Skip to main content

3 months mapping leave from work - what to do?

I've just started a 3 months study leave from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation where I'm spending my savings to acquire new mapping skills. Originally, my plan was to spend the time in South America but I had to postpone this adventure. Instead, I'll spend some time in Norway, Turkey, the Dolomites/Alps - and where?!?

Do you know of any interesting mapping events going on before 10th March? Would you like some help on an exciting mapping project? Please notify me. 

My study plan is to improve my cartography skills, learn how to map with D3.js and to continue my 3D experiments with three.js. 

Winter in Norway

Comments

Theo said…
Hi Bjørn

I discovered your site a few days ago, and wish I had discovered it sooner.

So what should you do for the next few months?

First: learn to use the pages feature so your demos are viewable directly from GitHub.

Help devise a strategy and a plan so that bitmaps with elevation data with a resolution down to, say, 50 meters can be added to GitHub. And TINs too, if wanted. And then, let's do it.

Help start a Google Group for 3D map making with Three.js. Maybe called cartograthree? Ask for and respond to the most imaginative 3D mapping queries.

Devise strategies and tips and tricks - and build demos - so that maps can have real-time weather, bikes, buses and trains, and more.

Devise new projection methods. For example, we always look at the earth from the outside. What would happen if we looked at it (with a bit of transparency) from the inside looking out?

We have hundreds of years of history of cartographers trying to make 2D maps that pretend to be 3D globes. Now we really have 3D globes that work and are usable, what should cartographers do next?

And, finally, given that you have so much time, building Borges' map should very eay.

Theo
8 December 2013 at 08:47
Bjørn Sandvik said…
Many thanks for your advice Theo!

I've used the pages feature before, and I'll use it again :-)

My plan is to create a GitHub repository with geospatial functions for Three.js - and use the social features of GitHub - more about this soon.

Looking at the Earth from the inside would be interesting. I also like the transparency used by Globaïa.

It exciting what we're now capable of doing in the browser.
12 December 2013 at 22:38
Unknown said…
Hi,
I went through your blog but understood only few elements. I use MATLAB graphics for presenting data on global maps or regional maps etc. At present I have a problem of presenting appropriate patches onto a global countries' map with dengue cases retaining the infection's across the boundary features (obviously science is beyond boundaries). I am not able to do this. Could you kindly help. Thanks
Chakravarty (chakravarty08@gmail.com)
30 December 2013 at 06:24
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creating a WebGL Earth with three.js

This blog post will show you how to create a WebGL Earth with three.js , a great JavaScript library which helps you to go 3D in the browser. I was surprised how easy it seemed when reading a blog post  by Jerome Etienne . So I decided to give it a try using earth textures  from one of my favourite cartographers, Tom Patterson . WebGL is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 3D graphics in modern web browsers without the use of plug-ins. Three.js is built on top of WebGL, and allows you to create complex 3D scenes with a few lines of JavaScript. If your browser supports WebGL you should see a rotating Earth below: [ Fullscreen ] To be able to display something with three.js, you need three things: a scene, a camera and a renderer. var width  = window.innerWidth,     height = window.innerHeight; var scene = new THREE.Scene(); var camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(45, width / height, 0.01, 1000); camera.position.z = 1.5; var rende...
11 comments
Read more

Thematic Mapping Engine

It's time to introduce the Thematic Mapping Engine (TME). In my previous blog posts, I've shown various techniques of how geobrowsers can be used for thematic mapping. The goal has been to explore the possibilites and to make these techniques available to a wider audience. The Tematic Mapping Engine provides an easy-to-use web interface where you can create visually appealing maps on-the-fly. So far only prism maps are supported, but other thematic mapping techniques will be added in the upcoming weeks. The engine returns a KMZ file that you can open in Google Earth or download to your computer. My primary data source is UNdata . The above visualisation is generated by TME ( download KMZ ) and shows child mortaility in the world ( UNdata ). The Thematic Mapping Engine is also an example of what you can achieve with open source tools and datasets in the public domain: A world border dataset is loaded into a MySQL database . The same database contains tables with statistics ...
45 comments
Read more

Creating 3D terrains with Cesium

Previously, I’ve used three.js to create 3D terrain maps in the browser ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ). It worked great for smaller areas, but three.js doesn’t have built-in support for tiling and advanced LOD algorithms needed to render large terrains. So I decided to take Cesium for a spin. Cesium is a JavaScript library for creating 3D globes and 2D maps in the browser without a plugin. Like three.js, it uses WebGL for hardware-accelerated graphics. Cesium allows you to add your own terrain data, and this blog post will show you how. Impressed by the terrain rendering in @CesiumJS - with a 10m elevation model for Norway! Farewell Google Earth. pic.twitter.com/RQKvfu2hBb — Bjørn Sandvik (@thematicmapping) October 4, 2014 Compared to  the dying Google Earth plugin , it's quite complicated to get started with Cesium. The source code is well documented and the live coding Sandcastle is great, but there is a lack of tutorials  and my development slows down when ...
12 comments
Read more