Brian T Jacobs

Brian T Jacobs

@btjak.es

Currently building Earthling Maps: https://www.earthlingmaps.com Graphics for cyberspace: https://btjak.es

242 followers676 following49 posts

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Big news 🌎🌍🌏: Earthling Maps v1 has launched! Read about it, give it a try, and reach out with any feedback. They're maps that aim to work well even when really small, with defaults to set the stage for great cartography regardless of map-making experience.

Earthling Maps@earthlingmaps.com

Earthling Maps is here! It's all about creating focused maps for articles, newsletters, social media, and presentations, to orient your audience. Learn more in the launch post: www.earthlingmaps.com/updates/intr...

Making progress

Earthling Maps@earthlingmaps.com

To realize our cartographic dreams, we developed a custom, home-grown map renderer and we're building map capability one step at a time. Coming soon, an Earth's worth of shaded relief with @mapterhorn.com data. Seen below in Kodiak, Alaska (vs. no relief)

Or: vastly improved real-time vector tile reprojection rendered to Canvas2D and SVG, with automatic selection of D3 projections across scales, using MapLibre styles but no MapLibre 🤓

Earthling Maps@earthlingmaps.com

Earthling Maps v2.1 is out, with major performance improvements to map and label rendering

Brian T Jacobs reposted

Area masking means only the labels within your area of interest are visible. It's one of over 40,000 areas on Earth currently available to highlight in Earthling Maps v2

Emerging from the mines to write about this month's UN map news, automatic map projections, and new ways to make maps

Earthling Maps@earthlingmaps.com

Earthling Maps v2 is live! There's a ton of user interface updates and long-awaited features ready to use. We're especially excited about clipping a part of the world to a geography. Dig into all that, and the importance of map projections, in our latest post: www.earthlingmaps.com/updates/un-v...

For the clipping, or area masking, there's shapes for all 7 continents, 271 countries/territories, 3,919 states/provinces, and 38,908 smaller regions like counties and districts. Ready to go in an updated UI. (OpenStreetMap data via @overturemaps.bsky.social)

Nothing like a leader line when you need it. Basemap improvements and region highlighting coming up next

Earthling Maps@earthlingmaps.com

A few nice updates today. No more free trial: Earthling Maps Basic is now simply free! We also added one-time, non-auto-renewing options for upgraded access. And some mapping upgrades: label connectors, aka leader lines, for less clutter. Read on: www.earthlingmaps.com/updates/free...

And for my more technical friends: in future posts I'll go deeper into its automatic projection system, meaning that even if users have never heard of projections they'll result in maps with less distortion. See you later Web Mercator!

Earthling Maps@earthlingmaps.com

Earthling Maps is here! It's all about creating focused maps for articles, newsletters, social media, and presentations, to orient your audience. Learn more in the launch post: www.earthlingmaps.com/updates/intr...

This is made possible by a home-grown map renderer to pull off what MapLibre and OpenLayers haven't quite prioritized, combining vector tiles with arbitrary projections. It's D3's vast palette of projections combined with @protomaps.com vector tiles/styles, rendered to Canvas and SVG.

I'm really interested in making the app accessible for a public audience so I'm restraining myself for the time being in talking too much tech. But I'm wildly excited about what's going on under the hood here! For me, it's a certain holy grail of web map rendering I've been after for years.

Brian T Jacobs reposted

Let's give a Bluesky welcome back to my friend Brian Jacobs. If you're into journalism, design, maps – follow! And check out his new tool that allows you to create beautiful maps for your stories, essays, etc!

I'm long overdue for a social media update, so here it goes. I moved out of DC to the Hudson Valley and I've been freelancing, continuing to enjoy making graphics and tools, designing, coding, and a lot of mapping. I'm about 2 hours north of New York City:

I'm long overdue for a social media update, so here it goes. I moved out of DC to the Hudson Valley and I've been freelancing, continuing to enjoy making graphics and tools, designing, coding, and a lot of mapping. I'm about 2 hours north of New York City:

View full thread

I'm long overdue for a social media update, so here it goes. I moved out of DC to the Hudson Valley and I've been freelancing, continuing to enjoy making graphics and tools, designing, coding, and a lot of mapping. I'm about 2 hours north of New York City:

View full thread

Earthling @earthlingmaps.com centers around a home-grown map renderer that strives to respect cartographic ideals whether creating a map of the planet, or of your neighborhood. Web maps were never meant to be locked into a few standard projections.

While I'm a map nerd and am wildly excited about breaking free from Web Mercator, non-nerds won't have to know anything about this. @earthlingmaps.com automatically chooses appropriate map projections, so all can benefit from this in the form of good defaults.

I'm long overdue for a social media update, so here it goes. I moved out of DC to the Hudson Valley and I've been freelancing, continuing to enjoy making graphics and tools, designing, coding, and a lot of mapping. I'm about 2 hours north of New York City:

Brian T Jacobs reposted

This is a real timelapse video of the Moon transiting in front of the Earth. It was captured by the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft in November 2022 while flying at it's furthest point from the Earth. The video covers about 3.75 hours of real time. 🔭🧪

Spoiler alert, great maps and words from @rsimmon.bsky.social

Robert Simmon@rsimmon.bsky.social

And here’s some background info on why I like adding contours to rasters when datasets have a wide range or large variation over time. medium.com/@robsimmon/o...

It's like my hometown dentist Lou Smoler • “Cartesian” comes directly from Cartesius, the Latinized name of René Descartes. • “Cartography” is rooted in the Latin charta and Greek -graphē, concerning maps and writing — with no connection to Descartes’s name or mathematical concepts.

Brian T Jacobs reposted

I have been experimenting with different ways of visualizing the curvature of meandering rivers. Plotting curvature in the context of the meanders themselves helps QC-ing the curvature data ⚒️🧪

Geospatial pareidolia: when you stare at maps all day, things like the eastern seaboard appear in coral shadows

Coral City Camera@coralcitycamera.bsky.social

Two squids making a splash and they’re gone in a flash 🦑💨🦑💨 #caribbeanreefsquid #reefsquid #squid #oopsiinkedmyself #ink #squidink #cephalopod #cephalopodsofcoralcity #poof #gone #jetpropelled #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity

Yesterday's eclipse captured in 2 frames about 2 hours apart, from the eyes of DSCOVR's EPIC camera (epic.gsfc.nasa.gov) parked around Lagrange point L1. I've been working a lot with this data recently, project coming soon...

Today, Doogie Typer is loaded up with Doogie's first entry, written on his 16th birthday in the pilot episode. He would have turned 50 today, just a tad younger than @nphstuff.bsky.social. Happy birthday Doogie. 🎂⌨️🔊 btjak.es/doogie/

btjak.esDoogie TyperYou're a genius teenage doctor and it's time to reflect

Gonna put my hifi lofi Doogie Howser M.D. journal simulator right here https://btjak.es/doogie

Happy belated crab day

カニの散歩道Crabs' Promenade@crabspromenade.bsky.social

Crabs around Tokyo Bay. Even around the metropolis, we walk across diverse of crabs! In Japan, 22 June is designated as "Crab Day" to promote crab dishes, but at this juncture, I would like to promote crab watching🦀 今日はカニ料理の美味しさをひろめるカニの日とのことで、カニ観察の楽しさもこの際ひろめたく、東京湾周辺のカニたちです。

Dream machine

Red@red64.bsky.social

I made a cool image I'm quite proud of after seeing something similar posted, unsourced, by a meme page on Twitter. What if Winamp was a real hifi unit! bsky.app/profile/red6...

Brian T Jacobs reposted

Another day, another amazing anatomy fact! 🧪 Your teeth are joints. They're a fibrous joints called dento-alveolar syndesmoses. Science speak for: pegs of tooth fit into jaw socket. LOOSE teeth are bad right? Why's it a joint? Because a tiny bit of movement tells you how hard you're cronching!

All aboard the crustacean cruise ship

whales are just crustacean cruise ship, they exist to transport some of the oldest & well-adapted animals on the planet around the ocean if you don't understand how amazing the adaptations are for the invertebrates living on cetaceans, you are missing out on some of nature's greatest wonders 🦑🧪

Brian T Jacobs reposted

Congrats to @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com for winning the first Tiny Awards! rotatingsandwiches.com was chosen from over 300 nominees and publicly voted from 16 finalists as best representing the small, playful web. https://twitter.com/kleinkleinklein/status/1683822941895532545

Andy Baio@andy.baio.net

Tiny Awards is a new effort to celebrate the best of the "small, playful, and heartfelt web.” As part of the selection committee, I helped narrow the ~300 nominees down to 16 finalists, and now you decide who wins! Voting’s open until July 20. https://waxy.org/2023/07/vote-on-the-tiny-awards/