Hello World

16 March 2006 @ 12:17 | In Mappings |

First post. “Hello World!” is maybe an appropriate exclamation - and what better way to get started than to display some nice maps?

Hemispheres in Lambert projection

These four maps show the four hemispheres mapped using the Lambert projection. Upper left: the Northern hemisphere, upper right: the Western hemisphere, lower right: the Southern hemisphere, lower left: the Eastern hemisphere.

The maps were generated using GMT — The Generic Mapping Tools, an open source collection of more than 60 tools for generating high quality maps. Being a command line tool, the learning curve of GMT is quite steep, but once conquered, GMT is more flexible than most GUI based map making software. The above maps were made using the following four lines of code:


pscoast -Rg -JA90/0/5c -B5 -W0.25p -G -P -K > world.ps
pscoast -Rg -JA0/-89/5c -B5 -W0.25p-G -X5.2c \
-P -O -K >> world.ps
pscoast -Rg -JA270/0/5c -B5 -W0.25p -G -Y5.2c \
-P -O -K >> world.ps
pscoast -Rg -JA0/89/5c -B5 -W0.25p -G -X-5.2c \
-P -O >> world.ps

R indicates the Region of interest (here: global), J indicates the projection (A for Lambert, then the projection center and map width), B is the border, W is the coastline, G indicates filling of land areas. If you want to know what the rest means, then go have look at the GMT — The Generic Mapping Tools, and maybe install it on your computer. It runs on Linux, Mac, as well as Windows. There are some very illustrative tutorials as well as cook books available to get you started—but do expect a somewhat uphill learning curve.

2 Comments »

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  1. Great! I am thrilled to see you started blogging, and with an interesting first post as well! :) Funny to see, that the guys who makes GMT apparently fell of the web design wagon somewhere in 1996, they are keepin’ it real.

    Comment by Jonas — 16 March 2006

  2. Thanks for leaving the first comment, buddy! It’s great to be entering the world of blogging, at last.

    Comment by Thomas — 16 March 2006

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