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Maps
Roundup: Map Skills
Even if you served your time in geography class years (or decades!) ago, there's no reason to let your map skills get rusty. While I'm a big fan of the Ork Neighborhood Posters, there are plenty of other ways to get your map on around the house. Take for instance this cool Uganda Painting from Etsy seller noahwoods.
See Locations on a Map Without Leaving the Page
My new favorite online tool comes from Bookmaplet and it has revolutionized my life (OK, maybe not to that extreme, but it brings a smile to my face every time I use it!). I love to travel, and hate not knowing exactly where a place is when it's mentioned on a website. All you have to do is drag and drop Map That Address into your toolbar, and then whenever you're on a site that names a city name, an address, or even a country, just highlight it (like I did with Reading, PA, in the pic below) and click "Map That Address."
Kidlandia Brings Kids' Fantasy Worlds to Life
A land of spaghetti mountains, ice cream ponds and broccoli forests could move beyond your child's fantasies and right to their bedroom wall. Using Kidlandia, kids and their parents can create personalized maps featuring their names, as well as those of their family, friends, pets, and favorite foods. Once the people and items have been input into the system, the site automatically populates the map with towns, characters, mountain ranges and more.
DIY: Découpaged Walls
Découpaging your walls with pages from an old book, antique maps, or magazine covers can instantly transform a boring wall into a conversation piece. Your wallcovering will be one of a kind, a quality that even the most glam wallpaper can't give you. Some of you might think that tearing up a book for any project is sacrilegious.
Do You Decorate With Maps?
Growing up, I always enjoyed gazing at the map in my father's office and dreaming of all the places I'd one day visit. Like in this home, he also had a habit of pinpointing the locations he'd traveled to. While it certainly served as a logbook of sorts, it also had a beautiful visual effect — and also an ever-changing one.
DIY: Map Coasters
I've shown you a map lamp, so now's the time to match up that luminary with something for your tabletop: coasters, to be exact.
What You'll Need
- Coasters
- Map or other decorative paper
- File folder or cardboard for template
- Scissors
- Mod Podge
- Foam brush
DIY: Map Lamp
If you have an armchair explorer in your house (you know the type, they have a whole drawer in a cabinet stuffed with maps and atlases), then I have a perfect project for that special wanderer. Chez Larsson came up with this easy and fun lampshade project that will add some topography to your living room, without putting a dent in your pocketbook.
What You'll Need
- White lampshade
- Map
- Cutting surface, such as cutting board
- Spray adhesive
- Scissors or Exacto knife
Where I'm Clicking Now: Global Electoral College
The Economist polled the world to find out who would win the US election if the result depended on a global electoral college. The results so far: Obama would win 9,103 votes to McCain's 163. The poll gives every country a minimum of three votes, and then allocates additional votes based on the proportion of the world's 6.5 billion voting population located in each country.
Voting by the Book: Amazon Maps US's Political Reading List
If our electoral map were as red as Amazon's map of our political book-buying habits, things would be looking up for John McCain. Yet while Americans are buying up conservative books, our electoral map is getting bluer and bluer each day.
I initially chalked up this discrepancy to how unscientific Amazon's map is.
The Atlas of the Real World Maps Out Demographic Importance
The Telegraph recently featured The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live, which uses software to illustrate countries around the world, not by their land size, but by their demographic rank on a range of subjects. The size of each country represents its land mass in proportion to that of the others.
The atlas depicts a whole assortment of topics — from tourist destinations, alcohol consumption, wealth in the year one versus wealth in 1990.
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