Week Three Lab Assignment

View Los Angeles Art Museums and Bus Stops near UCLA in a larger map

      The reason I this map is very simple. Being an art major, I have to and want to go visit art galleries on a frequent basis. However, not having a car on campus means that I need to take the bus and find certain bus stops in order to go to the museums. This was my motivation in creating this map of bus stops near UCLA and a couple of art museums in Los Angeles. 
      Neo-geography is a new and exciting field that gives people the opportunity to create and share their own unique maps with the world. It allows people to create highly-specialized maps that usually would not exist on their own, and many people can take advantage of the new and useful information these maps give. For example, if you really like Mexican food and live in the Los Angeles area, somebody has probably created a map that shows where all the good Mexican restaurants are in the LA area. This kind of map would be very useful to a select number of individuals. The introduction of neo-geography has vastly increased the amount of maps with specialized topics.
      Although the introduction of neo-geography has brought about maps that can be very useful at times, they are, however, not without their flaws. One of the major problems with neo-geography is credibility. There is no guarantee that  a map will be geographically accurate in terms of locations or directions, or even if the creator of the map had good intentions when making it, and was just playing some kind of joke. Even if the creator of a map did have good intentions when creating it, the map may still have inaccuracies. Maps could be mislabeled, not to scale, or may contain the creators preferences, for example, somebody else's idea of a good restaurant may be different from your idea of a good restaurant. Even though neo-geography maps can be very helpful at times, they cannot be trusted completely due to the lack of a credible source.

Week Two Lab Assignment

1. The name of the quadrangle is "Beverly Hills Quadrangle".

2. The names of the adjacent quadrangles are:
      1. Canoga Park
      2. Van Nuys
      3. Burbank
      4. Topanga
      5. Hollywood
      6.
      7. Venice
      8. Inglewood
3. 1966
4. Datums of 1927, 1929, and 1983.
5. The scale is 1:24000
6.
      a) 1cm/24000cm = 240 m x 5 = 1200 m on the ground
      b) 1in/24000in = 2000 ft x 5 = 10000ft/ 5280 = 1.89 miles on the ground
      c) 5280ft x 12 = 63360 in/ 24000 = 2.64 in on the map
      d) 3km x 100 = 3000m x 100 = 300000cm / 24000 = 12.5cm on the map
7. The contour interval is 20 feet.
8.
      a) 34°04' 30'' N or 34.075° N , 118°26'00'' W or 118.43° W
      b) 34°00'45'' N or 34.0125° N , 118°30' 10'' W or 118.525° W
      c) 34°07'45'' N or 34.13° N , 118°24' 45'' W or 118.4125° W
9.
      a) 560 ft or 170.68 m
      b) 140 ft or 42.67 m
      c) 780 ft or 237.74 m
10. UTM zone 11
11. 3763000 m N, 361500 m E
12. 1000000 m
13.

14. 14°/249 mils
15. South
16.

http://www.infographicsinsights.com/2011/09/global-shipping-route.html 

This is a map that shows the world's shipping lanes and the number of times a route is traveled. The routes are color coded to show how often each route is traveled in a given amount of time. This map clearly shows the amount of shipping traffic on the Atlantic Ocean but I had no idea that it was the busiest shipping lane in the world. One would imagine that the Pacific Ocean would have much more traffic due to the amount of manufactured goods coming from east and southeast Asia to North America but there are clearly more trips between the U.S and Europe. I am also very surprised at the amount of traffic in the North Sea bouncing between Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and the U.K. It is also very curious to see how islands like Hawaii can have an affect on the trajectory of shipping routes because it can be used to refill cargo ships. It is very interesting to see the trade relationships between continents. 

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114867

 This is a visualized map of the United States and all of the internet connections within it. It is designed very simply and utilizes line and color so that connections may be more visible. I found that which regions of the country connect with others to be very interesting. I had no idea that there would be so many connections between California and the east cost. This could show us that more populated areas tend to communicate more with other populated areas rather than rural areas. Seeing which cities in the U.S. are major internet hubs is also fascinating. It appears that Florida plays a major role in Internet connectivity.

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/308-the-pop-vs-soda-map

 This is a map of the United States that shows the relationship between location and what word people use for "soda". The map is color coded to show the different counties where different terms for "soda" are used. The design of the map is very simple but effective. I find this map to be very interesting because shows areas of different culture through vocabulary. It also stimulated my interest because I have an uncle that refers to soda as "coke" no matter what it is, and this map shows me why. My uncle is from Arkansas and the map shows that the south primarily refers to soda as "coke". I think that it is very interesting seeing differences in vocabulary portrayed on a map.