Anyhow, if you are into calendars that serve a different kind of purpose, you will love the Mapping Stereotypes Calendar Project by Alpha Design. As you can read from the title, however, this is definitely not for you if you are rather sensitive about political correctness and everything else remotely related to the concept. The Mapping Stereotypes Calender Project might very well be the furthest thing from political correctness.

The idea is to take the map of the world – or parts of it – and change the labels on the countries depending on the perception of a group of people. You can easily see how wrong this can go. Then again, you have to bear in mind that this was done with all silliness in mind. Just laugh it away and not take it too seriously.

With that warning being thrown out there, I shall let the maps speak for themselves.

Mapping Stereotypes Calendar: World According to the United States of America

World According to the United States of America

Mapping Stereotypes Calendar: Europe According to the United States of America

Europe According to the United States of America

Mapping Stereotypes Calendar: Europe According to Greece

Europe According to Greece

Mapping Stereotypes Calendar: Europe According to Germany

Europe According to Germany

Know what I mean now? If you only took a short time to go through the maps, take a look again with a more open mind this time. These maps – and a whole lot more – are part of the Mapping Stereotypes Calendar, which you can purchase at Alpha Designer.

Anyhow, I guess we can all agree that Google Maps is very practical; practical being the operative word. And we all know how being practical sometimes is no fun at all. So how about having a little bit of fun with Google Maps?

Enter Rorschmap.

The first thing that came to mind when I read that name was Rorschach. You know the set of tests developed by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach, right? It’s the psychological test wherein patients are shown inkblots and asked what they think of them, or what they see. The results of the test will depend on how the patient perceives the images (which are so funky that they really can be anything). Here’s a sample to make things more visual.

Rorschach Blot

Now take that concept and put it together with Google Maps. You see where I am going?

What do you get when you put Rorschach and Google Maps together? James Bridle has worked on something so that we can all have a little bit of fun during downtimes.

This is what Paris looks like on Rorschmap.

Paris Rorschmap

And this is New York.

New York Rorschmap

Of course, I had to see what my current city looks like all tripped up, and I have to admit that it looks pretty cool! Here’s Manila.

Manila Rorschmap

You have got to admit that playing around with Rorschmap is one of the better ways to waste time! Google Maps on LSD or some really trippy stuff. Do you have a better alternative?

The idea of a square and stationary Earth is totally outdated and we all know that this map is so far from being accurate. That fact makes the map a novelty, though, and being the only intact one left, it is rather valuable. The current owner is Don Homuth, a former North Dakota senator. He has had the map for a long time, not realizing that it is the only one of its kind. He only found out about this when he got in touch with the Library of Congress with the intent of donating the map.

Without further ado, here is the Map of the Square and Stationary Earth – although the Earth is still circular, only set in a square frame!

For a better view of the details, here is the map in full size. Don’t forget to take a close look at the images in the outermost parts of the map. Prof. Ferguson has placed his arguments against a spherical Earth in these locations, and as wrong as they may be, they are admirably drawn. And one can’t deny that the men clinging on to a speeding Earth for dear life is hilarious.

I wonder if reprints can be made? This would look good on the wall of my home library. (My imaginary one, that is.)

Via

Legend of Zelda fans: you can’t live without this absolutely killer map of Hyrule.

Nintendo’s bestselling fictional fantasy world has never looked better (or been taken more seriously) than it is in this ingenious, high-quality map. In honor of the game’s 25th anniversary, artist Bill Mudron spent who-knows-how-many hours pouring an insane amount of detail into this one giant image, which shows the versions of Hyrule depicted in the first Legend of Zelda game and The Adventure of Link. A close-up view of the map reveals that items, palaces, and dungeons are all marked on the map.

For $40 plus shipping, a 24″ x 36″ print of Mudron’s amazing Hyrule map (on “archival premium matte stock”) can be yours.

Now insurance maps may not be the first thing that come to mind if you are looking for some typography eye candy, but bearing in mind how they did things in the old days, this collection of photos is not at all surprising. When now things are mass produced and price is of prime consideration, it seems that these photos of pages of old insurance maps were meant to please the eye more than anything. Of course, I could be wrong, but there is something about these images that caught my attention.

The hand behind these images belongs to D.A. Sanborn, a surveyor from Somerville, Massachusetts. In 1866, he was commissioned by the Aetna Insurance Company to create insurance maps for Tennessee cities. This, along with his own work of creating an insurance map of Boston, was the beginning of what became a household name in the fire insurance industry. Insurance companies can be a pain in the butt, but this gallery just might help you forget that for a moment or two.

Those are only a few images in the collection. To view more, visit BiblioOdyssey’s comprehensive post on the topic.

The chances are that you are also into LEGO, and just in case you have this thing for maps as well, here is the perfect obra maestra for you to feast your eyes on this Monday morning: Europe rendered solely using LEGO bricks.

The name of the project is surprisingly ordinary and seemingly uninspired – Euromap, but the result of the hard work of five LEGO fans from Europe is anything but. The idea was born on the last evening of the LEGO Fan Weekend 2009 in Skaerbaek when fans Vanessa Graf, Tanja Kusserow-Kurth, Torsten Scheer, Bruno Kurth and Tobias Reichling put their heads together. A year later, they showed the world what they – together with the support of other LEGO fans – have come up with.

The nifty thing about this piece of work is that they went beyond merely mapping out the countries. More than that, the guys added special places of interest and created well known landmarks, also built of LEGO bricks, of course.

Recognize this one?  I think it is supposed to be leaning, but perhaps they couldn’t quite get away with that piece of detail given what they have to work with.  That’s the Leaning Tower of Pisa for you.

How about this?  The Atomium in Brussels, Belgium was built in for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair with the original idea of depicting an inverted Eiffel Tower.  Obviously, that didn’t quite work out, and they a different kind of symbol altogether.  Geekier, at the very least!

Now for the details of the masterpiece:

• Number of bricks: ca. 53.500 (only relief)
• Area: 480 studs x 480 studs (3,84 m x 3,84 m)
• Number of studs: 230.400 studs in the base area plus 453.026 studs additional
• Time: April till September 2010

Not the largest LEGO creation of all time, but definitely something worth taking a look at, don’t you think?  For more photos and other information, visit the Euromap web site.

More blueprints at Mark Bennet’s online gallery.

So I have something to admit. I love maps. Awesome maps are awesome.
When recently my attention was drawn to this gorgeous whole back world map tattoo I wondered what more cool maps people had inked on their body and the result was not bad at all.

The whole world, tattooed over both feet is a great concept and it looks ace. Too bad that Britain is barely visible and Eurasia and Africa need both feet. An ace tattoo though and personally I wouldn’t mind if my girl friend had a similar one.

In the same spirit this world map spread over both cheeks. It is not clear if this is a tattoo or a temporary airbrush, but no matter what it is this makes anyone want to explore the desert. Desert, dessert?

Hot pants FTW, right?

If you prefer more old-skool, traditional cartography, this original world map is for you. Again you’ll need both cheeks to cover the whole world.

I like the cool colours of this tattoo, although yellow never was my favourite colour for a tatt, and the map but it is not too clear what Western part of the world in this image. It looks like Great Britain distorted, with a splash of Scandinavia or something like that.

I guess it goes without doubt that this the awesomest Australia map tattoo is I have ever seen. It might be true that I have never seen another map of the Foster’s exporting nation but that is not relevant here, nor to be discussed. This map rocks and it’s the best Australia tattoo you’ll see all week long.

Yes, that’s what she said.

The Galapagos Archipel.

The Philippines, together with the surname of the owner, tattooed on a back.

The last ‘cheeks map’ in this list. Again it is hard to see if this is a real tattoo. My bet goes to a temporary airbrush. It does clearify that the Middle East is in shit though.

What I don’t really like about this map is that you would not get an ash cloud but instead you’ld end up with lots of tsunamis, depending on how much you love cheese and onion pie.

This is how our galaxy would look from a distance.

The last tattoo map is a tattoo for all geeks. Better than a map of the Middle Earth this is the map of Thrór, the King under the Mountain at Erebor.

Bonus map: subway map tattoo.

Campaign maps

• Chapter One – Shaun’s Pad
  Players start in the shed (found in shaun’s backyard), equiped with Left 4 Dead’s First Teir weapons, and they must work their way through shauns house, onto the street, and through the neighborhood to the backroom of the Corner shop.
• Chapter Two – Mum’s House
  Players start in the backroom of the cornershop, and must work their way to Shaun’s Mum’s House, where the map ends.
• Chapter Three – Lizz’s Flat
  Players start in Mum’s House, and must work their way to Lizz’s Flat (expect some trouble’s along the way) where they enter the backside of the building and take saftey inside Lizz’s Flat (Appartment).
• Chapter Four – To the Winchester
  Players start in Lizz’s Flat (Appartment) and must work their way outside, then through some tuff situations and onto the Winchester, where they find saftey in the backroom (or so they think…).
• Chapter Five – Survive the Winchester
  Players start in the backroom of the Winchester Pub, and must survive inside long enough for the power to come on (allowing them to use the lift found in the cellar), as well as wait long enough for the APC to arrive (Upon exiting the Lift).

Left4Winchester.

So it’s good news that GeoEye has started delivering some of the high-resolution color images from its latest satellite – GeoEye-1 – to Google. GeoEye-1 was launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on 6th September last year.

All the images were taken in the last two months so they’re bang up-to-date, and were shot from 423 miles up.

Highlights you can spot include Borneo, Indonesia; Cairo, Egypt; Cape Town, South Africa; Hong Kong; Mount Fuji, Japan and Xizang (Tibet), China.

This site shows you how to use a couple of inputs and XML files to get Google Maps on your own webpages. Not sure how legal this is, but it sure is fun to see people figure these things out.

Even cooler is that you can display custom HTML in the info popup window. Checkout the sample map to see it in action.