It was just a matter of time.  ArcMap and CityEngine were used to build a Star Wars Galaxy interactive map.  Check it out.

Back in 1887, Fred Eaton, the City Surveyor, drew up plans for a proposed sewer system for the City of Los Angeles.  He estimated a cost of $1,000,000 to construct the proposed system.  A report from consulting engineer Rudolph Hering supported Eaton’s work and suggested spreading fields for the system.

I like how everything flows to one location, “Outfall Sewer”, at the lower left corner of the map.  I wonder if some of that infrastructure is still there today?  Check it out on the Huntington Digital Library site.

For you high-res junkies, here you go!

If you were a bicycling enthusiast back in 1896, you probably had this map on hand as you toured California.  The map was surrounded by advertisements to make sure you had the latest bicycling gear.  But more importantly the map outlined bike paths in red with labels which represented the road condition from good to very poor and the grade of the road from level to mountainous.

Check the map out on the Library of Congress site and download the high resolution image to see all the glorious detail!

Found this interesting startup which claims to have invented the “simplest way to communicate a location”.  The startup, what3words, divides the world up into 57 trillion 3×3 meter squares and then assigns each with three words that makes them unique.  With that, you now have a unique address for any location on the globe … even in the middle of nowhere!

From a human standpoint this makes sense.  We can remember three words for an address fairly easily, especially in a remote location that may not have an established address system.  However, gridding the world is not new.  We have many world grid systems, like MGRS that goes down to 1 meter squares.

Will what3words catch on?  Who knows.  Maybe if Amazon starts using it for deliveries by drone!  Start telling your friends to meet you at “humans.flash.crab” after work!

You are working on a map and know the ground distance and map scale but need to figure out what size your paper map will be.  Try Scale Buddy.  Depending on the parameters you know, you can calculate map dimensions, ground distance, scale, and unit conversions.

Back in the 1970’s there was a US Forest Service Engineer who had a sense of humor and created a Cocktail Construction Chart.  Years later this chart actually made it into the National Archives.  Read the back story about who created it and how it made it into the National Archives.  Click below to view the chart.

Go to Google Maps, zoom to a location, and you will see the Pac-Man icon displayed in the lower left.  Click on it to play Pac-Man using the streets!

Check out this map showing the autocomplete predictions of a “cost search” for each state’s capital.  The search phase was “how much does a * cost in …”.  Some of the autocomplete predictions were rather … well, you will see!