Paul Ramsey 🗳️

@pwramsey
1.4K Followers
269 Following
778 Posts
Loving open source software, practicing the piano, moving things around, working @crunchydata
Bloghttps://blog.cleverelephant.ca/
GitHubhttps://github.com/pramsey/
LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-ramsey-717134/
LocationVictoria, BC
Paul Ramsey 🗳️Aug 12
Michal Migurski 🍉Aug 12

1989 Sun Sparcstation Via https://mastodon.social/@aka_pugs/114327869596697912

https://migurski.tumblr.com/post/791646378796449792

Paul Ramsey 🗳️Aug 2
A. Lee Bennett Jr.Aug 2
Paul Ramsey 🗳️Jul 11
Show threadWaldo JaquithJul 11

We're being told that the way to build trust with the community for broadband projects is to speak to the Rotary Club.

It is not! The way you build trust is you *install some damn broadband*. People shouldn't have to take it on faith that the project is going to work out. They should see that their friends and neighbors are getting gigabit fiber on schedule, for a fair price, without a lot of hassle.

Paul Ramsey 🗳️Jun 22
Kapitän ClownfeuerJun 22
"So many eyes, all the bugs are found" is only one side of the equation
From: @ramsey
https://phpc.social/@ramsey/114704760928232612
Ben Ramsey (@ramsey@phpc.social)

libxslt project maintainer steps down, citing the amount of time it takes to triage embargoed security issues. “I’ve been doing this long enough to know that most of the secrecy around security issues is just theater. All the ‘best practices’ like OpenSSF Scorecards are just an attempt by big tech companies to guilt trip OSS maintainers and make them work for free.” https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/issues/913

PHP Community on Mastodon
Paul Ramsey 🗳️Jun 20
PGConf.dev 🐘Jun 20
We've published a video of David J. DeWitt's keynote From RAP to Snowflake - A Look at 50 Years of SQL DB Scalability https://youtu.be/7HKrtciXU0k #postgresql #PGConfdev
Paul Ramsey 🗳️Jun 3
Show threadEven RouaultJun 3
@gdal We've had up to 265 attendees following the webinar about the GDAL CLI Modernization. You'll find the slide deck at https://download.osgeo.org/gdal/presentations/GDAL%20CLI%20Modernization.pdf , including a best-of of the Q/A session, and the video recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKdrYm3TiBU
Paul Ramsey 🗳️May 25
Tan G.May 24
I asked ChatGPT what the distances from London to Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo were and then to draw a map to show the distances. What a wonderful time to be alive. #gischat
Paul Ramsey 🗳️May 25
KestralMay 20
Web 1.0 = Info
Web 2.0 = Personal Sites & GIFs
Web 3.0 = Crimes & Grifters
Web 4.0 = Exclusively written by LLMs
Web 4.5 = Exclusively read by LLMs
Web 5.0 = The Resistance™
Web 6.0 = Info (on rebuilding society)
Web 7.0 = Personal Sites & GIFs
Paul Ramsey 🗳️Apr 8
Ricki Yasha TarrApr 8
Obsessed with the amount of spite it took to make this map:
Paul Ramsey 🗳️Apr 7
Information Is BeautifulApr 7
Another reasons to tut at the Mercator Map projection - how a circle with a radius of 5,000km, centred on Paris, looks according the Mercator map
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Information Is BeautifulApr 7
Another reasons to tut at the Mercator Map projection - how a circle with a radius of 5,000km, centred on Paris, looks according the Mercator map
Show threadCoffeeApr 7
@infobeautiful
Show threadBill, organizer of stuffApr 7
@coffee @infobeautiful But what if we took the Goode Homolosine and made it completely useless!
Show threadAndrewApr 7
@wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful the Bade Homolosine?
Show thread🐦‍⬛Apr 7
@wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful That's not completely useless. Not ideal for navigation, but it is a decent map of the Earth's oceans.
Show threadKim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷Apr 7
@Crow @wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful Mercator is ideal for short-to-medium distance navigation, because it gives correct bearings between ant two points. However, that results in a course which is longer than the great circle route (except for due N-S bearings), so not a good plan for trans-oceanic journey planning.
Show threadDirk JanssenApr 8
@KimSJ @Crow @wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful A navigator would never plan a transocean voyage on a mercator map. The professionals have special maps and/or can calculate the great circle courses without a map.
Show thread🐦‍⬛Apr 8
@dirkaufsee @KimSJ @wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful I didn't make the claim that they would, merely that this map is not "completely" useless. If it's all you had, you could still potentially get where you're trying to sail.
Show threadDirk JanssenApr 8
@Crow @KimSJ @wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful If you only have a Mercator as a navigator, you would calculate the great circle and the distance you have to travel on the Mercator map until you have to change the course by one degree.
Show threadwall-e / DanielApr 7
@wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful the Homolocosine? 🤔
Show threadBill, organizer of stuffApr 7
@wall_e @coffee @infobeautiful 😂
Show threadsabikApr 8
@wcbdata @coffee @infobeautiful
Ocean-oriented Goode Homolosine
Show threadEvannakitaApr 7

@coffee @infobeautiful Honestly, speaking as a map designer…I actually love the Mercator projection!

Mercator might distort circles and sizes, but it *doesn't* distort lines—a straight line on the globe will be straight on the map. This means that if you zoom in anywhere on Mercator, you'll have an accurate local map. Almost no maps have that property.

It might not be useful on a classroom wall, but Mercator powers things like Google Maps—it's incredibly useful.

Show threadFrannovalApr 7
@evannakita @coffee @infobeautiful , that doesn’t seem right. Isn’t a great circle a straight line on a globe? If so, I’m having a hard time visualizing one translating into a straight line on a Mercator projection. am I just suffering from lack of geometric imagination?
Show threadDavid NashApr 7

@Frannoval @evannakita @coffee @infobeautiful It'd be more accurate to say that Mercator doesn't distort *bearings*. A route on the Earth with a constant bearing compared to north (e.g., due northeast) follows a straight line on a Mercator projection regardless of where on the map it is. Most great circles don't have this property of a constant bearing along the circle (only the equator and circles of longitude do).

That's why Mercator was popular in the first place: it made a lot of sense for navigation, and was never intended to represent large areas accurately.

Show thread☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑‍💻Apr 7

@infobeautiful agree there @evannakita I wish people looking at maps understood their use cases, who designed them and way? Having straight lines on a map 🗺️representing compass bearings are fantastic for navigation 🧭on the open sea as found by Gerardus Mercator in 1569. (1) cc @coffee

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

Mercator projection - Wikipedia

Show thread🐦‍⬛Apr 7
@coffee @infobeautiful Dymaxion, Pierce, Waterman.
D. I like Asimov, but not the rest.
P. Every bit of this.
W. I would love to own anything nice like that, and you'll probably grow to resent me entirely.
Show threadDoug Whitfield [Minneapolis]Apr 7
@coffee @infobeautiful Dymaxion seems very strange, but based on the description I should like it. Tell me more.
Show threadsabikApr 8

@musicman @coffee @infobeautiful
Dymaxion maps the globe onto an icosahedron, which is the regular polyhedron closest to a sphere, then unwraps the icosahedron

In the variant shown here, it's used to (over-)emphasise the connectedness of the landmasses

Show threadAcin ☆Apr 8

@coffee @infobeautiful

Tag yourself—

I'm Robinson-A Globe!

Show threadvrtxdApr 8
@coffee @infobeautiful personality type: mapmaker
Show threadChristian GudrianApr 7
@infobeautiful Mercator must have been a guitar player.
Show threadStephen Elliott~BuckleyApr 7

@infobeautiful

Then we have this map. A polar view of Russia and its satellites, #mairikkka, Panama, Canada and Greenland.

#cdnpoli #canada #mexico #fascism #antifa #elbowsup

Show threadMarty FoutsApr 7
@infobeautiful All projections have distortions, so why single out Mercator?
Show threadTor LillqvistApr 7
@MartyFouts @infobeautiful Exactly. Somebody just bickering about the Mercator really gives the impression that they don’t know much about map projections but have read the usual almost conspiracy theory level stories about the Mercator.
Show threadAnders NorénApr 8
@tml
Casual Mercator bashing seems to be a US thing.
@MartyFouts @infobeautiful
Show threadBodhipaksaApr 7
@MartyFouts @infobeautiful I believe Mercator is the projection that people are most familiar with, which is in itself a good reason to critique it. Often people are so familiar with it that they think it accurately reflects how the world is. Pointing out Mercator's flaws is therefore useful. Showing people other projections, and discussing the flaws inherent in them, is a useful way of countering people's false assumptions about geography.
Show threadMarty FoutsApr 7

@bodhipaksa @infobeautiful The Mercator projection accurately reflects how the world is in some ways but not in others.

The issue is that people aren’t aware of which ways it is accurate and mistakenly assume that it is an equal area projection.

Show threadKatharsisdrillApr 7
Mercator is good for computers, as it twist and stretch a sphere into a coordinate system. Trump having the same understanding of geography as a chimpanzee is really just bad luck.
Show threadGergovieApr 7

@infobeautiful

False
Already debunked :

https://piaille.fr/@Gergovie/113288963071427347

Gergovie (@Gergovie@piaille.fr)

Attaché : 1 image @infobeautiful@vis.social @sman42@chaos.social There's no reason for a circle to become a sort of triangle during the projection. The trace of the 5000km radius circle should be something like that :

Piaille
Show threadEl Pamplina 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 Apr 18
@Gergovie @infobeautiful Hummm... Posting false "information" is not beautiful. 🤨
Show threadNeave InteractiveApr 7
@infobeautiful All projections have problems. Draw that circle on a globe then turn the globe around, and you can’t even see the circle!
Show threadPatrick ShinozakiApr 7
@infobeautiful But a straight line on a Mercator map follows a continuous bearing in the real world, which is useful if you can't easily measure your longitude.
Show threadInky says "What the hell?!"Apr 7
@infobeautiful And Peter's and it's ilk are sooooooo much worse.
Show threadTrinityApr 7
@infobeautiful so that's a guitar pick
Show threadforestineApr 7
@infobeautiful i have a map i inherited from a relative on the wall and i find it very funny that they insisted on slicing europe and asia in half to put the u.s.a in the centre, but because it's mercator, it's teeny tiny
Show threadWenzel 👨‍💻Apr 8
@infobeautiful I like globes.
Show threadDaniel SaidiApr 8
@infobeautiful @arroz It's almost as if that Mercator projection had some kind of historic, important role to play. 🤔
Show threadS-Man42Apr 8

@infobeautiful @knurd42

This was posted in October and it's still not true. The northern bound of your circle is not 5000km away because this would cross the north pole

(red and blue lines mark the ways to two points your "circle" cross. Both have not a 5000km distance)

Show threadThorsten Leemhuis (acct. 2/4)Apr 8
@sman42 thx for mentioning it, unsharing this now
Show threadRutgerApr 8

@infobeautiful What's the point of complaining about a map projection that you choose to use? If you care so much about area, choose an equal area projection. Similarly, if you care about preserving shape, select your projection appropriately.

There's nothing wrong Mercator or any other projection, it's all inevitable tradeoffs. Critique your own decision making.

Show threadHDApr 9
@infobeautiful So, um, that's incorrect. The circle extends beyond 90 degree north, thereby expanding it to infinity, it doesn't close back to form a circle
Show threadJuniApr 13
@infobeautiful most interfaces these days are digital anyway. Why don't we switch to fully 3d globes for everything?
Show threadLokjo - European online mapApr 18

@infobeautiful

Here's an interactive version, the difference is pretty weird.

https://engaging-data.com/country-sizes-mercator/

It looks like 'size does matter', for political reasons.

Real Country Sizes Shown on Mercator Projection (Updated) - Engaging Data

This interactive map shows the real size of countries on a mercator projection map. The animation shows some countries shrinking to show their true size.

Engaging Data
Show threadBen BrockertApr 18
@infobeautiful US foreign policy is being run by people who grew up with the Mercator projection.