http://xkcd.com/977/

For some of the map lovers here. 

I always go with a globe or Peters, I guess that makes me a hateful clever guy :-/ What are you, ratsy?

I'll tell you my least favorite right now is polar stereographic.  But that's just because we've been having trouble getting it to display at work because it's more different than most of the others.

I'm kind of a Dymaxion guy... but I'm interested in being more into the quincuncial.

And of course, I like my maps old.

I just recently me a guy that had a depth chart for the great bear lake from the 1900's. We poured over that map for a couple of hours. Good times. :)

Pseudo related :

My wife comes from a tiny town in NW Iowa.  Her dad, who passed many years ago, was a farmer, but also worked for the city planning office.  We were going through a bunch of his things that her mom gave us, and we found an original plat of survey map of the entire town from the early 90's that is really cool.

Being from a big city, and having traveled a lot around the world, you get used to looking at new maps of big cities/familiar places.  You get used to looking at giant maps of big cities or of states when travelling.  And you (at least I did) forget that even small towns need maps for their local government use.  Us big city types sometimes mistakenly assume that all urban planning decisions and land disputes in a farm town in rural Iowa are decided over a bottle of whiskey, in the bed of a pickup, in the parking lot of the local high school football game.

Anyway, my wife probably would have thrown it out, but I really liked the map so I framed it and it's hanging in my home office.

And in more related news: for map preferences, I prefer Google Earth
1) It's proportions are as accurate as a globe (something that frustrates me about most map projections) but....
2) You can actually zoom in and see a lot more detail of the landscape and topography and...
3) by using Google Earth you are not known as "that douche who is always carrying a globe."

BorisTheFrugal wrote:

 

3) by using Google Earth you are not known as "that douche who is always carrying a globe."

..but if you use Google Earth, isn't that in fact what you are doing?

I knew that image had been posted here before..  Here's an interesting thread from back in '12.

M57 wrote:

I knew that image had been posted here before..  Here's an interesting thread from back in '12.

I've always loved maps, that's some cool stuff...

BorisTheFrugal wrote:

My wife comes from a tiny town in NW Iowa.  

sweet more iowa blood! Where at? 

I'm from the NE/E side of Iowa... 

BorisTheFrugal wrote:

 all urban planning decisions and land disputes in a farm town in rural Iowa are decided over a bottle... 

the contents of said bottle and location vary, but this much is true. 

weathertop wrote:

sweet more iowa blood! Where at? 

Sibley.  
Halfway between Rock Rapids and Lake Okoboji.
Small enough that when we drive there in a car with GPS, the map literally goes blank when we exit the highway for her town because it's not large enough to have the roads included in the GPS package. 

BorisTheFrugal wrote:

 all urban planning decisions and land disputes in a farm town in rural Iowa are decided over a bottle...

the contents of said bottle and location vary, but this much is true. 

Might be ture, but no matter the contents, you can bet money that it will have the word Whiskey somewhere on the label.  It'll never say Galliano or Schnapps.

Came across another interesting map:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4u3MEDg8Zs

This needs to be recreated.

How about this one:

http://thegreatglobe.com/globe-project/

It's going to be 420 (hehehe - wonder what they were smoking when they came up with this idea) ft in diameter when completed (if it ever is!).

Ozyman wrote:

How about this one:

http://thegreatglobe.com/globe-project/

It's going to be 420 (hehehe - wonder what they were smoking when they came up with this idea) ft in diameter when completed (if it ever is!).

Get them kiddies working!