Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it • Hacker News Board

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#21

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:38 PM UTC

pharke wrote: post #13

amelius wrote: post #4

> I've spent 1,5 years working on this project So wouldn't it make more sense to just buy a huge display then? :)

Or a decent high res LED projector, would have cost less than the foam board he stuck the map to and he could have it done in a day.

Given his objectives specifically included high resolution enough to see details on the map up close, even a 4K projector would have fallen far short of this.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#22

Post by kaeluka » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:40 PM UTC

xt wrote: post #5

Very cool. But I was surprised to see he chose Mercator. See: https://xkcd.com/977/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#23

Post by anc84 » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:41 PM UTC

castell wrote: post #19

xt wrote: post #5

Very cool. But I was surprised to see he chose Mercator. See: https://xkcd.com/977/

I thought that too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection Which map projections would you choose? A difficult decision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections

Robinson or Winkel-tripel like National Geographic does.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#24

Post by skrause » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:41 PM UTC

dietrichepp wrote: post #7

This guy "loves world maps" but chose Mercator for the wall of his room? I guess there's no accounting for taste. There are hundreds of projections to choose from, why choose the one optimized for navigation by compass ?

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/977/

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#25

Post by junto » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:42 PM UTC

bedatadriven wrote: post #14

FWIW, a shameless plug for the company where I had my first programming job as a 17 year old: www.marketmaps.com. They will print and ship HUGE maps without a moment's hesitation. Choose a nice world map with a decent projection or send them a PDF and they'll overnight to you :-)

Oddly, they don't seem to have world maps advertised online. Everything else though!

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#26

Post by relet » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:43 PM UTC

Demiurge wrote: post #17

I wish someone would have recommended him to tweak one of many available OSM styles in TileMill. He also could have exported the layer in any tile shape, projection, and resolution using mapnik. You can even render to vector trivially, which comes in very handy for any printable pdfs. https://github.com/mapbox/osm-bright https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik/wiki/MapnikRenderers

The project was started 1,5 years ago at the time of writing the article.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#27

Post by ptaipale » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:46 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #4

> I've spent 1,5 years working on this project So wouldn't it make more sense to just buy a huge display then? :)

I would guess that the destination wasn't important, the journey was.

But I must agree with others that the author at least seems to give the appearance that he was rather ignorant with different map projections. But if you want an Africa-sized Greenland and a huge huge Kamchatka, why not.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#28

Post by daigoba66 » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:47 PM UTC

seqizz wrote: post #8

dietrichepp wrote: post #7

This guy "loves world maps" but chose Mercator for the wall of his room? I guess there's no accounting for taste. There are hundreds of projections to choose from, why choose the one optimized for navigation by compass ?

This was also my first reaction. "Nice Africa-sized Greenland you have there.."

That is rather striking: http://www.pratham.name/images/mercator.png

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#29

Post by haihaibye » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:48 PM UTC

Not sure of the resolution but the easiest solution would be wallpaper. Googling "world map wallpaper" returns quite a lot of results, eg:

http://st.houzz.com/simgs/31e1e6fa0fd87c96_4-7734/contempora...

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#30

Post by UnoriginalGuy » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:49 PM UTC

dietrichepp wrote: post #7

This guy "loves world maps" but chose Mercator for the wall of his room? I guess there's no accounting for taste. There are hundreds of projections to choose from, why choose the one optimized for navigation by compass ?

He only had a Mercator map source data. Unless you know how to switch Google Maps into Peters Projection mode?

I am surprised people who read the article are even asking this considering how much he struggled even to get the source image (and how he ultimately wound up manually stitching together print screens).