GPS Wallet

Compu-Toon by Charles Boyce.  I've got a few more of these Compu-Toons in the hopper ready for posting, and I'll get to them eventually.  But most of them seem to be of this almost-funny variety.

I think that I did see mention somewhere that sales figures for commercial-grade GPS devices were waning because so many smart phones now have this capability.

Out of the frying pan

Cast iron skillets in the shape of each of the 48 contiguous United States from Felion Studios.  Who knows why.

Flowing ocean

A couple weeks ago we had the post about the gorgeous visualization of wind speeds around the country. Today we'll do another one that looks somewhat similar to that: A visualization of ocean currents around the planet. This one is from NASA and it's utterly mesmerizing.

Aerial survey

I don't read Jack Elrod's Mark Trail.  I just check The Comics Curmudgeon site  every so often and find it the object of ridicule there quite regularly.  As we learned last time, the "Tom" in question is a park ranger who found the clandestine pot growers by identifying plants on aerial photos... and was then kidnapped by them. 

Teh Gladiators

Teh Gladiators, a World of Warcraft -based webcomic by two Serbian guys, Uros Jojic and Borislav Grabovic. I can't begin to try to explain the plotlines these examples are from. Suffice it to say they're following around a map that's leading them through some adventures.

Poop joke

BC by Johnny Hart arguably doing a poop joke.

South America wrong again

So recently there was the dust-up about the Kony 2012 video calling attention to the atrocities committed by the Lord's Resistance Army... in a way that may not have been very well executed (sorry, bad choice of words there). The video nevertheless captured the interest of many millions of citizens of the internet, some of whom may have freshly awakened to a new sense of global geographic awareness.... or maybe not quite, as the image below extracted from Facebook suggests. But I gotta ask, why is there such a South American identity crisis? We've seen it numerous times before:

• South America wrong two-fer
• Wrong America
• South America as Europe
• South America as Darfur/Sudan
• At least Grover loves her.

Questionable story arc two-fer

Since we did Thursday's animation on Tuesday we'll do the Tuesday two-fer today.  I introduced Questionable Content by J. Jacques. a few months back near the beginning of a space-faring story arc that seems to have now come to a close.  The entire rendering was punctuated by increasingly sophisticated spectacular images of the Earth out the space station windows.  I'll post the links to the entire story arcs below, but I just want to take a moment to post a few of the more wonderful examples:

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2110: Orbit

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2111: The Space Station

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2116: Just a little glimpse

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2119: Barely visible through a window

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2123: A couple rim shots

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2128: Here we go, getting better.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2129: More earthviews

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2130: Peeking rims

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2131: Barely worth mentioning

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2136: Getting the party started

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2137: Not much here

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2138: Indian Ocean backdrop

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2139: The Full Africa!

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2140: More Africa

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2141: It does kinda look like he's showing a little rotation

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2142: Pacific coast

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2151: Africa still or again? Gotta be again

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2155: Romantic view

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2157: More romance

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2158: High above the rim

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2159: Money shot!

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2160: Fall through

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2162: Morning after

Big oil world

Political cartoon about gas prices from editorial cartoonist Ken Catalino.  Note the globe beside the desk, which seems to be the requisite prop for global-dominating corporatists... and teachers... which is an odd juxtapositions, yes?

HOORAY FOR TAXES!!! (sheesh)

Here is a clip from a WWII-era Disney cartoon starring Donald Duck enthusiastically extolling the patriotic exaltation of paying taxes. The entire video is thoroughly over-the-top dripping with jingo-ist patriotism. It's the perfect thing for tax day, yes?

Time paradox

We've done The Doghouse Diaries (by William Samari, Ray Yamartino, and Rafaan Anvari) before.  This one presents a "Time paradox". And the mouseover at the original comic says: "Congratulations on unlocking this mouseover.  It doubles as your prize"

Delicious map cupcakes

For a small GIS WhereCamp conference in San Francisco the good people at Cups and Cakes Bakery made these completely edible and thoroughly delightful maptile cupcakes of San Francisco.  Some of the collaborators even rectified it to check accuracy. This... THIS... is why map geeks are the best geeks.

Blowing beauty

Click on this! It's simply gorgeous:

This is an amazing project by from Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viegas. Their latest piece (in this link) shows animated live wind pattern (click and see!), based on data from the National Digital Forecast Database. It's beautiful to look at.  By the way, It's also zoom-able so that one can see wind speed details in any region or locality.

MARIJUANA!

Jack Elrod's Mark Trail discovers marijuana in the forest! ...using an aerial photograph.... which seems like an egregious stretch.  I mean, sure, there are certainly people who grow hidden fields of pot in forests and sometimes on federal or state lands. And there are certainly ways to observe such crops via aerial reconnaissance.  However the dialog is so ridiculous here and the old-school technique with a magnifying glass.  Well, it's Mark Trail.  What's one to expect?  Actually if I were him I'd be a lot more worried about the gigantic bird that's about to attack the buildings he's in.

Animaniacs two-fer

I'm going to do an animated two-fer today because this is just too good to pass up. Here is Rob Paulsen singing a song. Y'all know Mr. Paulsen right? Well a lot of you will certainly recognize his voice when he starts singing (from memory) this wonderful and technically complex song which should bring back memories from the early '90's as it did for me:

Yes, that's right, Mr. Paulsen is the voice of Yakko Warner from the ground-breaking cartoon Animaniacs. Let's watch Paulsen as Yakko do it, complete with animated world map:

And finally, while we're at it, here's Yakko's brother Wakko (voiced by Jess Harnell) performing a slightly-less-rapid-fire song about the nation's capitals:

Happy Easter, world

I hope that you enjoyed a Happy Easter.

Aroundeth the World

The lyrics of "Around the World" by Daft Punk... as imagined in the style of Elizabethan English.

Feline fate

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney. I haven't posted one of these in a while, but I like the strip.  The current plotline is just heating up... but this is one of those strips where the Sunday version almost never has anything to do with the weekday plotline.

It is extremely easy to imagine any cat doing this fully consciously and without any care for the victims.  Why is that about cats?  I do like them.  

Socks GPS

Here's Over the Hedge by Michael Fry & T. Lewis gets looking for a sock with GPS.

Redistricting.... again

There aren't that many states still fighting out the redistricting battle. Texas, of course, is still in the thick of it... and the result of that epic fight are still playing a role in this cycle election circus. So here's a few more redistricting-themed cartoons:

Nick Anderson does a typical approach for Texas

It doesn't look like Chan Lowe has a particular state in mind, just the process in general.

Matt Davies has another take on the process.

And then Calvin Grondahl has his version for Utah.

Google Fool

Let's call this as being in the spirit of yesterday's April Fools and switch the animation on Thursday to today's posting.  Because this year's annual Google April Fool's prank is map-related.  It's a new tool that allows for 8-bit mapping.  The press-release video is unsettlingly funny:



I still like Google's toilet prank the best... because I'm 12.