The cool factor of the following maps just barely outweighs the revolting “look at how worldly I am” quotient. I wouldn’t have posted them except that the site which generates the graphics is so well done and my curiousity about GIS data is growing.

create your own visited states map

create your own visited country map

This place is a mess.

Ninety minutes later: Dumb in public, updates throughout…

If my interpretation of this map (bottom of page) is correct [it wasn't] and the markings are kilometers, [they're not] the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have landed about 130 km apart (80 miles) [on opposite sides of the planet].

The Rovers’ top driving speeds are reportedly 5 cm per second, which is about 0.18 km/h (0.11 mph) or 4.32 km/day (2.7 miles/day). If they were to drive towards one another, they could theoretically meet in a little more than two weeks [if they were 130 km apart, which they aren't]. Only 487,000,000 kilometers[pdf] (303,000,000 miles) later.

Actually, NASA’s stated mobility goal is only 40 meters/day, and the top speed after various hazard-avoidance and navigation procedures is only 1 cm/second.

Spirit’s Gusev Crater appears to be within 50 km (31 miles) [on the same side of Mars as] of Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in our Solar System. I haven’t read anything about seeing the volcano in any of the Spirit Panoramas, possibly because the volcano is actually quite flat, 20 times wider than it is tall [or, possibly because it's really quite far away].The hill I thought might have been Olympus Mons is simply labeled ‘Southwest Hill 215 Azimuth 7,5′, the wrong direction by my reading of the (unmarked) map. [at least I had a built-in excuse—sort of]

Of course if those aren’t kilometers, almost all of this is wrong [emphasis added].

Update: And they weren’t kilometers, and a lot of that was wrong. The map is actually a Mercator projection of Mars, all of Mars. The unmarked numbers are Martian latitude and longitude. I suppose claiming illiteracy about Martian geography isn’t the worst thing ever. Here are links to some Martian maps which could have prevented some embarrassing speculation:

• Up to date, labeled Mars Map
• Interactive Map of Mars
• Older Mars maps

As an aside, is geography really the right word? Being derived from the latin root geo, it seems a bit terrestrial. From a linguistic origin point of view, Astrogeology seems kind of linguistically muddled and contradictory. The word we should be using has evolved an altogether different meaning: Astrology.

The verbs founder and flounder are often confused. Founder comes from a Latin word meaning “bottom” (as in foundation) and originally referred to knocking enemies down; it is now also used to mean “to fail utterly, collapse.” Flounder means “to move clumsily, thrash about,” and hence “to proceed in confusion.” If John is foundering in Chemistry 1, he had better drop the course; if he is floundering, he may yet pull through.

I’ve been meaning to link to Paula Bernstein’s site for months. Her most recent article from the New York Observer is a fun read,”Committed Couple Seeks Fred and Ethel: Country House a Plus” (NYO). It’s a great little essay about the difficulty couples (especially with kids) have in finding other couples to hang out with.

This part had me laughing out loud, partly because anyone who’s been to a crowded playground with a toddler has seen this happen over and over:

“There was another couple we bonded with while pushing our children on the swings at the Union Square playground, but any hopes of forming a fabulous foursome were quashed when our daughter brained their son with a toy truck. (It’s amazing how quickly a little spilled blood can get in the way of a meaningful relationship.)”

There’s lots more on her site, The Hat Police is another spot-on slice of urban parenting.

click for larger image

Just awesome. Congratulations. (Photo: NASA)

The photo was taken from the Spirit rover on Mars looking back at it’s landing module. As someone who tries to build things that work without much assistance, this is incredible. It’s not a person’s foot, yet, but something people built is right now rolling around on Mars.

Below are a few styles I created to mimic those XML and RDF buttons found on a lot of sites. Since the icon is so simple, there’s not really any reason to use a GIF instead of CSS. The number of bytes transferred is basically the same, but you do save one server connection. (text-shadow only works in Safari so far as I know, it’s ignored everywhere else but nice if you have it.)

.xml_link, .rdf_link {<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;font-family: verdana, sans-serif;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;font-weight: bold;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;font-size: 11px;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;text-decoration: none;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;padding: 0 5px 1px 5px;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;color: white;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;border: 1px solid #555;<br />
}<br />

.xml_link:hover {border-color: #ee5500 #000 #000 #ee5500;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;text-shadow: 2px 2px 0px #7d3302;<br />
}<br />
.rdf_link:hover {border-color: #0000cc #000 #000 #0000cc;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;text-shadow: 2px 2px 0px #00005d;<br />
}<br />

XML	RDF

Those pretty much matched the most common graphics I found, but I thought they were a big chunky, and I couldn’t convince the height to scrunch down to 14px while remaining an inline element. So changed the font-size to ‘9px’ and the padding to ‘0 3px;’ which creates these smaller stylings:

XML RDF

Of course, I don’t have a feed yet, but a lot of other people do.

These are free to use. (as if…)

Update:There are a bunch of these floating around online, here are some others:

• CSS Buttons
• XML button via CSS
• Advert Buttons using CSS
• Creating CSS Buttons

Ah well, I only wasted about 10 minutes re-inventing the wheel this time. I’ve done far worse than that.