Doper Maps

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I suspect that many of you aren’t keeping current by reading the existing thread on the Doper Maps. I would like this thread to be used for discussion or commenting on the maps. If you want your name added to the map I ask that you continue to add your names to the existing thread.

First of all, there are two maps. One for the United States and one for everybody else. We are a very international group, but the United States still dominates, if I hadn’t broken the US into a separate map I might as well have just covered it with smilies on the world map. Currently there are 100 locations marked on the US map and 30 on the world map.

Currently we have people listed for every continent except Antarctica. Among the states, New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho remain unrepresented.

These files are large. The .html files are 18K and 57K for the world and US respectively. Currently, the map image files are 491K and 567K respectively. But I should be able to decrease those to about 250K.

If anybody has any comments or criticisms I would really like to hear them, especially if you find that the maps do not work on your browser (I’ve already fixed some javascript errors that caused problems with some versions of Netscape). I’ve only tested the maps on IE5.5 and Netscape 4.04 and 4.74. If you have a problem, please include the browser name and version being used.

Most of the grunt work is done with this and I can now pay attention to minor improvements. If you don’t like the way your name is spelled, or the precise location of your smilie, let me know and I will try to accommodate (but I can’t promise you won’t have to change the spelling of your name to conform to my map).

Most of all, kudos to Democrotus for the fabulous idea. I’ve only been the grunt on this, it was all his idea.

2

I’m sorry, Demo, you will have to change the spelling of your name to conform to my post (and the map).

3

Just wanted to let you know that the you made for the javascript errors in Netscape took care of the problem I reported to you last night. Thanks. BTW, what was it? I couldn’t spot it and didn’t save a copy to compare.

And also a big thanks to Demo for the idea.

Jim

4

Well, it was a bitch to find.

Because it was working on IE, but not Netscape I assumed the problem had to be in the Netscape portion of the javascript. Spent an hour examining every comman and curly-brace. Couldn’t find it. Deleted that section and redid it from scratch. Didn’t fix it.

Fortunatley, at that point, serendipity (not Serendipity) looked kindly upon me. In one of my frustated viewings of the page I just happened to move the mouse of Stillwater, Oklahoma and the text popped up. Further examination found that Baltimore (d0), Boston (d1), and Stillwater (d2) all worked while no others did. This indicated the problem was actuallin the <DIV> definitions.

Finally found the problem: a missed </FONT> in d3.

Inserted those seven characters and all was solved. Apparently Explorer is smart enough to figure out what I meant and rendered the page correctly, whereas Netscape choked on it.

I’m not sure which is more annoying, Netscape being stupid or Explorer allowing me to make mistakes. There you go, more detail than anyone likely wanted.

5

obfus, thanks to you and Demo for doing this. When you get the chance, you can just group me with all the other Chicago-area dopers in other smiley icon - Palatine is just a suburb of Chicago, anyway.

6

Great Work!

Sorry to say this, but I’m actually in La Grande, Oregon, which is in the far north-eastern corner of the state, very far from all the other Dopers…Just about straight North of HometownBoy in The Dalles, pretty close to Idaho.

Again, great job, you guys! Thank You!

7

Can we volunteer other Dopers? Because I know at least ONE is in North Dakota…

8

Ack! Sorry about that Tie-Dye.

I know very well where La Grande is, I’ve been there several times. I also know very well where La Pine is, it is not too far from Bend.

Unfortunately, when I went to Mapquest to get an exact location for La Grande, I typed Le Grande, which is a suburb of Bend (as much as Bend can suburbs). When I saw the location my brain switched to La Pine, said “looks good,” and I placed it there. I’ll fix it tonight.

porcupine: I had placed Chicago a bit too south and so there was room for a separate smilie for Palatine. If you really want to conglomerate I will replace it with a single smilie, better placed. But it will still say “porcupine, Palatine, Illinois” unless you really want me to say Chicago. I am hoping to be able to list people as precisely as possible (check out Diane in Kansas or bibliophage in Maine). Up to you.

9

obfusciatrist, thanks for the explanation. I figured it was some small but hard to find mistake since the other map worked. I thought I was going to get to be a hero by telling you what was wrong instead of just reporting it.

Jim, almost a hero.

10

Dammit. I told you, spelling it Democrotus makes it look icky. Demo-crotu-s / s-]crotu-m. That’s just too similar and I don’t want my name associated with that… I don’t think… hmmm, lemme think… No. :smiley:
Anyway, as all us grunts know, the grunt work is all the work. Coming up with ideas is the easy part, implementing them is the hard part. Thanks again, obfus for putting this together so nicely.

11

obfusciatrist: I think I may have spotted a mistake. Sublight appears in Sydney, Oz & Japan. (and I don’t appear in Sydney :frowning: )

Apologies in advance if this isn’t a mistake

12

One suggestion, you REALLY should have those images in .gif format. It will really help out the filesize and resolution of the US map. I assume you have the images in a hi-res version .psp or .psd or something.

Regarding the Chicago area (and others) artistically I kinda like the idea of having as many smileys indicating different cities/regions as possible. Ergo, the Chicago area should have different smiles for Palatine, Joliet, Naperville, and Chicago Proper. This theory applies to the other metro areas too, and it looks like you did that in SF pretty well already. A suggestion to keep the work to a reasonable amount, and still show a higher smiley density for areas with alot of dopers would be (for example) in Chicago to have a smiley in place for “Chicago”, “Northern Suburbs”, “Northwestern Suburbs”, “Western Suburbs”, “Southwestern Suburbs”, and “Southern Suburbs”. This distinction is how the locals popularly divide themselves up. From a map its easiest to decide which region a suburb belongs to in chicago by its proximity to the nearest expressway. If its closest to I-55 its a SW Burb, I-57 South, I-88 Western, I-90 NW, I-94 North. Your discretion is welcome however and you may choose to just go with North, West and South to save space and work, however the first method is probably more accurate. Then you could of course use the default method in the javascript dropdowns of “screenname, city, state” under each regional heading.

For areas like Chicago, New York and San Fran where there seems to be a large concentration of dopers (even if many haven’t yet submitted themselves to the thread yet) it might be best served to plan this type of regional seperation out ahead of time.

my $.02

13

Well, Springfield, Illinois is actually about 30-40 miles North-Northeast of where you’ve got us. But I’m still pretty impressed!

14

Hi, just wanted to say I like the map. You have me right on. But there might be a slight misunderstanding with Rachelle. Her smiley is pictured as being above(north?)of mine(I’m in Topeka Kansas) Her post on the other thread didn’t name her exact location, just said it was some amount of miles WEST of Baker. She didn’t mean a TOWN named Baker, I think she meant me, the poster. She is in Manhattan, Kansas.

15

  1. Both maps are current through Crafter_Man in the other thread. If you are not listed on either map but should be, let me know.

  2. Ell has been added to Sydney.

  3. Sublight has been removed from Sydney.

  4. Democoscrotus’ name has been correctly spelled.

  5. Chicago is currently one smiley.

  6. Le Grande, Oregon, is back where it belongs. The city council can finally relax.

  7. Springfield has been moved approximately one smiley NNE, the destruction of many cornfields in the process was a terror to behold.

  8. Rachelle is now 35 miles west of Baker the person rather than 35 miles west of Baker the town. It is kind of amusing that there was a Baker town near Topeka as well.

  9. The USA map has been converted to .gif, bringing the file size down to well below 200k; a similar conversion of the world map, however, boosted the size up over 400k, so it remains .jpg.

  10. I brought the world map down to 230k, but it required boosting the compression to 70. Resulting is reasonably degraded image. Any further advise. Note that I am working with Paint Shop Pro 7.02.

  11. We are now up to 140 individual smileys combined on the two maps.

  12. Omniscient, I was only able to cram so many smileys into the Bay Area because I am very familiar with it and have a very prominent land feature to work with (the Bay). Plus, the Bay Area stretches to almost 100 miles long so I have much more room than I do with Chicago and its suburbs. However, if someone wants to give me image coordinates for appropriate suburb smileys I will note it for eventual use if someone claims that area. I do not want to add smileys until they are actually used. Note that the smiley has a diameter of 15 pixels.

16

ob, for reference the suburbs of Chicago radiate across an area around the loop (center of the city itself) in a semicircle with a radius of about 50 miles. Quite comparable to SF I’d say.

I agree that you shouldn’t add smileys until they are required, and I wasn’t trying to suggest that you should, more that i thought it would be best to place the smileys that are used in places and amounts which would leave space to gorw when the other regions are filled.

I am not sure what your ratio of pixels to miles approximates out to, but just from my visual inspection I think you’d be able to put the 5 smileys I suggested within the radius i proposed. And those smileys would pretty accurately cover the regions as far as area too.

Maybe I’m being too analytical about it, but I’m just putting the same knowledge of the area into the suggestion as you did for SF.

FYI, In Chicago you’d currently only have one smiley for Chicago, and one in the place of the old one for Palatine and Prospect Heights in the NW, approximately adjacent to the chicago smiley at a 45 degree angle NW. Pretty straight forward.

17

Hmm, I’m using IE5.5 and when I move over a smiley, the box pops up, but if I keep moving within the circle, the box will blink on and off. Very strange. No big deal, the box stays if I don’t move the mouse.

Oh yeah, and you can make a “Long Island” group and put me in it. To the right of NYC and below Connecticut, right in the middle of the island.

18

My name is spelled AerialCartwheels, not Arial…no biggie, you just forgot the “e”. :slight_smile:

I think the map looks cool. Good work guys! :slight_smile:

19

Let me just say that, even though I’m only 50 miles or so NW of Washington, I’m really pleased that Hillsboro (pop 100) has its own smiley.

Kudos to the man!

20

The map is cool! But having my lone smilie being surrounded by nothing convinces me even more yhat I live in a wasteland. I suddenly feel very lonely.

I need my teddy bear.

Great job!