I’ve drafted a map with the same title as this blog post.
You need to leave my site to see it because WordPress-hosted blogs don’t allow Java/Flash embeds except from certain companies that have agreements with. That list of certain companies does not include GeoCommons, which I used to make the map, and which I’ve recently, tentatively, fallen in love with.
My new love adores talking about demography and places. He remembers every piece of geographic information anyone ever tells him and then makes it available for free to anyone who wants it. He fetches any Google, Yahoo, or Bing or any kind of other background imagery I want for my map so that I can avoid the tediousness of downloading big satellite files from the National Atlas. He has an army of staff who answer my many questions, any time, by email. He makes it easy to symbolize data and make maps “pretty.” We’ll see if the love affair lasts.
I was about to say I can’t think of anything bad to say about him, but there is one thing — he’s not that flexible about providing interpretive information on the maps we make together — things like legends and labels. I guess he just feels that if people know him and love him, they should just understand, and he shouldn’t have to explain. Well, OK. I can live with that. But nevertheless, here’s some explanatory information for the map. (Don’t tell him I told you.)
1.There are two animations you can watch. Both show the progression of buildings on new parcels over time, starting in 1970, and continuing to 2009. Size over Time shows the relative size of the parcels that the new buildings are on. Prop Class over Time shows Seasonal Properties as purple dots, and Year-Round Residences as orange dots.
2. To turn any layer on or off, click the eye icon on the layer list. To turn an animation on, click on the clock icon. When the timeline box pops up, move the slider all the way to the “faster” end of the spectrum. Beware — these particular animations take a long time to load due to some technical issues I haven’t solved yet. Once the animation has played all the way through, you can back up, replay, or start it over, without reloading all over again.
3. You can read more details about an property by clicking on it on the map. You can read the year labels on the timeline by clicking on those.
4. Because the parcels where development is happening are so small, it can be helpful to zoom in on a dense area during an animation to see what’s happening in more detail. Try Montague, for instance.
You can help me out if you offer feedback in the comments section. What was easy to understand/use? What takes longer to understand? Is there anything else you’d like to see?
very interesting site. I will be spending some time here. Looks like you have done a lot of work. See you on the Tug.
http://winteridge.wordpress.com
Checked out your new map/ new love –very neato! If you’d like my feedback on how it felt to make your map’s acquaintance, here goes:
Aesthetics = gorgeous. The palatte you chose for layering — I can only say yuh-hunh! Clear and easy to distinguish, and also just plain purdy. This is Tug Hil, and a purdy map befits a a purdy place, but there are also graver issues at stake, such as map ignorance, of which I am a victim. As a map idiot, I think all maps should be nice and clean and just plain lovely enough to buck my courage up while I attempt to discern their nitty gritties. Your map does that with the “real” look of the Hill, the visually easy-to-get bubbles and the dialog box that makes it simple-as-pie to display the layers one at a time or in twos or threes or all together. That gave me immediate payoff when I first loaded your page and started playing with the features.
Similarly, I loved the the way I could click on a bubble and see the exact address of the property. Simple as this might seem to map sophisticates, that helped me ground your beautiful map in reality. But many of the address details that appear with a click are your mapmaking labels ( I think), and as a mapreader they didn’t make sense to me. I don’t know if it matters, but if I could understand the labels it would be cool. (for ex — the diff between Curr Tot A and Tot Land A? I don’t know. And I don’t know if I should know… but if I could know, it would be so efficient to glance through one of those boxes. But that doesn’t mean I could know, or that I should. I realize it might be too tough to title in a way that explains it to the lay person.)
As for other nits and grits, the animation was super cool but so super slow I was sure I was doing something wrong, even with your (much appreciated!) warning it would take till the Judgment Day to load. My laptop is a modest little beast and my wifi never seems to have all the bars the heart desires, so I think most users will have more luck than I did. I ran the animations regular size and then when i reread your blog on a different day, saw your tip about Montague which I’d forgotten on the first go round. So I tried to run the animations on your map again, this time zoomed in as per yer tip, but the box with the faster vs. slower option did not come up again. Or I just couldn’t find it. Not a major issue and possibly all my mistake of some kind, but I gave up on trying to run it the second time. It was either set to “slower” and giving me no option to speed it up, or just wouldn’t run and would not run and would not. The kid who won’t blow out his birthday candles. You know that kid. Could be my wi-fi on that second day or my map idiocy, a more constant condition, but I checked again today and am still not seeing the faster/slower box for the animation feaure when zoomed in.
Another nit is that I didn’t understand the charts that can be shown or hidden in the Layering dialog box under the “Parcel Size Over Time” and “Year Round Residence vs. Seasonal over time” categories. For ex, in the Year Round vs. Seasonal chart — the a nice pretty timeline with a periwinkle bar and an orange-lichen bar and the numbers 112 and 941.83 appearing on opposite ends of the chart — what does 112 mean and what about 941.83? Did 112 year-round homes turn into 941.83 seasonal homes from 1970 to present day? I was stumped, while aware the answer could be ultra obvious because…
I really am bad with maps, although I really really like them. And I give myself a solid B because I think I understand 85% of your important map of parcelization on Tug Hill. Which probably means you should get an A+ as I still get lost on a regular basis on the farm that I live on, despite the very nice and accurate maps my husband draws for me, complete with landmarks and compass rose and a big x to mark my own domicile, and despite of course the aforementioned fact that I live here.
So in sum, I’ll try again another day to get a zoomed-in animation going over Montague. The last 15% of map content that has eluded me could reveal itself suddenly, like a sweet little Tug Hill toad under one of those orange-lichen colored leaves, but even if it doesn’t, I feel I learned stuff, had fun doing it, and am very excited to hear more from you on the parcelization/second homeification of the Hill, not to mention to meet more of your good-looking maps with their complicated thoughts and memories! Thank you so much for putting this up on your site for all interested parties to check out!