No-one Knows Where I Am And No-one Can Hear Me Scream

Continuing my theme of arm chair geo bagging a few more recent phots from surveying friends.

Firstly, one from Afghanistan.

One from the Washington DC area.

And this slightly mysterious one which I've been passed from someone recently.  However I had a geomatics fail and forgot to retain adequate metadata about it.  Doh.

My final offering is from Japan in the form of a cartoon about a lost and found survey marker.  The article about the lost marker stake travelling from Japan to the USA is here.  However the real piece de resistance is delivered by the manufacturer of the survey marker, Ripro Corporation, who have turned it into a traditional Manga graphic comic book.  In includes the haunting phrase when the little survey marker is all alone in the ocean and realises that "no-one knows where I am and no-one can hear me scream".  But you can read on without alarm; there is a happy ending awaiting Little Orca.

"Mum, It's Behind You" - An Afternoon of Discovery in Birmingham

Roger and I travelled to Birmingham today to visit our daughter, Caitlin.  It was a wet and blustery day and we headed to the city centre for a stroll to the canal.  As ever, my geo antenna were on full alert and as we walked through Victoria Square I knew there had to be something for me there.  And, yes, there was.  A lovely flush bracket benchmark on the side of the Council House.

"Ah," I mused to Caitlin.  "A Council Hall....reminds me of St George's Square in Glasgow where we found those standards measures on the side of the wall and across the square.  I wonder if there are any here?"

"Mum," she responded.  "I forgot to mention it.  They're behind you."  And lo and behold!

Aren't they just beautiful?

Feet, links, metres and poles.  Wonderous.

Not sure I've ever heard of a Dekametre.

After this we scurried to the library to enjoy the amazing architecture and the book rotunda.  On the way to the Shakespeare room we walked past the map section.

Well, not so much walked past.  More like stopped.

It was stuffed full of treasures.

Some beautiful books.

And a limited edition copy of Blaeu's 1662 atlas of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

Such treats; and makes me wonder if our local library has similar offerings.  I must go check.

Loving the Mapping

In celebration of St Valentine's Day I've stumbled across a few links.  Firstly, the Ordnance Survey wish us Happy Valentine's Day with their blog.

Secondly, a wonderfully named company Strumpshaw, Tincleton and Gigglesworth have created a little loving number.

I unrolled one of my lovely maps today - a scratch off map my girls gave me a while ago.  I had a few more countries to add since I last touched it, namely Denmark, Turkey and Brazil.  Brazil!  That took ages to scratch off.

New countries for me for this year will be Sweden and Iceland.  There's a big world out there.  So much to scratch. 

Latex Mapping

On a recent visit to London I had the opportunity to visit the Mapping the City exhibition at Somerset House.  I'd never visited Somerset House before and would thoroughly recommend you stand on the terrace overlooking the Thames before walking through the amazing courtyard up to the Strand.  It even has an ice rink in the winter which must be an uber cool setting for a skate. Anyway, I digress.

The exhibition was a 'contemporary cartographic art by international street and graffiti artists' so I knew it would be an eclectic mixture.  And indeed it was.  Added to this brochure contained the sort of write ups which my scientific brain finds hard to translate.  Such as "he uses a childish and innocent medium...to disparage the urge to impose our beliefs on one another, the urge to vanquish rather than to syncretise".

Some of the exhibits looked map like.

And this is Barcelona - somewhat stylised.  I wish I knew Barcelona better as it'd be fun to relate a more traditional map against this one.  I've spotted the citadel though.

This globe was created by an Argentinian from memory.  He started to lose his memory in the 2000s and was advised to undertake some memory exercises.  It's a globe showing all the places he can remember in the world (an awful lot better than many of us would be able to do).

But it does help explain why New Zealand isn't quite where it should be.  And there were 3 wee pirate ships in the Indian Ocean.

I liked this French picture made up of street signs (spot the Carrefour logo in the centre?).

The most unusual exhibit was this French one.  I initially thought it was animal skins but it's actually latex moulds of a Parisian Metro sign.  Quite visually effective but not terribly practical.

And just as I was leaving I popped into their wine bar as I'd spotted this beauty.  The waiter showed little surprise that I wasn't after a drink as I had my eyes on this wonderful map: Edward Moggs' Strangers Guide from 1817.

Now that's a wine bar worth returning to. ;-)