May 2019 – Quiz Time! So another month, another geography quiz on geographical related events which have occurred over the last month. You know the drill by now, so test how much you’ve been keeping up with the geographical news with this quiz below. Enjoy! Happy Mapping, David Read More →
And now the points from… I wasn’t even planning on another post about the Eurovision Song Contest and the voting geography of this crazy contest. However, messing around on data and geospatial visualisation platforms, and the urge became too strong. So twelve months on here I am again, examining the predictability of voting patterns. The Balkans bloc, the Scandinavian bloc, the former Soviet bloc – you know the drill, so I’ll spare going through the context again – I’ve explored this previously in 2018 and 2017. Data viz for the Euroviz What’s new for this year are interactive data visualisations where you can explore a country’sRead More →
April 2019 – Quiz Time! So another month, another geography quiz on geographical related events which have occurred over the last month. You know the drill by now, so test how much you’ve been keeping up with the geographical news with this quiz below. Enjoy! Happy Mapping, David Read More →
This part one of a series on capital cities, exploring influences on their location and history. There will be maps. What about capital cities anyway? Allow me to be controversial – geography is important. I’d actually go as far to say it’s vital. Don’t let comments about it just “being colouring in” tell you otherwise (though I do love colouring in). It’s the influencing factor that explains why where we live or work exist. Whether it’s proximity to water, transport links, natural resources, defensive position or simply other locations – these are all factors. Historically or more recently, locations don’t just ‘happen’ – they emergeRead More →
February 2019 – Quiz Time! I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a very busy start to the year, so thought I’d take a moment to slow down with another geography quiz. Turns out that both out of this world and on it, it’s been also been a busy month in geographical news. How much have you been paying attention to it? Find out with this short quiz below. Happy Mapping, David Read More →
Unique Sporting Landscape There was a sporting story a few weeks ago about some Patriotic football team from New England winning a record number of ‘Bowls’ last week and somehow male sheep and Maroon 5 were involved. I’m learning a lot about American culture, even falling in with love in many respects, but it’s going to take some time for this blogger to fully understand American football. American culture is a unique, great and fascinating one – a product of its pioneering, multicultural, diverse history and background of starting a country anew. I could easily do an article about the food culture and diversity ofRead More →
January 2019 – Quiz Time! Firstly, a very belated happy new year! It’s still January as I write this, so think I can just about get away with it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a very busy start to the year, so thought I’d take a moment to slow down with this geography quiz. Turns out that both out of this world and on it, it’s been also been a busy month in geographical news. How much have you been paying attention to it? Find out with this short quiz below. Happy Mapping, David Read More →
I sense your presents… Wintertime in Western culture is known for the religious and pagan traditions of gift-giving, merriment and feasting around Christmas. Commonly across many cultures, it is considered Santa Claus delivers gifts. Last year we asked, ‘where’ does Santa come from? This year we are looking into ‘how’ – namely how does Santa Claus (or whichever gift-bringer) navigate and deliver their gifts? Using a map of course! We can only guess on the actual map Santa uses – but I imagine that it could look like something like the stylised map below which I hope you enjoy. Several cultures have different figures whoRead More →
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 →
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 →