Mapping the way of everything
by Hannah Oates [guest blogger]
Dear internet,
I have always hated maps.
Being a part of a fairly old-fashioned family who detest spending money on
things they ‘believe’ they don’t need, means that GPS never came into my
life. So we bring out the old ‘Mel-ways’ that has coffee stains and ripped
out pages, and attempt to find our destination (before we realised our phones
did this). So my basic experience of maps was never very exciting.
But yesterday, my world was turned. No longer do maps literally just map a path from A-B. They can map almost anything. The CartoDB work shop program, run by Steve Bennett with the help of Fiona and Lachlan, was mind-blowing.
Starting off with basic procedures, we learnt how to log in, what the buttons do, very simple things. And then scaled off into another realm of difficulty, spiraling into the map-making empire. We began with Ebola. Not the happiest topic, but gave an interesting element to our maps, and had a rather curious data set. And then we learnt how to work with the data sets; downloading data sets, uploading data sets, playing around with the data sets, changing parts of the data sets, then having to change it back. It seemed to all revolve around this data set. Which is an accurate assumption, because in fact, the entire program revolves around you have a proper data set.
And with this seemingly magically set of data, comes a map. Quite simply, a fully-fledged, legitimate (depending on the data set) and much more interesting than Mel-ways, map.
For example, here is a map that I made, that shows every public internet access in Victoria. How cool is that? Not to mention, amazingly useful.
And if you wanted to see the full extent of the power of this map, see the link. It shows the individual addresses of the places, whether it is free and phone contact details. http://cdb.io/1f9fCwH
Or how about every meteorite that has hit Australia? This map, created using CartoDB, by Simon Rodgers, acurately shows where meteorites have hit, from all over the world. (http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2013/feb/15/meteorite-fall-map)
https://simonrogers.cartodb.com/maps
No longer have maps taken a mundane toll on my life. I am definitely going to be using this site. And encourage everyone reading this to as well.
Visit data.gov.au for pre-made data sets.
