Project: A geographical snapshot of the forum

[DonnaT]

She said she didn't illustrate Alaska.

The members living the farthest north are in Alaska (not on the map)

[Carolynn]

Hi CJ. Interesting distribution, with some really big gaps! Maybe a reflection of population size, and maybe internet access in some cases. I would expect the concentrations in larger cities and along the coasts.

Anyway, thanks for all your efforts. Looks good!

Love, Carolynn

[Rony]

CJ
Looks pretty good.

Rony

[CJ]

Hi all,

Please remember, this is a work in progress. I'll be making it more accurate in the coming weeks and months as I continue gleaning information from the members list, PMs, and individual posts on the forum. I imagine that, at some point, it will become a fairly faithful snapshot of member location.

There are a couple of reasons I chose to design the map the way I did, the most pressing one being the ratio of available space (forum page width) versus significant detail. I could've included Alaska (and, indeed, the entire world, too) but that would've made all the red dots bleed into each other even more than they already do. Of course, I also thought of splitting the map in at least two parts for clarity's sake. But this made the whole thing unwieldy and ungainly. In a future iteration, though, I promise I'll try to include an Alaskan insert somewhere in the northwest corner of the map. The reason I didn't do it with this one is that I don't have any location information for those couple of members who live there; Alaska is huge and I didn't want to just put the dots anywhere in that vast state (although, to be honest, I did have to extrapolate some and took some liberties with smaller areas; for instance, Daphné(GG) says she lives in France, so I put a yellow dot on Paris... but I tried to do this as little as possible).

Anyway, y'all, be patient with me; the map'll soon come into its own as I refine it. Thanks again for all your input!

Carolynn,

Could be the gaps are due to missing info or, more probably, to the fact that I'm not quite done with the map yet. I sort of expected this kind of distribution, too.

Love,
CJ

[Anita]

Hi CJ--
Very good looking! Like the colors. Headquarters in Houston shows up in pink; totally appropriate for a CD forum, of course.

I was wondering if there's a scroll bar across the bottom that I'm missing. I wanted to check out how many of us are in Outer Mongolia this year, and oh, yes, Armenia. Does the map go there?

[Kay]

Hi CJ
Great work It's good to see you all . Just one tiny comment can you move my dot over a bit, say about 5 miles to the right, It'll be just perfect then .
Kay

[CJ]

Heh. You silly gals!

Seriously, though, I'm not quite done with Europe yet; as you can see, our members from Spain, Italy, and Greece are not on the map yet. Soon, though. Soon.

I've had a longtime member of the forum offer to help me with some low-tech data-mining, looking for mention of locations in the body of posts throughout the forum. It's a herculean task but it'll have to be done, for the sake of completeness.

By the way, two peculiarities to keep in mind, not just about this map but about any images posted on any web site: 1) the image size (and thus the need for scroll bar use) will vary according to the screen resolution of individual users. I designed the map on Roxanne's PC, which is set at an 1024 by 768 pixel resolution; if your own screen resolution is smaller (say, 800 by 600 or even 480 by 640), that'll make everything appear bigger and you may thus have to engage in lots and lots of scrolling. Conversely, if your screen resolution is larger (e.g., 1280 pixels by 1024), everything on screen appears smaller and you may therefore not need to scroll at all. 2) The image of the map is saved as a jpeg file. This image format, widely used over the internet, is considered "lossey," as it compresses the data (making the image less "data-heavy") by dropping some pixels from an image every single time you save the image. For example, as I worked on the map over many different sessions, it became progressively unfocused and the red of the dots became progressively almost black and had a tendency to bleed in the surrounding green "countryside." I had to "recolorize" the dots in the final version. I'll try to find a way to work around this next time I update the map.

Sorry to get so technical but I just wanted to give you all an idea of what's involved here. Again, thanks for your comments (and for your patience!).

Love,
CJ

[Curly(SO)]

It's looking good, CJ. The demography is pretty interesting too

[Susan]

I live on the coast - I can hear the waves roll in if I open my windows

No surprise to see the scatter amongst the English speaking nations, after all this is an English language forum

very interesting

thank you

[Anita]

I'm not quite done with Europe yet; as you can see, our members from Spain, Italy, and Greece are not on the map yet...

Does this mean there are no scroll bars to move the map east-west? Currently, I don't see anything past France on the map, and I also don't see any scroll bars at the top or bottom.

[CJ]

Hi Anita,

Here's a miniature version of the map. This is what you should be able to see:



Love,
CJ

[Carla L]

Tee hee, I see me on that map!

[CherryLynn]

I can see Russia from my bedroom window . Just kidding I'm an east coast liberal, New Jersey Gurl.

[Amelie-Laveau]

Here ya go CJ, now you can pinpoint exactly where I live. In the vid i live next to the telephone poll.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SArWMUs-Zh8

Bye
Ya'll Have a nice life.

[Jeannie]

Hi Hon
Loved your video Beautiful! It looks just like Waterbury! I have take Marley for a walk someday down my street with a video camera and give you Gals a virtual tour. I might be able to make it back home without being mugged and my camera stolen but I'm not sure.
I hope everyone voted today. If you don't vote,don't complain! Hugs.

Love
Auntie Jeannie