8/12/2005 11:02:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||

I love maps- they're probably the best thing since those cut-away drawings of Thunderbirds and castles from the magazines I had as a child. There was a time, when every night for about a year, I looked through an Atlas that my grandmother bought my sister and I, in a set with an encyclopedia, dictionary and thesaurus. Excuse me if I sound arrogant, but I think is perhaps why I have such the fantastic geographic knowledge I have today. I can name most countries using an outline map, apart from the tiny islands in the Pacific, which are probably less important to global affairs than the books and websites that publish information about them.

But anyway, I've recently discovered the Google Maps API- by which I mean, I've known they've existed since it launched (thanks, /.), but I'd never bothered finding out how to use them. What is all this? Google are now letting anyone use their fantastic maps system- long story short, it involves a lot of boring programming things. It's so good, I have managed to create a map of all the Wilkinson stores in the UK! Coincidentally, I do leave my house occasionally. Have a click around, it's bitchin' stuff.

This API has reinvigorated my interest in cartography, maps and stuff- I'm now dying to find some dynamic data that uses longitude and latitude, which I can then plot on a somewhat needless map. As you might have guessed - there is very little on the internet that hasn't been plotted on a map. I lacked inspiration.

But then I had an idea. By which I mean, I remembered an idea I had a few months previously, but had never made the effort to do anything about.

In Leicester this morning with Heather, I bought, along with a child-hand-mould-plaster-of-Paris kit (more on that in a future blog update), two road atlases from The Works, for £1.99 each!

What am I going to do with these?! I'm going to cut, glue and sellotape together the pages and fabricate a massive map of the United Kingdom's road network! Coincidentally, I do leave my house occasionally. So far, I've only done the very tip of Cornwall, and I'll hopefully be doing more in the coming weeks.

Why? I'm hoping to emulate Geoff the iPod man, Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace, albeit in a very craptacular way. C'mon publishers, give me a book deal or something! I love writing about myself! 30,000 no problem!

I'll keep you posted on how the big map goes.

|||112388525471179398|||Big Maps