An autoportrait of a lived space

This is a map by which I’ve presented myself to my students on the first day in a course on tourism and mobility. I’ve given it in 2010 at the Università degli Studi di Bergamo. I wanted to make two points by showing it:

What a professor teaches is deeply rooted in who he is. You can only acquire […] Continue Reading…

Change the language to English/US on all slides and boxes in PowerPoint 2007 to 2016

Changing the language of a whole presentation in MS PowerPoint can be tedious. Especially when you translate your slides. You easily end up with a mix of languages on a number of slides. You notice, then, that it is not possible to select the main one: the language button (on the bottom bar) is simply not clickable if a […] Continue Reading…

Augmented Reality and the Places of Dreams

Behind the illusion

In Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Klaus Kinski with his eyes buried deep into another world stands on the shore of a river and says:

Everyday life is only an illusion behind which lies the reality of dreams

This is what the Jivaro Indians reportedly believe. But what Kinski’s character sees is his boat climbing over the hill to reach another […] Continue Reading…

ScapeToad – Anamorphosis or Metamorphosis of the Base Map ?

Most 2D-maps are used to represent topographic metrics: distances and areas measured on the map (multiplied by the map scale) give traveling distances and land surfaces. In some cases, this information is irrelevant or even misleading [see an example]. As a cartographer, you may wish to use map metrics to represent other data, such as human populations or amounts […] Continue Reading…

TinEye – Find an Image With an Image

The TinEye search engine allows you to find images on the web based on an image-file URL.You can also upload the image to search for.

Basically, the serch engine finds copies of your image scattered around the web.

The algorithm has an excellent tolerance for resolutions and color variations. Here an example with one of the images of this blog:

For the […] Continue Reading…

Representing a territory of mobile individuals by calculating total stay-times

Counting how many people reside at a given address might just not be enough to understand a territory of mobile individuals. Instead of counting people, I count their “stay-times”. In other words, I sum up the time spent by people in each place.

The map above compares two results:

ΣH, the hypothetical total stay-time which would have been registered if […] Continue Reading…

Swiss mobility in 2005

This map shows all movements made by Swiss citizens questioned on their traveling practices in the “Mikrozensus zum Verkehrsverhalten 2005”. 33’390 people have been asked. The map includes trips made for the purpose of work, study, leisure and household matters.

Material infrastructures, like roads and railways, are shown too, in pink and red, but they are not the main point […] Continue Reading…

Design you color scheme

Searching for an harmonious color scheme starting with a givent color? I recomend Petr Stanícek’s “Color scheme designer”.

Using a simple yet powerfull graphical interface, you can find complementary, triadic analogic and many other methods to any web color. Colors can be directly copied to your CSS.

I recommend combined use with ColorZilla Firefox plugin.