iSad

I've been pretty slow to respond to the death of Steve Jobs today. It's taken me a while to come to terms with. After all, this man changed my life. Who else can I say that about? It's worth repeating. This guy changed my life. Here's why.

I came to the scary world of digital cartography very late - 1991. And I could have so easily missed the boat. Thanks to Malcolm Swanston and Swanston Publishing (early pioneers of DTP Cartography in the UK) I retrained. As I recall I first worked on an Apple Macintosh IIci, with a 40 megabyte hard drive. 

It sold for $6000. But it was a great machine. I could preview my work in colour! We were running Adobe Illustrator 3 and Freehand 3 on OS version 6, and later version 7. I did try using CorelDraw on Windows at that time, but the user experience was just not the same. I soon fell in love.

1989-1991 is sometimes called the first golden age for Apple, but it all went downhill from there. Innovative ideas, but performance was poor and under Gil Amelio's tenure things got worse. I bought a Performa for home use in the early 90's, and frankly it wasn't very good. 

 I ended up selling it to a mate. Apple's first PDA, the Newton, came out about the same time. Another financial failure - but it paved the way for the Palm, the iPhone and the iPad. The company were on it's knees by now. But there was still a spark of hope.

 

In 1997 Steve Jobs rejoined Apple. Let's call this day zero.
Remember him? He's the bloke who built the first Apple in his garage, later attached a mouse to it and re-invented the GUI. My facts may be wrong here - but hey, I'm an Evangelist, and that's what Evangelist's do!

 

In 1998 Apple launched the iMac. Holy Moly! Not a grey box, but curvy and cuddly. I bought a Bondi Blue RevB version and adored it. Within a year under Job's tenure Apple started to build the iLife suite. iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband soon became must-have consumer software. On the professional side, Final Cut Pro and Logic were added.

Things had been turned around and Apple are back in profit again, but what happens next is just, I dunno, amazing.

March 2001 saw Mac OS X released - a completely new architecture, and the transition was really smooth for me. How did they do that?
May 2001 - the first Apple store opens. Now there are 350.
November 2001 - 1st iPod goes on sale. OMG.
April 2003 - iTunes launched.
January 2006 - shift to Intel Macs.
January 2007 - iPhone launched. Another OMG.
July 2008 - App Store launched.
January 2010 - iPad launched. Yep, another one.

What a 10 years that was! The iPod is not yet 10 years old, and Jobs has changed the music industry forever. With the iPad publishing is going the same way. The mobile phone market has had to up it's game to match the iPhone.

I don't bow down to the altar of all things Apple - I have no iPhone or iPad, and my iPod is a £40 shuffle. But I adore my Mac. It's not my adversary. I treat it well and it returns the favour in being reliable, stable and dependable. It enables me to make a living, in a way that is an enjoyable interaction with technology. If only for that reason, thank you Steve Jobs.

Competition time!

Just post the answer to this question on my Twitter page, @DVDMaps

Name one overseas country where I have lived and worked. Simples!

The prize is the best Cartography available in Charlbury, West Oxfordshire. (Well, the best north of Market Street. Apparently I'm not the only Cartographer in the Village)

Good luck.

David

Free Cartography - are you REALLY serious?

Despite a decidedly lukewarm response to my competition, I will honour my commitment, to mark 2 years of DVDMaps.

So here is how it works. As I have clients all over the world I will launch the competition at 22.00 GMT tomorrow. That should ensure you can enter if you are in the UK, USA, SA, India, or in NZ. If you are in Sydney or Melbourne, I'm sorry, you will just have to get up early.

So the prize is a whole days work, free of charge, on a project of your choosing. That's for an existing client. For a new client, the prize is half a days work. There are two prizes. What constitutes a whole day's work is negotiable!

I will post a question on Twitter and on this Blog tomorrow at 22.00 GMT, so simply be the first to answer correctly to win. The answer to the question will be on my Website. No other T&C's - you will just have to trust me!

To enter you will need to follow me on Twitter and post your answer there.

Good luck!

David

Free Cartography - are you serious?

DVDMaps will be two years old very soon, and I have devised a competition to mark the day. Fabulous prizes! Free Cartography! Onerous T@C's!
To be in in with a chance of winning, you need to like my DVDMaps Facebook group, or follow this Blog or follow @DVDMaps on Twitter.
Competition details will be announced on 31st September.
So what are you waiting for?

Money well spent

I have just splashed some cash and bought the Times Concise Atlas to use as a reference. I contributed to this some years ago, but I expect very little of my work remains. Probably just as well! 

But what a wonderful product. I can guarantee this will never be further than an arm's length away.

It has already been used to check the location of an obscure National Park in Argentina.

Money well spent. Maybe one day I'll get a new Times Comprehensive. But until then...

Welcome South Sudan

Revolutions, Civil Wars, Internecine fighting, Coups and the Arab Spring.

It's all pretty messy out there, and I can't help but feel it always will be. As a Cartographer I sometimes suggest that these are welcome developments, generating work to revise all of our maps. But it's a double-edged sword, as the cost to human life is often so high.

Add to that the potential for conflict caused by Global Warming, and you start to wonder what the future may hold.

So in these uncertain times lets wish the world's newest country - South Sudan - a stable and fruitful future.

Here's a new World Map for all you lazy Cartographers out there.

Eccentric Maps

Sometimes you come across maps in the most unexpected places. So let's start with a centrepiece of the Portland Rose festival, which closes tomorrow, 19 June 2011. Within the Pioneer Courthouse Square is a map of the world, set out in flowers. Each country of the world is represented using a particular flower. For instance, purple flowers for the United States of America, red for Mexico, and green for Japan. Very nice - so far. But what's this!

Japan is represented in green, bamboo-like plants. But to the south Taiwan has the same green plants. And to the North of Japan Sakhalin Island is green too. I expect the Russian and Chinese delegates to the Portland Rose Festival may have some reservations about the display. The flowers were corrected after a while, but apparently Sinai still belongs to Jordan. 

This started me thinking - someone should consider a thesis investigating why horticulturalists have a world view stuck in 1945. Thanks to Sarah Morrigan for the details.

Then I spotted an Estate Agents' car in Woodstock the other day. I always ensure that I have a map in the car before I go on a journey. But here is a better idea - have a map ON the car! Now if I forget my map, I'm always covered. The new Mini was completely covered with local maps, from the Ordnance Survey as far as I could tell. Despite inspecting the car from bumper to bumper, I failed to spot a copyright note.

And one more. Not so unexpected, this one. As a freebie to a local music festival I produce the site map for the programme. I was pleased to see it blown up to a 2 meter high poster at the site today, and I think it works quite well. Not entirely happy with it - I may need to refine it for Riverside 2012. 

I entered the site today and happened across an acquaintance of mine - a speculative property developer (you can choose your family...)

He was lost, and asked me where the bar was. On reflection, many hours later, I suspect he was teasing me. Or maybe I overestimate his intelligence...