer mat! Failt ort! Dynnargh dhis! If you managed to work out the languages in the above greetings without Google, congratulations! For those who needed to Google (including myself), will know for the record that the above all means ‘Welcome’ in Welsh, Irish Gaelic/Scots Gaelic, Breton, Manx and Cornish respectively. However, despite being ‘native’ languages to their respective regions of the British Isles and Northern France with long histories, they are minority languages compared to English and French respectively, with differing fortunes and histories. In a previous article exploring the geography of Wales, we have seen how the Welsh language is a historical link to pre Angl0-SaxonRead More →

Dull Twinned with Boring

By:
On:
In: gis, maps, My Maps
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
With: 0 Comments

Welcome to ‘Twin City’ Enter most towns, cities or villages in not just the UK, but in Europe and beyond, and you will likely find a ‘Welcome to [insert place name]’ and underneath ‘Twinned with [insert twin cities]’. Perhaps it is easy ignore these twin cities and linkages, or dismiss them as nothing more than symbolic, but what is the story behind twin or sister cities and what does it mean today? For those unaware a twin or sister city partnership is where there is a ‘friendship’ and legal/social agreement between one town or city (or even a region) to another , usually in a different country.Read More →