Comments on: Finding the Cheese Factory

By: Tectonic Junction, What’s Your Function? « Cartastrophe

Tectonic Junction, What’s Your Function? « Cartastrophe — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:39:59 +0000

[...] with the inset. Are those historical volcanic eruptions, or maybe earthquakes? Maybe they’re places less interesting than the Cheese Factory. And what are the little round-ish zones drawn in blue, which makes them hard to [...]

By: Concerning the Value of Human Life « Cartastrophe

Concerning the Value of Human Life « Cartastrophe — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:59:58 +0000

[...] brought to my attention by one of our readers, Robin, who previously alerted me to the problems of Moon Maps. This map appears in a post on the OKTrends b, where the authors analyze the geographic [...]

By: Daniel Huffman

Daniel Huffman — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:45:30 +0000

Good to have my suspicions confirmed.

I appreciate that they are putting these maps out there free, but it would be nice if, at the bare minimum, the webpage had the legend somewhere, even if they don’t attach it to every map.

Also, a friend of mine pointed out this evening that it looks to him like they printed the maps, then scanned them in, instead of exporting them out of whatever program they were originally constructed in (assuming they did them digitally). I’m not sure either way.

By: Andy Woodruff

Andy Woodruff — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:02:48 +0000

Being in possession of a Moon guidebook (New England), I checked to verify what I suspected, which is that somewhere in the book is printed a legend. Indeed, on the last page is a map legend. The moon symbol, by the way, is a “highlight.” Surprisingly, you were dead on with your guess that squares indicate “things less interesting than the Cheese Factory.” Word for word, you nailed it.

Also on the same page is a pretty full list of unit conversions, in case you are visiting a place where the locals tend to measure distances in furlongs (201.168 m), as well as a drawing of a clock with 12- and 24-hour labels, in case you never learned to read a clock or don’t know how to subtract.

Anyway, the single separate legend is forgivable and even sensible in a book, but we see here the problem in taking maps that were meant to be published in printed collections and simply throwing them online without any efforts toward adapting to the different medium. Whereas originally we had a set of maps with a shared legend you could easily flip to, now we have a zillion maps with no legend at all.