Road trip

It's summer and as our family road trip approaches this Adam@Home comic seems appropriate for that situation (although this particular joke may be in danger of extinction as GPS systems become more ubiquitous).
By the way, the style of the artwork for Adam@Home changed recently, but the byline didn't. Anybody know what's up with that?

Spotify

This is an illustration that was done to accompany a piece on Slate.com about a fantastic online music streaming service called Spotify that is available in the UK but not the US. I've not tried the site, but rather I found the illustration compelling. 

After reading the article I think I'm envious. The illustration is by Mark Alan Stamaty. 

Does California make our American butt look big?

Poor man's GPS

I'm thinking this is a combination of the "scale" - related mapping jokes and a standard GPS joke. Those wavy lines in the comic would indicate the globe is presenting some sort of non-visual information to the driver. But given the location on the globe that he's probably looking at where is he driving? It looks like he's staring at the middle of the Indian Ocean. The artist is Paul Tarnowski.

There's plenty of other examples of attaching a globe to a car as a navigation device:
Some do it in order to pre-empt marital disputes
Even the Romans did it

Gophers

I got a nice email from "Saint Holiday" a few weeks ago. He has a blog called "The Ancient of Weeks" that includes his webcomic "George & Georgie". I finally went through his webcomic archives and found one that is geography-based. Here it is:

Genius

Girl Genius by Phil & Kaja Foglio is simply spectacular. This webcominc is updated Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and it is a very fun read. It's got a steam-punk aesthetic (i.e. Gilded-age style with modern/futuristic technology). Well written and beautifully drawn, Girl Genius is in the vanguard of the webcomics phenomenon. May it have a long and prosperous run.
By the way, this is in the middle of a thoroughly rich and complex story arc that I've been following from its beginning, yet I still don't completely understand everything that's going on. Agatha Clay is the titular heroine and is trying to figure out the mysteries of this airborne, artificially intelligent, partially homicidal castle she appears to have inherited. This part of their website may be helpful, but it's best to take the time and read from the beginning.

Sun-up

Regular contributor to The New Yorker Pat Byrnes came up with this one in the September 2, 2002 edition of the magazine. His work is rather good. One of his funniest was one at a Japanese theater with one audience member asking the other “What part of Noh don’t you understand?”. Can't get much more New Yorker than that.

Phantom coordinates

This one is somewhat odd in the sense that I don't regularly read this strip, only when it shows up on the great "Comics Curmudgeon" site by Josh Fruhlinger.

I don't read The Phantom by Lee Falk because it's soap opera-y and the plot lines are excruciatingly slow and it was never in any of the newspapers I knew in my youth ('course I wouldn't have read it then either). The Comics Curmudgeon keeps track of such strips and posts about them when there's something worth posting about (mostly how soap opera-y, slow, and ridiculous such strips are). Here titular Phantom has rounded up a bad-guy and is being transported to some place to dispense with the guy. Yet the actual plot surrounds one of the crew women who tries and fails to look at The Phantom. Serious yawn. But since he mentions map coordinates, here it is. I seriously doubt I'll ever post The Phantom again. Butcha never know.

Your are mugged

Another in the "You are here" genre of map-related comics. Like I said, there's a LOT of comics on this theme.

That kind of reminds me of a new term in editorial cartooning "The Yahtzee". I learned about from Sheldon creator Dave Kellet who claims editorial cartoonist Daryl Cagle invented it. The term refers to the situation where 5 or more editorial cartoonists come up with the exact same joke on the same topic on the same day. For a recent example, Mr. Kellet brings up the use of Cronkite's tagline "And that's the way it is" on a rather large number of obituarial (is that a word) comics about him.

Pirate GPS

The wonderful strip Bizarro had this strip in 2007. Just lovely. By the way, Dan Piraro hides any number of the following things in his strips: a UFO, a rabbit, a piece of pie, a bird, a stick of dynamite, and sometimes a giant chihuahua. Surrealism is the best.

Map the internet

A few weeks ago I posted an XKCD toon that was a map of online communities. I'm not sure if this is an earlier version of that or a somewhat different subject.  This is a map of the Internet, not a map of Online Communities. Same or different? I'll settle on similar. This one is from 2006, as opposed to the other one from 2007. While the Online Communities map has more of a J.R.R. Tolkien-Middle-Earth look and feel to it, this one definitely hollers back to some of the character-story-based video games I remember playing way back in the early '90's. The "projection" described for the navigation of this map is pretty crazy. I like it.

Go to this actual webcomic, hover over the image, and there will be an additional message in the "title-text" . This one says:

For the IPv6 map just imagine the XP default desktop picture.

FoxTrot Satellite 6

Google Headquarters actually now sports a massive solar installation. And there are blogs/websites devoted to showing images from Google Earth where people have made specticles specifically for aerial viewing, if not directed at Google Earth itself. All the world has become a stage.

FoxTrot Satellite 5

Eileen Jacobson is the arch nemesis of the geeky Jason character.

FoxTrot Satellite 4

Did Mr. Amend know at the time he did the satellite imagery week that Dick Cheney had ordered the Vice President's address to be blurred out on Google Earth and other satellite imagery sites? Or was that too easy a target?

If anybody out there still harbors any illusions about Dick Cheney not being a profoundly troubling individual, take this recent quote from him about Gitmo detainees: "...if you don't have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them."

FoxTrot Satellite 3

Definitely echoes from the early 2000's. The second 3 Star Wars movies definitely got a bad rap. I personally liked them well enough. But I don't know that they ever could have lived up to the originals. Jar-Jar was jarring, sure. And the holes in the plots were large enough to walk an At-At through (Why in the world couldn't the Jedis have simply gone back and freed Anakin's mother from a life in slavery? Wouldn't that have dramitically mitigated Anakin's evil streak?). But then again the original 3 were campy and flawed in their own right. But tremendously ground-breaking and iconic. Star Wars will always be a landmark in cinematic and cultural history, for good or ill.

FoxTrot Satellite 2

Actually it is possible to see people on Google Earth, but that's rarely from the satellite imagery. Most cities in the US are covered by aerial photography that is higer resolution than the satellite imagery. And there are plenty of people who troll Google Earth looking for people on nude beaches. But there's never much to see. And Google itself tries to remove such images. Whtcha gonna do.

Foxtrot Satellite 1

The great comic Foxtrot by Bill Amend did a whole week on Google Earth back in 2005. Here it is in its entirety.

Boy Scout

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, by Zach Weiner, is a wickedly funny webcomic that is usually off color. Funny but vicious. I love it.

Buy a map

Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson is the best new comic strip I've seen in a while. This is from a story arc where the class is headed to a petting zoo, but they get stuck in terrible traffic and their teacher/driver, Miss Bliss (of Blisshaven Preschool) makes a pit stop at a convenience store to figure out a new strategy. Just lovely.

Online communities

XKCD by Randall Munroe again. This is a map of online communities drawn in 2007. And yet despite being so recent, it is visibly dated (No Twitter, MySpace is too big, Facebook too small, and I think there really should be Pirate Bay on here somewhere). This is somewhat indirectly suggested by a John Grigg on a different online group I frequent. Thanks John. 

Go to this actual webcomic, hover over the image, and there will be an additional message in the "title-text" . This one says:

I'm waiting for the day when, if you tell someone 'I'm from the internet', instead of laughing they just ask 'oh, what part?'

Try comparing one to this one.

Updated version here.

Draw a map

Mike Baldwin has this pointed picture of the office. Seems Dilbert-esque. Very good.

Blondie's ankle bracelet

I wasn't expecting to see Blondie here, but if Dagwood is going to get into the GPS scene, I'll post it. This was from just a few days ago.

Mixed nuts

Over the Hedge by Michael Fry and T. Lewis is a great strip. It was made into a movie that was largely forgetable save for the climatic scene where the squirrel has downed and envery drink and is suddenly able to move quickly enough to watch laser beams creep slowly by. That bit was brilliant. The rest of the movie wasn't as good as the weekly strip. I should think Sammy here would do better by using a full-fledged GIS software package next time.

Race

Because there is a mention of the word "globe" I've included this one. And also because Wondermark by David Malki is a pretty good webcomic. Victorian drawings composed to express new, funny ideas. It's fun.

Ogle Earth

This is like the post from the other day, a paroday of a mapping technology that was completely unknown just a few years ago, but is now ubiquitous.

Roz Chast is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.