That Bloke In The Big Smoke

Brilliant: London's Central Line turned into a line graph of house prices. Taken from http://t.co/luGS0bahMN pic.twitter.com/xeOcuqQr76

— Andrew Losowsky (@losowsky) November 12, 2014

A new collection of data maps of London reveals a city heaving with information.

This is a map of all the London drinking and dance establishments that I've graced my presence with since moving here in the summer of 2007 (updated to yesterday's visit to The Gazebo in Kingston, bottom-left). 200+ places and counting!

You can see the map in detail here. The last time I posted a part of this map (in February 2010), I had visited just over 130+ establishments. Despite expanding my pint footprint at the rate of about 40 places a year, there are obvious gaps to fill.

UPDATE: Since making the original post, I've updated the pic above to include a club in Notting Hill, but annoyingly it seems to have reached some sort of limit on Google Maps, because it's created a second page of pins. This means not all the pins are on a single page any more. I'm tempted to fire off an email to the good people in Mountain View and demand an answer! Also, since adding the Notting Hill Arts Club I've also added another pub, one which I'd forgotten about in Sarf London's Forest Hill neighbourhood. With the disparity between establishments graced on either side of the river, I could do with remembering every one south of the Thames! Just another 4000+ pubs, bars and clubs to go in the rest of London. Time to up the ante!

KEY:
Green - Pubs & Bars
Light Blue - Pubs & Bars whose names I can't remember!
Purple - Pub where I used to go quizzing
Yellow - Ancient Pubs (usually 18th-c or older)
Red - Restaurant Pubs
Dark Blue - Clubs (includes Afterhour institutions like MoS, Egg etc)

WORLD:
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6. Compared to a lootfest like London or Beijing, Delhi is just an also-ran [23 Sep]
7. Let's put a stop to this cliche – "right now" | Mind Your Language column [22 Sep]

UK:
1. Thieves on the line: copper raids on railways hit record levels [28 Sep]
2. Barclays launches prisoner bank accounts scheme [28 Sep]
3. UK transport mapped: Every bus stop, train station, ferry port & taxi rank in Britain. The ultimate transport data. [27 Sep]
4. Human rights lawyers condemn English tests for spouses coming to UK [27 Sep]
5. Legal aid: Who qualifies and how much help can you get? [25 Sep]
6. Reviewed – the CycleStreets navigation iPhone app [24 Sep]
7. 1.5% of Britons say they are gay or bisexual, ONS survey finds [23 Sep]

Cartography 2.0: A Map With A Difference (Beeb)

It is possible once again (after a gap of two years?) to zoom into all areas of Old Muscat on the Satellite mode of Google Maps!

No cartographical conspiracy here

"There is no surer way for The Economist’s Asia section to cause offence than to publish a map. Angered most often, to judge by its actions, is the government of India. Our maps that include the disputed territory of Kashmir show it carved up into Indian, Pakistani and Chinese areas of control. Every time we print one, every single issue of the magazine distributed in India is defaced with an official stamp. Some readers in India seem to suspect us of malice: perhaps we publish such maps purely to irk the authorities and add to the overtime earnings of the hard-pressed stampers. Farther east in Asia, a Japanese diplomat recently went so far as to accuse The Economist of condoning the use of force in international affairs. The truth is more benign..." -The Economist

Transport for London's (TfL) Online Journey Planner just became even better. This has come as a pleasant surprise because there were some serious shortcomings with the previous system. In the past, the Journey Planner used to provide maps for only the first and last legs of a journey, which was fine for a two-legged sojourn; but for longer expeditions, it left everything in between to your cartographic imagination and common-sense. Given that the latter skill is untapped by a great many people, one can see the kind of problems this may have created. Rest assured, Londoners can no longer blame TfL for any of their directional blunders. Indeed, not only does TfL provide maps for EVERY leg of a journey now, but it also offers a choice of HTML or PDF format; unlike the old system that forced your browser to collapse under the weight of those pesky Adobe-files. It even offers a mobile texting service which costs 25p (50 cents), and is a fantastic way to save Londoners the trouble of hunting down those writing utensils. All said and done, there are still some minor issues. For example, the mobile text sent by Tfl, kindly informs us that there are 2 pages of instructions, but I've requested for two separate directions, and received only the first page for each one. I'm sure the good men at the Tfl will quickly realize their folly and smoothen things out. In the meanwhile, Londoners can thank their lucky stars that some governmental agency still puts the customer first. Of course, that is until we're charged for even using their bloody website. Till then, I say make hay while you can!

Are Great Britain, the UK and England interchangeable? No! The diagram belows explains why, or you can read more on Wikipedia.



So in other words: the British Isles is a geographical term, the United Kingdom is a political term, Great Britain is a geographical term and England is a political term. The British Islands however, is a political term consisting of the UK, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man (but not the Irish Republic). And even though in English, isle and island mean the same thing, within the British Isles you have the Isle of Man, the island of Ireland, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Dogs, the Isle of Sheppey and the Channel Islands. But you can call Shetland either the Shetland Isles or Shetland Islands. And for the record, the Isle of Dogs is not an isle, it's a peninsula in London. Get it now? :)

Yeh, so my day began @ around 12:20am, real early this morning - while most of you Montrealers were asleep infact. Long story short, random livejournal browsing landed me up @ the doorstep of this gurl, Elisabeth who used to study in my school, the ABA in Oman way back in 1989 till like 1991. So we got started sending messages back and forth on her page until I decided to unlazify myself and see if she had an MsN ID or something. As it turned out downloading AIM last night came in handy and after a coupla hours of catching up on the 'good ole days' I went to bed around 5:30am. (Liz btw, lives/studies in Texas).

( Click to read about the Rest of my Day... )

Cluster Map
Also, some of you might recognize this next thing from a while ago. I think I put it on my journal within a week or two of signing up but of course I only had one other friend on my list then. So this time I expect every one of you to add yourself to my Cluster Map ... or else, you'll regret not doing so. Trust me. I got contacts in high up places. Yeh, so please be nice and just add yourself. Thanks!!

I'm trying to get all my Livejournal friends' locations plotted on a map - please add your location starting with this form. Username: (Then get your friends to!)

Take Care Amigos.
Peace, from da Westside!