North Pole, South Pole

I scanned these engravings from an old World Book. They are currently residing in my "to frame" file. Notice the unexplored regions.

Hand Drawn Vintage Video Game Maps

I love these hand-drawn vintage video game maps by various unnamed artists. They remind me of Joan Miro, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu and Mark Lombardi. Great stuff - especially the Zork I map.

from Zelda Legends
from Zelda Legends
from Atari 2600 dot com (available for purchase!)

via Twigsta666

from Secret Fun Blog
Zork I from Secret Fun Blog
from a forum thread on hand-drawn video game maps at theshizz.org
from a forum thread on hand-drawn video game maps at theshizz.org

Widespread Idioms in Europe and Beyond: Bury the Hatchet

A Cross-linguistic and Cross-cultural Research Project found here.

Variations include, “to bury (down) the battle-axe”, “to bury the war-hatchet”, “to bury the tomahawk”

Wyoming; Powder River Basin Coal Mining

These two maps are portions of an antique mining map in my collection:




Yesterday we flew from Denver to Gilette, Wyoming to take aerial photos and on the way we passed numerous coal mines. In fact, after returning I read on wikipedia that the Powder River Basin "is the single largest source of coal mined in the United States, and contains one of the largest deposits of coal in the world." I took a couple of photos but had some camera difficulty so this is all that turned out of that particular area:

Since moving out west I've loved the appearance of geological survey mapping - with the large swatches of multi-color shapes representing different mineral deposits. You should also check out this beautiful map by the Wyoming State Geological Survey:

Bird Imprints on Glass

While browsing flickr yesterday I came upon the most unusual photo group; "Bird Imprints on Glass". Currently there are over 80 photos in the group, and all of them feature the impact of a bird (usually pigeons) against a glass window. I realize this is somewhat morbid, but there is a beauty to the patterns left by the last moment of each birds life - and the amount of detail that is captured in some of these impressions is astounding. Audubon estimates that "about 100 million birds die each year in collisions with buildings and skyscrapers in the U.S. and Canada alone."

by xinegrrl
by Karnaphuli
by Superburschi

In somewhat related news, check out windows live maps - where you should click on the "birds-eye" view. This point of view is a twist on the google maps and is actually much like what I see while doing aerial survey photography. It is so detailed that you can actually see people on the ground. You'll get that wide-eyed wonder you got the first time you saw aerial views on google maps.