Maps

i was most gratified to see due attention being paid to Tolkien's map of middle-earth in the extended LotR: FotR!

maps i have with me at my current house:

greater london a-z
manchester a-z
berlin street map
postcode/borough map of london
diagrammatic map of the tube
1987 rand mcanally america roadmap
london: photographic atlas
england: photographic atlas

i have much more back at my parents

oh, and best site evah!

Maps are wonderful things. I can't list all the ones I have at home, cos I have *loads* (a huge pile just of maps of the Outer Hebrides, for example).

that link is ace, gareth.

Our maps are very underused, it's a huge shame.

I collect old maps of places all round the world that I have visited/lived in, and frame them. The walls in my hallway and stairs are filled with them.

I have a vast collection of large scale UK ordnance survey maps too. Earlier this year I drove around the Isle of Wight in my Land Rover, via all the off-road trailways marked on the map (The Tennyson Trail etc). That was brilliant fun.

(the symbols from the old One Inch series maps, because my map-love started with a pile of One Inch maps that my grandad gave me)

i still do this now!

Quite right. But you notice how they moved Bree a bit and ignored the Old Forest entirely and...

Is Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth an essential purchase? Yes, my friends.

Recently the library cleared out a huge load of maps. I scored so many old National Geographic maps you couldn't believe it. :-)

Harry Beck's London Underground Map: Explorer Nicholas Crane examines Harry Beck's iconic and lasting tube map, which was modelled on circuit diagrams.

(it's a repeat but i missed it the first twice around)

(Though I'm trying to think if I've seen this before - or am I confusing it with the series where someone went round the Monopoly Board with an A to Z.)

I thought it had something to do with the more representational nature of a map - that a diagramme does not have to be to scale or geographically accurate in the way that a map should.

But I suppose that answers my own question - the tube map doesn't really show geographical relationships correctly. Couldn't it just be a map, but one that's wrong though?

Diagram:
1. A plan, sketch, drawing, or outline designed to demonstrate or explain how something works or to clarify the relationship between the parts of a whole.
2. Mathematics. A graphic representation of an algebraic or geometric relationship.
3. A chart or graph.

i'd say 'diagram' is more accurate but i'd also argue that 'map' is ok. i'll leave it to other people to point out the inaccuracies in 'underground' and 'tube' 8)

(And do they make a mess when they bleed?)

http://www.anorakheaven.com/photos/cob_cr71.jpg

(that's a close-up of the diagram in the Victoria Line Control Room - this is the whole thing)

One of the books I'm reading contains dozens of wonderful sea charts. Sand banks and the like always have such fanciful names. "The Swin" etc.

I started reading this the other day
http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/bimgdata/FC0691115338.JPG
but then in my subconscious fear of maths I sort of mislaid it...

It was the next mathematical quandary solved after Fermat's Last Theorem. (If it has, indeed, been proved?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-color_problem

It is, according to mathematicians who do not know how to program computers.

To my mind it no worse than using a calculator for a bit of arithmetic; you could do it by hand if you wanted to waste the time, but why bother when there's a quicker way of doing it?

But I'm not a mathematician.

xpost - exactly.

Maybe.

what about a solution for N space?

a proper formulation of that would probably have to come from an elegant solution. not a brute force. (or would it? i guess you could solve that by calculating higher orders.)

the thing is... brute force doesn't offer a howwhy... the deeper connection to what's happening. elegance often provides insight.

m.

there's no connection between these two problems!

as far as i can recall, people were a little iffy about the orginal four colour theorem proof because the computation was so long (and the program that did it?) that it was pretty hard to check. i think recently someone's reproved it by a program that checks itself, or something. i failed to go to a few talks on it a year or two ago, anyway.

The classification of the Finite Simple Groups runs to 25,000 pages iirc, and no-one's complaining about that, are they?

i don't think this is quite true - i think people think there are probably very small gaps to be found, and there's quite an industry in checking/rewriting/improving the proof, i think; see stuff about the GLS project in this (very interesting) survey:

http://www.ams.org/bull/2001-38-03/S0273-0979-01-00909-0/S0273-0979-01-00909-0.pdf

http://photos21.flickr.com/29095173_088559805e.jpg

What is AD&D? Dungeons and Dragons? I think the only reason I ever really played it as a 12 year old was because it was an excuse to draw loads of maps in increasing detail.

This month, their special is Nelson. Last time I visited them it was all about Elizabeth I.

100 years ago it was hoped that one day *every* mathematical theorem would be proved, so you could go step-by-step from 1 + 1 = 2 (and similar) to the most complex parts of maths.

"All elephants are pink. Nellie is an elephant. Therefore..."
"Nellie must be pink!"

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Proof.html

their piece on the 4-clour thm is quite good, too:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Four-ColorTheorem.html

BBC2 17/10/2005 8:00 pm
Map Man
Mrs P's A-Z, 1936: How, after getting lost in London with a map that hadn't been updated since 1918, Phyllis Pearsall, a writer, painter, and traveller decided to map the whole of London.

(took me about a month to walk all of page 74 so god knows how long this took her)

I've been really enjoying the few Crane docu's I've actually managed to get home in time to catch. Especially the one where he cycled through the Lake District on a 1930s boneshaker.

oh oh kate did i tell you about the london map i have been dribbling all over? i've wanted a proper kickarse london wallmap since i moved here, like the ones what you get in taxi offices and estate agents but bigger, and last weekend i went to stanford's and got them all out all over the tables and grraaaaargh went off into a little reverie over them for a while. v tempted by the aa one with the one-way streets but it covered a slightly smaller area than the a-z one and anyway they're always fucking around with the one-way systems in london so i went for the a-z and i feel like it's a design classic anyway, it's become/always was intuitive. it's on the wall opposite my and the russian's rooms now and aaaargh i cannot walk past it without stopping for a quick ogle. num.

Most street maps don't get all the Clapham connections *quite* right. They are very complex, though.

(has anyone else on this thread come across the Quail maps? They're the definitive British railway maps)

Oh god, I didn't need to know about those.

My dad felt the same way - he never got to do the floor, but when he finally got his own office in our house, he just wallpapered the walls with the survey maps for our local area.

Actually, this has been going a long time. When my brother and I were little, in Connecticut, we ended up drawing our own map of the neighbourhood on giant strips of computer printout paper and pinning it to the wall of our rumpus room.

Mmmm, Stanfords. I love their Victorian OS maps. I have an 1896 one of Highgate when my house was surrounded by fields and a working railway.

(stalkers note: it's now the B1203)

PS - I literally went 'oh my fucking god' in the office when I found the quail maps. I've been looking for these for years. More grail than quail. And now it shall be mine.

again i thought the mapping software was fascinating (the underground map program also had great software for editing tube maps). and the phantom road names?

and i can see emsk in one of those a-z cycling tops

I might go to STANFORDS after work today.

That mapping software was amazing. now I'm convinced that that is what the Reality Vans do. They drive around London mapping roads and making reality.

Phantom Roads... my former friend and housemate (who has since moved back to Vancouver) started a small press and the first book she printed was a Pynchon-esque novel about phantom roads in and around LA - that's where I first heard of them. The bloke had so obviously had his brain bent by the concept, but unfortunately his novel didn't quite live up to the coolness of the idea.

Mmmm, Stanfords. One of these days we should have an ILX field trip to Stanfords and then sit in the Lamb and Flag afterwards discussing our aquisitions!

(While maps in general are ace, orienteering maps totally rule, due to their insane scale – typically 1:10000)

These will be the cary maps, we've got lots in our collection, as they were postal routes, and indicated coaching houses as well as big estates etc.

http://www.ukcountymaps.co.uk/aboutjohncary.htm

Of course, any member of the public can come in and look at photos of our maps, but some of the originals need conservation and their size makes them difficult to handle and so you need to have a genuine research need to look at them. We do have some life sized facsimiles in the search room though

http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/collections/archive/maps/index_html/view?searchterm=map

what? WHAT?! i know not of these products but i waaaaaaant one! erm except i would keep trying to use it to get places. ha, holborn roundabout - easy, just there on the left. ah bugger, elephant and castle - hmm... think it's round here somewhere... oh no-oops-OW-oh shit... perhaps it's under there... ow!

yes :( boo. i didn't realise it was on for only half an hour and i didn't leave the office til quarter to eight. bums.

hehe a butt ^__^

xpost 'kinell.

also.... found a place selling fresh iranian beluga for $100usd for 120g... hmmm

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:gnppckg2naipkrzrj5otbuv6/bafkreihxuaoffhmrk37w5pc2fwlpbmdt4vi2ui5hc5vwbl4qdtcyqos75q@jpeg