3d_design

updated 2008-01-02

contents:

design news
Cool Maps
map_software
materials and how to attach them.
supplies
tools
furniture
educational aspects of toys
architecture
Design, in general.
general-purpose tools vs. single-purpose tools
simplicity
synergetics
geometric shapes
a sphere approximation
sphere packing
city information
automobile design
- flying car
skyhook design
spacecraft design
trebuchet design (Never thought you'd see ``trebuchet'' and ``spacecraft'' in the same sentence, did you ?)
TRIZ
the "triangle function" t(x)
tiling; packed 2D barcodes
general aircraft design
paper_airplanes
origami
equations for 3D objects my cheat sheet of formulas for finding the surface area of a sphere, etc.
"Don Reinertsen"
counter-intuitive facts
unsorted

"Engineering design is a decision making process required to optimally convert resources into systems, components or processes to meet desired needs." -- Dr. D. A. Lucca (possibly quoting someone else).

A #design describes how to apply #tools to materials.

David Cary also maintains related pages:

idea_space.html#everything for disciplines which study ``everything''.
Some references that explain how stuff works are listed at search_tools.html#fixed_encyclopedia .
Ask for what you really want creed.html#really_want
David's Computer Graphics Tools computer_graphics_tools.html . includes some 2D, 3D, and 4D stuff and an entire section on visualization .
free_d.html about 3D computer aided design (CAD), especially free parametric software.
Global Positioning System (GPS) machine_vision.html#gps the geometry of the Earth in particular
David's idea_space.html talks about the space of all thoughts that can be thought of by humans. Ways of structuring knowledge, typically in a high-dimension space. (I find it mind-bending that someone can take all human knowledge, and use that as one of the many examples in one's book ...).
dimension.html for a more technical discussion of the mathematical terms "space" and "dimension", and their use in certain narrow fields of study and as more physical concepts. [FIXME: How to split up geometry between dimension.html and 3d_design.html ?]
Some design tidbits specific to nanotechnology are over in nanotech.html
At the moment, VLSI and MEMS vlsi.html are mostly 2D but seem to be moving rapidly to 3D.
design in the Bible (engineering, surveying and architecture) name.html#design
trip tips; trip planning trip_tips.html (if you are using maps #maps to plan a trip, you might want to look at trip_tips.html as well.)
astro_links.html telescopes, satellites, nanosatellites ... [FIXME: move all telescope and satellite design information from here to there ?]
international paper sizes 1d_design.html#paper

design news

"ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open source design innovation" http://thinkcycle.org/
"a database full of creative and original ideas." http://creativitypool.com/
"The Halfbakery is a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users, maintained by a dictatorial cabal of volunteers. It was created by people who like to speculate, both as a form of satire and as a form of creative expression." http://www.halfbakery.com/
[FIXME: move other design news links, to here]

materials

supplies

Supplies: [FIXME: is this the same as #materials ? ]

Batteries
finishing nails
wire
WD-40
superglue
Duct Tape
masking tape
scotch tape (writable with pencil)
clear contact paper
paint
spare light bulbs
ziplock bags
trash bags

tools

tools:

furniture

educational aspects of toys

``Engineers Vs. Normal People'' http://www.cs.utah.edu/~ratan/humor/eng.html | mirror http://repairfaq.cis.upenn.edu/sam/humor.htm#hum009 (perhaps by Scott Adams) "To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1.) things that need to be fixed, and (2.) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them." ... "Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet. ... To the engineer, the world is a toy box full of sub-optimized and feature-poor toys."

Origami:

reminiscent of the protein folding problem of biochemistry. A little closer (than LEGOs or wooden blocks) to the true ratio of tensile strength to compressive strength of typical building materials.

Paper airplanes:

aerodynamics (duh!) #paper_airplanes

Tetris:

a good intuitive model for crystallization (materials science). After playing Tetris, it is intuitive that faster crystallization rates result in more defects / mm^3. It makes it more intuitive that eutectic alloys have certain ratios.

Air hockey:

conservation of momentum, elastic collisions, (lack of) friction. (Physics).

Pool / Billiards:

conservation of momentum, elastic collisions (Physics).

Asteroids:

the relationship between velocity, acceleration, and position (Calculus); Newton's Laws (physics).

Pet Peeve: I despise the versions that have friction -- the ones where if you turn off your engine, you start slowing down and eventually stop. This makes it unnecessarily hard to understand Einstein's theory of relativity. The completely frictionless ones are better -- since in the real world velocity *is* truly relative.

Crystal ___(???):

Asteroids + gravity (physics); "the slingshot effect" (astrophysics physics).

wood blocks:

gravity, balance, gravitational potential energy (physics) building aesthetics (architecture) 3 D shapes and manipulation (3 D geometry; mechanical engineering) (Unfortunately, wood blocks teach the exactly the wrong thing what shapes have optimum strength -- -- a stack of blocks has zero tensile strength and practically infinite compression strength, while the strongest real building materials have very high tensile strength and lower compressive strength -- making tensegrity unnecessarily difficult to understand. Better 3D manipulatives are needed ! ). ... "the SOMA cube, invented by the Danish Author Piet Hein." http://www.fam-bundgaard.dk/SOMA/SOMA.HTM points to a "solver" program that, given the outer shape, tries to fit the available pieces together to make that shape.

Better 4D manipulatives are needed ! see video_game.html#4dtoys

Legos:

wood blocks + better tensile strength; the difference between compression and tension (physics).

Rubic's snake:

the protein folding problem. (Better protein folding analogues are needed !)

Erno Rubik's cube:

the difficulty of optimization (getting sucked into local minima), group theory (Math).

Pet peeve: Please *do not* peel the stickers off and rearrange them to "fix" the cube. They never stick back on very well, and soon fall off and are lost. Instead, if you *must* have it fixed and you don't have the patience to do that merely by twisting, *guess what's inside first*, then *take it apart* into "individual cubes". It's quite surprising how the whole thing holds together (mechanical engineering). Sure, it's "looser" after you do this, but easier-to-spin is not a bad thing. [FIXME: describe exactly how to get the 1st cube out, or link to a page that does.] http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=rubik [FIXME: do I need 2 copies, 1 here, one at dav_info.html ?]

[rubik cube / typography ?] http://www.lineto.com/application.html?ID=122&dir_id=121

Rubik's Cube by Karl Dahlke http://www.eklhad.net/rubik/ has a on-line program that allows you to enter your current rubic's cube configuration, and it tells you step-by-step how to solve it. (You can download the source code to the program).

``As far as I know I am the fastest active cuber in Britain with a best average of 23.0 seconds'' -- stiff_hands http://homepage.ntlworld.com/angela.hayden/cube/cube_frontpage.html

Dominos:

"the domino effect", conversion between gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy (physics). Digital bit regeneration (communication theory).

Lemmings:

parallel processing (Computer Science).

HTML:

helps understand the difference between the 2 views of a program: design time v. run time. (Computer Science).

team sports:

teamwork, coordination, communication. (sociology, psychology) (Physics).

http://www.DurableToys.com [offline ?]

architecture

traditional architecture (designing buildings on the ground to support the humans inside).

related to learning.html , #design , #synergetics , #city [should I move ``city design'' info there ?], #spacecraft_design , #furniture , computer_architecture.html ,

news links:

WikiFish: the collaborative website for the Auburn University School of Architecture. http://wikifish.org/ (has a discussion on what sort of laptop the architecture student needs -- http://seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=Laptop%20Deployment&wikiid=1231 )

design

Design, in general.

What I call "general design" seems to be the same as what others call "the meta-field of design" (Adam Greenfield) and "design science" (Buckminster Fuller).

general-purpose tools vs. single-purpose tools

general-purpose tools vs. single-purpose tools.

see also generalize vs. specialize dav_info.html#generalize_specialize

DAV: I am having a little cognitive dissonance here.

On one hand, I think it's really cool to have general-purpose tools. General-purpose PCs that can do lots of things never envisioned by their original designer, ... PDAs that can accept new and improved software ... multipurpose tools that do lots of stuff and still fit in your pocket (rather than having to carry around an entire tackle box of single-purpose tools) ...

On the other hand, single-purpose tools are also nice. ... telephones that ``just work'', unlike some PDA/cellphone combos that seem to crash regularly ... ... A knife that's just a knife ... ... The single purpose tools in Unix ``cut'', ``sort'', etc. ... email handling programs that just handle email, rather than displaying animated graphics and relaying virus programs to everyone else in your address book ... tools that are optimized to do one thing well, and when you have a collection of them and one does not work, all the rest of them are unaffected. (In other words, when you let someone else borrow one tool, or one tool wears out or breaks, or the batteries in one tool are drained, or you lose a tool). ... multipurpose tools often have one thing they do well, but all other secondary abilities are a compromise.

The importance of scalability/upgradeability: idea_space.html#level It's much easier to improve my collection of tools (not only in dollar cost, but in time spent learning how to use the new, improved collection) if I can simply add a simple new tool and learn how to use it, then (after I am comfortable with the new tool) discarding old tools it makes redundant. As opposed to getting a complicated new tool, spending much longer getting used to its new quirks, then trying to remember all the different functions of complicated old tools, worring that if I discard this old tool, even though most of its functions are obsoleted by the old tool, perhaps I might still need this old tool to do the 1 or 2 things that the new tool doesn't do as well -- or worse, doesn't do at all.

Occasionally one thing can be both ``simple'' and ``multifunctional'' -- graphic display hardware without complex arbitrary restrictions on what text/colors can go where ... ... paper for origami folding ... bookshelves that are smart enough *not* to make every shelf the same height, so that they can hold all different sizes of books or display objects d'art without wasting lots of space, ... dremel tools come close ... what else ?

``One Piece or Two?'' article by Jeff Kirvin 2002-11-11 http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column021111.htm argues *for* converging PDAs and cell phones, and discusses many of the arguments *against*.
`` superappliances: the behavioral implications of artifacts
... the Swiss Army Knife http://www.swissarmy.com/ joins the Cuisinart as a single device that can perform a wide range of functions. ...
... both ... represent what I call a superappliance. ... both the personal computer and the interactive television [also] fall into this category. ...
... appliances of this class all share the following properties:
- Multiple function. ... functionality otherwise delivered through a number of simpler special-purpose devices.
- Single location. ... The higher the overhead or inconvenience in moving the appliance, the more constrained functionality becomes.
- Single user. ...
- Single function at a time. ...
- Space/complexity trade-off. These multifunction appliances are inherently more complex than any of the single-function tools that they overlap with. This is largely due to the overhead in switching the modality from one function to the other. On the other hand, they typically occupy less space and cost less than the equivalent set of single-function tools.
... it would be shortsighted to assume that there are not viable design alternatives to the digital superappliance.
...
One foundation of the discipline of the architecture of buildings is the design of physical space appropriate for particular activities. This way of thinking is perhaps best captured in the following quote from the architect Louis I. Kahn:

Thoughts exchanged by one and another are not the same in one room as in another.

... we associate specific locations with specific activities. ...
... with conventional specialized tools, each activity can take place independent from, and simultaneously with, any other activity...
... Rather than converging toward ever more complex multifunction tools, my claim is that going forward we must diverge toward a set of simpler, more-specialized tools. ...
plumbing, the Internet, and the Waternet
... there is little significant difference among personal computers that hang on the Internet. On the more mature Waternet, this is not the case. Attached to it are diverse appliances such as sinks, lawn sprinklers, toilets, baths, showers, fire hydrants, and so on.
...
... the reason the Palm Pilot succeeded when its predecessors had failed is that the designers specified the product in human terms rather than technological terms. ... the need to fit into a jacket pocket, to be able to find an address faster than one could in a traditional address book, and to find ``Whan can I have dinner with you ?'' or ``Am I free next Thursday ?'' faster than one could with a traditional date book. They also included the specification that one should be able to back up the contents of the device in one button push, so that if the device was lost, one would only lose the cost of the device, not the information.
...
on strength versus generality
... Why not achieve both strength and generality by having a suite of strong-specific tools ? ... even though each tool may be individually manageable, their collective complexity rapidly exceeds a human's ability to cope. ... the cognitive load imposed on the user in order to take advantage of the tools.
... when the strong-specific tools are digital and networked, they have ... the capacity to communicate and cooperate, thereby assuming much of the load that would otherwise burden the user. ...
... when a call comes in, the phone can notify the stereo to turn down the music. ...
... automotive electronics ... make up about 30 percent of the cost of a modern car... These systems involve real-time, process control, information sharing, and networked cooperating parallel processors from diverse vendors. If I am right, this type of system is what will soon appear in our office and home systems. Yet, given that most schools still focus on teaching traditional functional programming, how well are we preparing our students for this inevitable change in computing paradigm ?
...
devices as notation
... with Roman numerals... long division (from a question of cognitive load) was about as hard as second-year calculus is today...
... computers are notational instruments par excellence that have the potential to reduce the complexity of today's world, much as the introduction of the decimal did for mathematics in the past.
... to determine longitude ... With the introduction of the chronometer, the calculations were reduced to simple arithmetic and could be done in minutes. In the sense of causing a reduction in complexity, the chronometer was arguably as important a notational device as the decimal.
Increasing complexity is the enemy, and well-designed devices, appropriately deployed, can play a significant role in turning this tide.
design in front of the glass: what you see (hear and touch) is what you think you get
... two of the most powerful observations that a designer of computers could have. ...
1. You can change the input/output devices.
2. By your choice, you can have a huge influence shaping the end user's mental model of the system.
...
example 2: e-commerce beyond the Amazon
... Symbol Technologies http://www.symbol.com/ ... the amount of e-commerce that goes through browsers driven by their technology likely exceeds the total e-commerce being transacted on all Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers combined (including Amazon.com) by about 5 million times! How can this be ... ? ... Symbol Technologies is the largest manufacturer of barcode readers in the world ... most people would claim that checking out groceries is not e-commerce... the transactions run over the same wires, routers, and servers as most other e-commerce. ...
the Renaissance is over -- long live the Renaissance
... our earlier discussion of weak-general versus strong-specific systems.
The exact same issues that we saw in this discussion are evident in the tension between the need for discipline specialization versus general holistic knowledge. Given the much-discussed constraints on human ability, how can we expect an individual to maintain the requisite specialist knowledge in their technical discipline, while at the same time have the needed competence in industrial design, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and so on, which this essay implies are needed to do one's job ?
so does the solution in this case lie in a social network of specialized individuals. ... however, in this case, it is due to a social network of people rather than a network of computers.
In 1959, Sir Charles P. Snow ... the science community and that of the arts and humanities... Snow characterized these two communities as having ... lost the ability to communicate on any plane of serious intellectual endeavor. ... He coined the term the two cultures to characterize the polarization of these two communities.
... A commonly expressed view ... can be reduced to ``Let us create a community of Renaissance men and women, instead of these specialists.'' I would suggest that the result of this would be a culture of mediocre generalists, which is not what we need. ...
On the other hand, the notion of a Renaissance team is entirely viable: a social network of specialists ... But while viable, the systemic biases of language, funding, and institutional barriers make this type of team the exception rather than the norm.
... our educational system ... in the rare cases where team performance is encouraged, more often than not, it is a homogenous, rather than a heterogeneous, team from the perspective of skills and culture, in the C.P. Snow sense.
... ''
-- ``less is more (more or less)'' chapter by William Buxton
-- _The Invisible Future: the seamless integration of technology with everyday life_ book edited by Peter J. Denning, editor. 2002 [idea_space; #architecture; ?]

simplicity

I think simplicity is such a important general design rule that it deserves a section all by itself.

related local pages:

simplified English idea_space.html#simplified_english
"lossy text compression": writing constrained in size; summarizing. data_compression.html#lossy

"The Beauty of Simplicity" by Linda Tischler 2005-11 Marissa Mayer, who keeps Google's home page pure, understands that less is more. Other tech companies are starting to get it, too. Here's why making things simple is the new competitive advantage. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/100/beauty-of-simplicity.html
Waterbed Theory: if you push down the complexity in one part of a language, there is a compensation which increases the complexity of another part of the language. C2: Waterbed Theory
"The evolution of planetary probes" submitted by Sander, Jan 08 2004 http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Dec/gee20040108023357.htm "Imagine the difficulty of programming a computer with only 128 words of memory." points to "One Giant Leap: The Apollo Guidance Computer" article by Dag Spicer http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=1494/ddj0006hc/ "there was great pressure on the software team to be especially dedicated to error-free development." "in the early stages, a significant proportion of all ICs manufactured in the world were going to the AGC." In October of 1969, the computer industry journal, Datamation, noted that DEC's PDP-11 was much more powerful than the AGC, but this is beside the point. Simpler systems are inherently easier to program, maintain, and fail less often. [simplicity; space hardware]
http://simplerwork.com/library/ ??? http://simplerwork.com/ ??? [FIXME: to read]
Don Lancaster http://www.tinaja.com/ His thoughts on "elegant simplicity" http://www.tinaja.com/glib/elesimp.pdf have had a big influence on DAV.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LessIsMore [FIXME: move this section there ?]
"One line replaces ten. How can a piece of code that is an order of magnitude too large be considered reliable ? There is that much greater chance for confusion, and hence for the introduction of bugs. There is that much more that must be understood in order to make evolutionary changes." -- in the "being too complicated" section of "Programming Style: Examples and Counterexamples" article by Kernighan & Plauger reprinted in _Classics in Software Engineering_ book edited by Edward Nash Yourdon 1979
... even geniuses can easily get confused when there is too much complexity. If we can keep everything very simple, except possibly some part about error estimates or something similar, then the field will be less confusing, it will be open to more people, and progress will be faster.
... There seems to be a kind of culture in some parts of science that the one who presents the most difficult and convoluted equations has won, i.e. if you have succeeded in presenting something which no one else can fully understand, then you cannot be criticized. It should be the opposite; the one who can explain something in the simplest way should "win".
This is nothing new, it's simply Occam's Razor, but for some reason it seems to have fallen out of grace lately.
-- marx on Mon May 26th, 2003 http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2003/5/23/134430/275?pid=277
"My father said whoever tells the longest story is always the liar. The truth isn't that complicated." -- Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems
simple is beautiful
``A theme of my work: for FPGA CPU cores, simple is beautiful. In my experience, ...
- smaller is cheaper
- smaller is faster
- smaller is more power frugal
- simpler is easier to test
''
-- Jan Gray http://www.fpgacpu.org/log/sep00.html#000919 [FIXME: crosslink to computer_architecture.html#FPGA or computer_architecture.html#simple_cpu ]
I am a disbeliever of anything that requires ... much documentation, head-scratching, hand-waving, and eyes-glazing-over. -- Dave Winer, quoted at http://www.zeldman.com/ which has further thoughts on the subject.
Style has nothing to do with money. Anybody can do it with money. The true art is to do it on a shoestring. -- Tom Hogan [FIXME: cross reference from unknowns.html ]
As Paul B. MacCready, designer of the Gossamer Condor, says, "Treat every problem as if it can be solved with ridiculous simplicity. The time you save on the 98% of problems for which this is true, will give you ridiculous resources to apply to the other 2%." -- http://www.jera.com/techinfo/xpfaq.html
airplane rule
DECEMBER 1, 1999- "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness. It is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really good basket.
Source: The New Hacker's Dictionary -- http://www.linuxcare.com/news_columns/lingo/archive_99december.epl ... (Is it in the Jargon File ? creed.html#jargon )
"Frugal-Ed" is a forum for educators to discuss frugal or simple living and voluntary simplicity. -- http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/
Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. -- Charles Mingus quoted at http://www.bemorecreative.com/
``Simple does not mean easy.'' - Le Corbusier
`` There was a man named do Bono, a Maltese, who wished to investigate the process of creative thinking. He prepared for an experiment a room with two doors, one across from other. You go in one door, cross the room and then you walk out the other. He put at the door entrance some material--two flat boards, some ropes. And he got as his subjects some young children. He said to the children "This is a game we play. You must go through this room and out the other door. You must not touch the floor with any part of your body, or clothing.". All of the children figured out what to do -- they tied the one board to each foot and they walked across the room like on skis.
Now he performed second part of the experiment. He gave only one board instead of two. This time the children adopted the trick with a difference. They tied the rope to the end of single board and then stood on it, and jumped up, tugging the rope to pull the board forward, hopping and tugging, moving a little bit at a time. The average time to cross in the second part was less than in the first time.
Why didn't children in the first group think of the trick? They looked at what they were given to use for materials and, they like all of us, wanted to use everything. But they did not need everything. They could do better with less, in a different way. ''
-- Frederik Pohl, The Gold at the Starbow's End

-- http://www.cs.utah.edu/~ratan/humor/quotes.html
``Simplify, and add lightness.'' -- Harry Miller, race car designer.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (who was an aviator and aircraft designer #aircraft when he wasn't being the author of classic children's books) said: ``Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.'' -- http://www.ccil.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-paper-6.html
Nature uses as little as possible of anything. -Johannes Kepler, astronomer (1571-1630) [minimal mass; not quite the same thing as #simplicity]
``In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.'' ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1925.txt [fixme: design; procotol; serial ??]
``Brighthand Reviews the Palm Zire: A minimalist approach to handhelds'' review by Ed Hardy http://www.brighthand.com/article/Palm_Zire_Review

`` The other nice side effect of the minimalistic approach Palm's designers took with this model is it uses remarkably little power. It has only a 16 MHz processor, which draws very little current. The backlight is a big source of power drain but the Zire doesn't have one of these. Color screens use a lot of power but this model doesn't have one of these, either. Even RAM draws power so by keeping this down to [2 MB]. In short, the Zire may use the least amount of power of any handheld Palm has made since its very first model.
I've been using a Zire as much as physically possible since I got it and the internal battery has so far completely defeated my attempts to drain it. ... The usual estimate is someone uses their handheld for 30 minutes a day so you might get away with charging a Zire only once every couple of months. Compared with handhelds that have to be charged almost every day, this is phenomenal. ''
[simplify/synergy][low-power]
the Dana's rugged simplicity means it's less likely to have either hardware or software problems -- "A Dana for Every Schoolkid? : Using Palm software, this device offers many laptop-like benefits at a fraction of the cost" article by Stephen H. Wildstrom 2003-04-21 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_16/b3829030.htm [FIXME: crosslink with wearable_electronic.html#dana ?]

synergetics

Stuff related to Buckminster Fuller (who apparently coined the word "synergy"), his World Game, and geometry. (tensegrity ?)

Related to

Buckminster Fuller liked to start his analysis with ``everything''. See idea_space.html#everything for disciplines which study ``everything''.
#shapes for some more geometry,
dimension.html for geometry in 3 or more dimensions,
#maps for more maps.

latest Bucky news: news:alt.bucky-fuller | mirror http://groups.google.com/groups?group=alt.bucky-fuller
Synergetics on the Web Maintained by Kirby Urner http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/ [FIXME: finish reading]
... The irony, however, is that if somehow we could have gotten Galileo and Fuller together over lunch, Galileo would have perhaps found Fuller positively mad. http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture6a.html
http://www.lsi.usp.br/usp/rod/bucky/buckminster_fuller.html ???
The R. Buckminster Fuller FAQ by Christopher J. Fearnley http://www.cjfearnley.com/fuller-faq.html
Dome Reference Sheets http://members.aol.com/wvenable/Dome1OrderSheets.html "very useful for making your own dome. ... the sheets provide:
- Strut lengths for each dome frequency
- Strut lengths for basket weave domes
- Number of struts, vertices, and faces for different dome truncations
- Sum of edge lengths for all struts in the dome, used to estimate material requirements
- Beautiful images of domes of each frequency
"
This "transparent" rotating globe image I got from http://world.std.com/~brd/love.html is pretty cool. What would it look like with the oceans opaque, instead of the dry land opaque ? Or just the outline of the oceans opaque ? [FIXME: software todo] Was this created (or is the best way of creating something like this) using the GIMP Map-Object Plugin http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/gimp/globes.html ?
Chris Rywalt has some related pages:
- Dymaxion Projection Animation animation of an unfolding Dymaxion Map http://www.westnet.com/~crywalt/unfold.html (Rywalt wrote a C program to output Persistence of Vision Raytracer files; the source to both his program and POV is freely available.)
- The Bucky Fuller Travelling Miracle Medicine Show http://www.westnet.com/~crywalt/inventions/Bucky.html quotes the introduction to _Inventions_ by R. Buckminster Fuller:
  
  A vast overabundance of this Earthian cosmic energy income is now technically impoundable and distributable to humanity by presently proven technology. We are not allowed to enjoy this primarily because tax-hungry government bureaucracies and money-drunk big business can't figure a way of putting meters between these cosmic energy sources and the Earthian passengers, so nothing is done about it. The technical equipment -- steel plows, shovels, wheelbarrows, boilers, copper tubing, etc. -- essential to individuals' successful harvesting of their own cosmic energy income cannot be economically produced in the backyard kitchen, garage, or studio without the large scale industrial tools' production elsewhere of industrial materials and tools-that-make-tools involving vast initial capital investments. If big business and big government don't want to amass and make available adequate capital for up-to-date technological tooling, people will rarely be able to tap the cosmic energy income, except by berry-, nut-, mushroom-, or apple-picking and by fishing.
Bucky Fuller Virtual Institute http://www.cruzio.com/~joemoore/ /* was http://bbs.cruzio.com/~joemoore/ */ ( claims that 3 way weaving http://www.cruzio.com/~joemoore/Ideas/TriWeave3WayVs2Way.htm is 4 times as strong as standard warp-and-weft 2 way weaving. )
some pictures of nice domes and other geometrical living spaces.
- http://greggfleishman.com/Spheres.html
- http://greggfleishman.com/thinshts.html
- http://greggfleishman.com/Sfillers.html
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is quite staggering." -- R. Buckminster Fuller
The World Game Institute http://www.worldgame.org/ interesting real-time population meter and other metrics. ... apparently has changed its name to osEarth, Inc.
O.S. Earth: global simulations http://osearth.com/ quotes

Engineer and author John Lienhard might well have been describing o.s.EARTH's mission in his wonderful book The Engines of our Ingenuity:

We now use the term black box any time we have to describe a function that we hide from sight. It has practically turned into a metaphor for our retreat from understanding how things work....Educating a strong and capable citizenry means teaching students that someone else's subject matter is not a black box, that those boxes can and must be opened. Once we realize that we cannot deal with part of a system in isolation, it becomes very clear that encasing knowledge in boxes is one of the most destructive things we do.

So how do we open black boxes when they grow so complex? We need to find the threads of simplicity that run through them.

-- Oxford University Press, pp. 170-171

-- http://osearth.com/workshops/whysimulationswork.shtml [FIXME: books_to_read][FIXME: #simplicity]
Bucky links http://www.lclark.edu/~miller/bucky.html Bucky links http://www.shambhala.com/forums/wilber/new_messages2/2502.html a little mystical ... fractals

I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except to dare to think and to dare to go with the truth and to dare to really love completely.
--R. Buckminster Fuller quoted at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/bucky/ http://www.wnet.org/archive/bucky.cgi (these 2 seem identical) http://www.lsi.usp.br/usp/rod/bucky/buckminster_fuller.html "Interesting People & Ideas" http://www.lclark.edu/~miller/ideas.html#bucky http://www.plexus.org/chalkboard/land/messages/214.html
Whole Systems mailing list This area is devoted to the study of whole systems. http://www.worldtrans.org/whole.html ... http://www.worldtrans.org/ ???
FTL/Happold http://www.ftl-happold.com/ Architects + Engineers "specializes in the design and engineering of tensile structures, deployable and event pavilions, openable roof structures, air-supported and air-inflated buildings." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Robert W. Gray's R. Buckminster Fuller Notes http://www.servtech.com/public/rwgray/rbfnotes/notes.html
Synergetics (Buckminster Fuller) http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/synhome.html includes "sphere packing studies".
R.Buckminster Fuller biography http://euro.net/mark-space/bioRBFuller.html
Hexnetcompanies Infocenter http://www.hexnet.org/~hexnet/ seems to take the fact that the hexagon is superior to the square (but then, isn't everything ?). /* was http://www.ultranet.com/~gsteele/hexnet/ */
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/platonic.html
Platonic Solids in All Dimensions http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/platonic.html [FIXME: dimension.html]
Beautiful Code BV http://www.xs4all.nl/~gdj/ has a lot of pointers to "elastic interval geometry". [FIXME: look at the gallery ... "elastic interval cinema" includes Russel Chu's Foldable Dome ...] [name ?]
Victor Milenkovic http://www.cs.miami.edu/~vjm/ "Current Interests: Robust and reliable geometric computations, Computational geometry, Automatic layout, Optimization" has papers on "Position-Based Physics: Simulating the Motion of Many Highly Interacting Spheres and Polyhedra" http://www.cs.miami.edu/~vjm/Papers/siggraph96.ps.gz "Asymptotically Tight Bounds for Computing with Faulty Arrays of Processors" http://www.cs.miami.edu/~vjm/Papers/.ps.gz "Robust Geometric Computations for Vision and Robotics" http://www.cs.miami.edu/~vjm/Papers/ius89.ps.gz "Trinocular Vision" http://www.cs.miami.edu/~vjm/Papers/.ps.gz "Position-Based Physics: Animating and Packing Spheres inside Polyhedra" http://www.cs.miami.edu/~vjm/Papers/spheres.ps.gz "Placement and Compaction of Non-Convex Polygons for Clothing Manufacture" http://www.cs.bc.edu/~daniels/Papers/final2.ps.gz [FIXME: are all these files impossible to read ?]
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Dissection.html /* was http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/math/Dissection.html */
Chuck Hoberman http://www.pbs.org/wnet/bucky/hoberman.html holds five patents in the field he calls "Unfolding Structures." Hoberman Associates http://www.hoberman.com/associates/ | http://www.hoberman.com/ [FIXME: read]
Michael Stutz http://dsl.org/ "This site is about engineering a free society, and doing it through design science and the creation of artifacts." includes ``Applying Copyleft To Non-Software Information'' -- how to use the GNU GPL on digital information that is not software. ``How libraries are dumbing down their electronic catalogs''
Consequently, I also said in 1927, "Here I am launching a half-century-magnitude program with nobody telling me to do so, or suggesting how to do it." I had absolutely no money and my darling wife (who has now been married to me for 66 years) was willing to go along with my thinking and commitments. I said to myself, "If I, in confining my activity to inventing, proving and improving, and physically producing artifacts suggested to me by physical challenges of the a priori environment, which inventions alter the environment consistently with evolution's trending, whereby I am doing that which is compatible with what universal evolution seems intent upon doing -- which is to say, if I am doing what God wants done, i.e., employing my mind to help other humans' minds to render all humanity a physically self-regenerative and comprehensively intellectual integrity success so that humans can effectively give their priority of attention to the ongoing local Universe information-gathering and local problem-solving, primarily with design-science artifact solutions which will altogether result in comprehensive environmental transformation leading to conditions so favorable to humans' physical wellbeing and metaphysical equanimity as to permit humans to become permanently engaged with only the by-mind-conceived challenges of local Universe -- then I do not have to worry about not being commissioned to do so by any Earthians and I don't have to worry how we are going to acquire the money, tools, and services necessary to produce the successively evoluting special-case physical artifacts that will most effectively increase humanity's technological functioning advantage to an omnisuccess-producing degree."
-- R. Buckminster Fuller http://www.westnet.com/~crywalt/inventions/inv_138.html

Other pages with long list of Buckminster Fuller links:

http://world.std.com/~brd/bucky.html
Buckminster+Fuller http://srch.overture.com/d/search/p/go/?Partner=go_home&Keywords=Buckminster+Fuller&Go=Search
lots of Bucky links http://www.ecomall.com/activism/bucky2.htm

geometric shapes

http://web.shorty.com/geeks/96/sep/msg00159.html

how to mismake a soccer ball

     Subject: how to mismake a soccer ball
     From: (Anton Sherwood)
     Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 23:24:53 -0700

I wrote a little C program to enumerate the ways to make a closed ball
from 12 pentagons and up to 20 hexagons.  (I don't care whether the
faces are regular, because I got on this track by wondering about
the varieties of buckyballs.)

I thought I'd have to build (and debug) a representation of the polygons
and their connections.  Easier to do the search by hand... But eventually
it hit me that all I need is a bit string representing the convex and
concave vertices of the boundary of the incomplete ball.

        Solutions      = 526363
        Dead ends      = 21982613
        Face overflows = 19186580
        Edge overflows = 410

The output is also a bit string: 1 for a pentagon, 0 for a hexagon; and
they're added in a strict spiral sequence, so even though the program
knows nothing about the shape, it's easy for a human to build it up
from its code.  Each solution appears in the tree 120/G times, where
G is the size of its symmetry group.

And what's my point in doing this?  Well, if you should ever want to
build a dome house with a square floor, let me know!

Anton Sherwood   *\\*   +1 415 267 0685   *\\*  

"NO!!!  Not THAT button!!!"

DAV has long wondered what geometric formulas would look like if put in terms of addition and the triangle function t() rather than addition and multiplication. (Also, putting formulas in "reverse-polish notation" RPN).

Famous shapes with measurements in terms of the unit triangle or unit tetrahedon [FIXME: incomplete]

shape	size in unit tetras (or unit triangles)	size in unit cubes (or unit squares)
equilateral triangle with sides of length s (see #t(x) for details)	s^2	s^2 * sqrt(3) / 4
equilateral triangle with sides of length 2*s	4*s^2	s^2 * sqrt(3)
square with sides of length s	s^2 * 4 / sqrt(3)	s^2
square with diagonal of length s	s^2 * 2 / sqrt(3)	s^2 / 2
area of hexagon inscribed inside a circle of radius r	r^2 * 6	r^2 * 3 * sqrt(3) / 2
area of hexagon with a circle inscribed of radius r (it's pretty easy to see that once you chop out the inscribed hexagon, the 6 remaining fragments can be assembled into 2 more triangles the same size as the 6 interior trangles)	r^2 * 8	r^2 * 6 / sqrt(3)
area of a circle of radius r (obviously more than the 6 triangles of the inscribed hexagon ... the little leftovers between that hexagon and the circle add up to a bit more than 1 more triangle) (obviously more than the 2 squares of the inscribed square with diagonal of length 2*r ... the little leftovers add up to a bit more than 1 more square)	4πr^2 / sqrt(3) =~= 7.26*r^2	pir^2 = πr^² =~= 3.14*r^2
area of pentagon with sides of length s	s^2 * sqrt( 25 + 10*sqrt(5) ) / sqrt(3)	s^2 * sqrt( 25 + 10*sqrt(5) ) / 4


area of sphere (compare the unit dodecahedron, which has a surface of 20 unit triangles ...)	16pir^2 / sqrt(3) =~= (29.02)*r^2	4pir^2 =~= (12.566)*r^2
volume of a sphere http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Sphere.html /* was sphere */ = 2/3 the volume of cylinder circumscribed around it		4pir^3/3
volume of cylinder circumscribed around unit sphere		2pir^2
the Platonic solids http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlatonicSolid.html
volume of regular tetrahedon with edges of length s	s^3	s^3 / ( 6 * sqrt(2) )
volume of regular tetrahedon with edges of length sqrt(2)	2*sqrt(2)	1/3
volume of cube with edges of length s	s^3 * 6 * sqrt(2)	s^3
volume of cube with face diagonal of length s	s^3 * 3	s^3 * / ( 2 * sqrt(2) )
volume of regular octahedron with edges of length s	s^3 * 4	s^3 * sqrt(2) / 3
volume of regular dodecahedron with edges of length s	s^3 * 3 * sqrt(10) * ( φ )^4 = s^3 * ( 15 + 7 * sqrt(5) ) * sqrt(2) * 3 / 2	s^3 * sqrt(5) * ( φ )^4 / 2 = s^3 * ( 15 + 7 * sqrt(5) ) / 4
volume of regular icosahedron with edges of length s	s^3 * 5 * sqrt(2) * (φ)^2 = s^3 * ( 3 + sqrt(5) ) * sqrt(2) * 5 / 2	s^3 * 5 * (φ)^2 / 6 = s^3 * ( 3 + sqrt(5) ) * 5 / 12 (where φ = (1 + sqrt(5))/2 = the golden ratio ).

sphere approximation

Often we want to approximate a sphere by a few points (the vertices of a polyhedron) or by a few pieces of paper (the gores of a globe).

The opposite problem is #sphere_packing.

See also #map_software for more map projections.

What is the best way to pixelize a sphere? http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/icosahedron.html /* was http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/icosahedron.html */ ``This web site contains source code and documentation for the method depicted above, which involves inscribing the sphere in a regular icosahedron and then equalizing the pixel areas.'' [DAV: didn't I calculate that dodecahedron really gave the least distortion ? Did I just flub that back-of-the-envelope calculation ? Or does this really give equivalent ?][FIXME: email]
[FIXME: Does that source code, when executed, give exactly the same results listed by Hardin et al ?: ]
``Tables of Spherical Codes with Icosahedral Symmetry: A library of good packings, coverings and maximal volume arrangements of points on the sphere in 3 dimensions having icosahedral symmetry. The number of points ranges from 60 to 78032.'' by R. H. Hardin, N. J. A. Sloane and W. D. Smith http://www.research.att.com/~njas/icosahedral.codes/ (includes source code) For each of these point listings, if I draw the voroni cell around each of these points (dividing the sphere into little hexagons and pentagons), or simply draw lines between each point and ``enough'' nearest neigbors until the sphere is divided up into little triangles, those spherical (but nearly flat) polygons become a (nearly ?) regular tiling of the sphere.
Todo: use this idea to convert a map of Earth into little tiles (Which source code makes this easier to do ?) ... then what ? Simplest thing to do: Just print out the tiles, and assemble into a nearly-spherical polyhedron. Next-simplest: Print out *several copies* high-resolution version of the tiles, spread them out on my kitchen table, and play with my ideas of tiling the sphere onto the plane, and different ways to flatten pieces of the sphere with little distortion. (In particular, long, narrow slivers flatten with little distortion ...) Perhaps I could come up with a completely different ``more accurate'' map of the Earth. [FIXME:]
[FIXME: Think about extending this to 4 or more dimensions. Would this have any practical use ? ... how about covering the surface of the 4D object ``the surface of Earth from 0 A.D. to 2020 A.D.'', which is a cylinder in some projections ? Or we could warp it to fit (half of) a hypersphere, where one pole represents the 2 initial humans (Adam and Eve), and we map ``time'' radially from that pole, such that any one instant is mapped as a 3D sphere, with area proportional to # of humans alive at that instant ]
"Tiling a plane with a dodecahedron" http://codefun.com/Geometry_tile1.htm and "Tiling anything with a single shape" http://www.codefun.com/Geometry_golden1.htm seems related somehow.
Min-Energy Configurations of Electrons On A Sphere http://mathpages.com/home/kmath005/kmath005.htm lots of pretty geometry -- and yet another demonstration that the cube is unstable. Animated (Java) Illustrations [of] 24 Electrons on a Sphere http://mathpages.com/home/polyjava.htm /* was http://www.seanet.com/~ksbrown/kmath005.htm */
Optimal illumination of a sphere by Hugo Pfoertner http://enginemonitoring.com/illum/illum.html has a nice list of links to other "Optimization problems on the sphere" ... pretty rendered images of Maximal Volume Arrangements of Points on Sphere http://enginemonitoring.org/sphere/ http://randomwalk.de/sphere/volmax/ ... Hugo Pfoertner http://pfoertner.org/
A list of pages concerning the frequent question ``How can I arrange N points evenly on a sphere?'' http://www.ogre.nu/sphere.htm | http://lists.ogre.nu/mailman/listinfo/sphere several different definitions of "even" give somewhat different arrangements [FIXME: look at this more carefully]
mentions
- Points on a Sphere: optimal arrangements for n circles (of radius r) packed on a sphere with radius 1. (by Erich Friedman) http://www.stetson.edu/~efriedma/ptsphere/ DAV: Of course all 5 platonic solids are here (except the cube, displaced by the square antiprism) (except the dodecahedron -- is that just because the list doesn't go all the way up to 20 ? ) plus a bunch of other interesting shapes.
- Spherical Codes: Nice arrangements of points on a sphere in various dimensions by N. J. A. Sloane http://www.research.att.com/~njas/packings/ which points up to http://www.research.att.com/~njas/index.html#TABLES which in turn points to many "spherical codes" including Spherical Coverings: A library of putatively optimal coverings of the sphere with n equal caps http://www.research.att.com/~njas/coverings/
- FIXME: does this include Locations of N electrons on a sphere http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/95/equispace.elect ? and http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/97/spherefaq ?
NAC info http://www.chem-eng.toronto.edu/~shen | finger://shen@heat.chem-eng.toronto.edu
Intersecting cylinders Written by Paul Bourke December 2003 http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/geometry/cylinders/
Waterman Butterfly Equal Area Map (by Steve Waterman) http://odtmaps.com/detail.asp_Q_product_id_E_WAT-26.5x38-V1-proto "It is a 14-sided polyhedral projection" (a truncated octahedron?)

I've been thinking about building my own globe. Rather than approximating it with some sort of polyhedra made of flat polygons, I've been thinking about approximating it out of pieces of paper that are curved. (Unfortunately, paper can only curve in one direction ... which is what makes "map projection" so difficult -- the globe is not a developable surface ). Perhaps the intersecting cylinders illustrated by Paul Bourke would be much better than the standard thin globe gores.

sphere packing

filling space with a bunch of spheres, or filling some area with a collection of circles (possibly unequal-sized).

Hugo Pfoertner: Packing spheres in a cube. Packing spheres in a sphere. http://pfoertner.org/
http://randomwalk.de/sphere/volmax/ has many, many pretty images ... sphere packing, filling area with (unequal-sized) circles, tiling, hinged kite dissection, etc.
"Provably good mesh generation" http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/junkyard/acute-square/

Cool Maps

[2004-01-24:DavidCary I moved this from http://rdrop.com/~cary/html/3d_design.html#maps to http://visual.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/EarthMap ; this is now an old archive]

contents:

maps with driving directions
weather maps
other online maps
map software

maps with driving directions

Are these 4 really the same ?
MapPoint http://mappoint.com/ (same as http://mappoint.msn.com/ ) /* was Mapblast http://www.mapblast.com/ */ maps and driving directions. The ``geosearch'' is very interesting -- it lets you search for websites within __ miles from __ location on topic __. Mapblast allows you to add any number of intermediate stops to your trip.
http://www.smartpages.com/directory/router.jhtml
MapQuest http://www.mapquest.com/ | http://clients.mapquest.com/netscape/mqtripplus
"Where Are You ?" http://www.lycos.com/roadmap.html
Expedia Maps http://ExpediaMaps.com/ driving directions; topo maps; ``link to a map'' looks interesting. Driving directions has a interesting option: ``quickest, shortest, or scenic ?''.
http://geocode.com/eagle.html ``Input an address. Eagle will match it and return information about the address and (optionally) a map to go with it.''

weather maps

National Weather Service http://nws.noaa.gov/ "the sole United States official voice for issuing warnings during life-threatening weather situations." is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) http://www.noaa.gov/ and operates some weather satellites
http://www.weather.com/

other online maps

(and a few of the most interesting paper maps ... should I split out paper maps into their own category ?) (also photographs of Earth, Luna, and other planets)

Earth at Night http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020810.html [FIXME: convert to Dymaxion-like map ?]
http://www.boatchart.com/mapping/chart/swsindex.cfm [FIXME: short description]
"Everything About Everywhere" "We now have 505 stats, and this number is increasing all the time. If you know of some other stats, please don't hesitate to tell us. We want to cover everything from prozac use to platinum records." http://nationmaster.com/ ... http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/geo_are_lan&int=20 ???
NOAA Charting and Navigation http://www.noaa.gov/charts.html has a Historical Map & Chart Collection, Hydrographic Surveys Hydrographic surveys are conducted to determine the configuration of the bottoms of water bodies, especially as it pertains to navigation. This includes the detection, location and identification of wrecks and obstructions primarily through the use of side scan sonar and multibeam sonar technology. Using this technology, NOAA played a crucial role in finding the wreckage of: TWA 800, John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s plane and EgyptAir 990; , Electronic Navigational Charts, etc. NOAA began its release of prototypes of digital vector ENCs for testing and evaluation by the public. The ENCs are available solely via the Internet at no cost to any interested party seeking to download this data.
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection ... contains over 8,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North and South America maps and ... The collection can be used to study genealogy and family history. http://www.davidrumsey.com/ [FIXME: what kind of software do they use ? Is there an open-source alternative ?]
On-Line Mapping and Waypoint Servers http://www.eskimo.com/~archer/gps.html#On-Line%20Mapping%20and%20Waypoint%20Servers
The CIA Factbook search_tools.html#factbook http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ has a small map and some statistics for each nation, and also some nice maps of larger regions http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/docs/guideref.html ...
http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/english/
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
http://keyhole.com/ has lots of photos of Earth: aerial and space photographs. (a few crop circle photos)
Space Imaging http://www.spaceimaging.com/ has lots of photos of Earth from space.
TerraServer http://www.terraserver.com/ Not merely a *map*, but actual photographs of a lot of Terra (Earth). aerial and space photographs.
http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine/index.html ???
Earth and Moon Viewer http://www.fourmilab.to/earthview/ interactive; many options. points to public domain astronomy and space software
GORP (guide to outdoor recreation and travel) http://gorp.com/ has maps *and* lots of other useful information about actually going to that place and what to do when you get there.
the "RealEarth(r) GlobeMap(tm)" http://www.realearth.com/ The "RealEarth" map, based on a truncated octahedron, is a clever projection of the globe. Seems to be better for learning political boundaries on this shape, (8 hexagons + 6 squares = 14 facets) [ U.S. Patent No. 5,222,896 ] than the the icosahedron Bucky Fuller used ( 20 triangles ) Otherwise very similar concepts.
DAV bought some nice maps from these people in 2001-02-20; the mailing label says
```
	RealEarth GlobeMaps
	Universal Marketing Company
	1013 Barrington Oaks Place
	Roswell GA  30075-4790
	
```
Maps & Mapping Agencies by Samuel J. Wormley 2002 http://www.cnde.iastate.edu/staff/swormley/maps/maps.html points to lots of maps (some of them free) and map calculators.
"Useful Sites for MapInfo Users (And all people who love maps)" http://www.research.umbc.edu/~roswell/mipage.html links to more interactive maps, FAQs, GIS shareware (Free maps for Palm Computers, etc.), online map collections, zip code information [FIXME:], computational geometry, etc.
``The one, the only, photograph of Earth'' by Neil Fraser, March 2001 http://vv.carleton.ca/~neil/writing/earth/ laughs at the over-use of one particular photo of Earth, and helps you find to other NASA archive photos of Earth.
Clementine Lunar Image Browser http://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clib/
http://www.fourmilab.to/earthview/ makes very pretty nearly-photographic ``maps'' of Earth and Luna.
Geography resources http://www.deweybrowse.org/Teacher_Resources.html#geo [FIXME: some of these I'm already familiar with ... check out the rest]
Conic Planet http://conic.sourceforge.net/ ``Conic Planet is a planetary body rendering site.'' It has several different projections of the (3D) surface of the Earth (also other planets) onto a flat picture. What is ``show current cloud covering'' ?
InternetCycles http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?InternetCycles has a nicely-done map/graph, and it makes me so very happy it's in a proper circle rather than a boring rectangle. -- DAV

map_software

[FIXME: merge with other heading of same name]

Pad++ http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad++ 2D, smooth zooming. "zooming 'multiscale interfaces'" "really, really cool" -- Jim Pick
``tools for making, viewing, and manipulating digital maps'' http://linux.dsi.internet2.edu/science/cartography/!INDEX.html (under Linux)
Cavor geospatial app engine http://sourceforge.net/projects/cavor/ ("Creating A Vision Of Reality") edits and views various sorts of vector files, GIS; related to "Bruce Peren's US Map project".
The GIS (Geographic Information Systems) FAQ http://www.census.gov/geo/www/faq-index.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer/ has lots of stuff on digital maps (???)
How to make your own electronic charts by Niels Elgaard Larsen http://www.diku.dk/users/elgaard/eps/help.html describes how to scan in paper charts and use them with EPS, the EPS: The Elgaard Positioning System http://eps.sourceforge.net/ This looks pretty cool. It can use GPS receivers.
"Semantic Interoperability for Geographic Information Systems" http://ai.bpa.arizona.edu/gis/ Artificial Intelligence Lab, The University of Arizona.
http://www.gpsy.com/gpsinfo/ points to many internet mapping programs. Maps on CD-ROM & Map Vendors; GPS Resellers/vendors; GPS Unit Manufacturers; GPS Antenna Manufacturers.
gmap is a map viewer http://academy.cas.cz/~gis/ The sources are distributed under General Public License.
Geography -- Maps, Datums, Waypoint Lists, Map Coverage Information, Formulas, and Related http://joe.mehaffey.com/
the Society of Cartographers http://www.soc.org.uk/ [FIXME: look for software ... Would they be interested in my sphere-to-plane tesselation ? ] [FIXME: email them my software links ... keep in mind that they are mostly Macintosh-oriented]
Free GIS and Mapping Tutorial http://www.mapcruzin.com/
Free GIS http://www.mapcruzin.com/free_gis.htm
GIS Information and Education http://www.flagstaff.k12.az.us/mount_elden/images/WwwrootLauf/gis/gis.htm gis software and free GIS data

map software

ready-to-run mapping software; and (non-image) raw map data. See #sphere_approximation for other "projections" and other ideas and algorithms that might be useful for mapping software

Tony Vincent http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/p5/handhelds/applications/socialstudies.html recommends "CityZen" for PalmOS and "Mapopolis"
Xtraceroute http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d3august/xt/ "Xtraceroute is a graphical version of the traceroute program, which traces the route your IP packets travel to their destination. This version shows that on a rotating globe, as a series of yellow lines between 'sites', shown as small balls of different colors."
DNS LOC http://www.ckdhr.com/dns-loc/ The DNS LOC (location) resource record ... it allows individual organizations to manage their own latitude and longitude information
gmap is a map viewer http://academy.cas.cz/~gis/ The sources are distributed under General Public License.
XASTIR (X Amateur Station Tracking and Information Reporting) http://www.xastir.org/ | http://sourceforge.net/projects/xastir/ ``XASTIR is an APRS(TM) program that is Open Source and free to use and pass out to others. It uses GPS tracking/maps and Amateur Radio to convey position reports, messaging, weather, and much more.'' ``XASTIR provides messaging and realtime tracking of stations using map plotting, via radio''
The GeoCommunity http://www.geocomm.com/ "GIS and mobile industry data, jobs, news, software" links to free map data.
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Data http://slashdot.org/science/01/08/03/1239217.shtml
Map Projections by John Savard http://plaza.powersurfr.com/jsavard/maps/mapint.htm has source code to a BASIC program that generates many different map projections, using data from the GSHHS data set http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/gshhs.html from the U. S. National Geophysical Data Center.
http://cartome.org/ ??? "an archive of news and spatial / geographic documents"
http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap ???
Geonames http://gnpswww.nima.mil/geonames/GNS/index.jsp ???
The Tennessee Valley Authority Map Store http://www.tva.gov/orgs/gie/mspage1.htm sells paper and digital maps (unfortunately, no "free digital maps" online).
TIGER Map Service http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl | http://tiger.census.gov/
The Oklahoma Image Map http://www.mstm.okstate.edu/students/jjohnson2/oklahoma.htm
Star Map: "enter the date, the U.T. time, and your longitude and latitude ... to get a star map ... you can control such things as the minimum magnitude of stars to show ... meteor showers". It returns the map in Postscript, but has a nice link to Ghostscript viewers. [FIXME: delete either this one or its redundant copy in astro_links.html]
http://mapweb.parc.xerox.com/map -- Zoomable Map of the Earth
http://wings.buffalo.edu/cgi/xeroxgw?Portland+OR
Dymaxion Map based on a icosahedron
BkmMapViewer http://www.koeln.org/mapview/
Another list of online maps http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/dns-loc/finding.html
[FIXME: this sounds very similar to the NAG system ...] The Maidenhead Locator System Grid Locators and Grid Squares http://www.amsat.org/amsat/toys/gridconv.html
TopoZone http://TopoZone.com/ ``every USGS 1:100,000, 1:63,360, 1:25,000, and 1:24,000 scale topographic map for the entire United States.'' ``TopoFactory can make maps with full georeferencing information (world files) for use in mapping, CAD, and GIS software from ESRI, MapInfo, and others.''
http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/ [FIXME: move to a special GIS section ? For people who want to *make* maps, not just view them.]
``Geography with your Guide Matt Rosenberg'' http://geography.about.com/ lots of information, maps, flags, etc. about every country.
Cartography http://geography.about.com/cs/cartography/ how to make your own maps.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/maps/csites/ ``The following sites provide useful information on cartography, geographic names databases, government agencies, and map libraries.'' links to : maps, aerial photographs, map projections,
http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/links.html weather, earthquates, geography, GIS software, maps...
http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/courses/remote_sensing/ lists many remote sensing data sources [FIXME: check them out]
Oklahoma Image Map http://www.mstm.okstate.edu/students/jjohnson2/oklahoma.htm [offline ?]

city information

finding interesting places on Earth

Top 100 Cities of the World - ranked by population http://www.worldatlas.com/citypops.htm
1. 28,025,000 Tokyo, Japan -
2. 18,131,000 Mexico City, Mexico -
3. 18,042,000 Mumbai, India -
4. 17,711,000 Sáo Paulo, Brazil -
5. 16,626,000 New York City, USA -
6. 14,173,000 Shanghai, China -
7. 13,488,000 Lagos, Nigeria -
8. 13,129,000 Los Angeles, USA -
9. 12,900,000 Calcutta, India -
10. 12,431,000 Buenos Aires, Argentina -
New York USA (the largest city in the U.S.) became the largest city in the world in 1925 (7.774 million) (overtaking London, England). In 1965, Tokyo became the largest city in the world, but New York stayed the 2nd largest city in the world until at least 1990. By 2000 New York plummeted to number 5 (five). (Its population actually grew, but population growth was much higher in those other cities). http://www.unchs.org/Istanbul+5/10-11.pdf | http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm
http://www.findyourspot.com/

``Take our fun online quiz to find the best places to live, work, & retire. Discover perfect hometowns rated to match YOUR unique interests. Compare the best cities and small towns with free colorful reports. Then search for jobs in your career field in your Top Spots.''
Choosing a City http://www.library.nwu.edu/reference/careers/cities.html
the salary calculator(tm) ... Select "moving from" and "moving to" states. http://www.homefair.com/homefair/calc/salcalc.html
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc.asp
http://www.bestplaces.net/html/city_compare.asp lets you pick 2 cities in the US, and give you lots of side-by-side statistics. I think it's funny that one of the first few statistics is ``How many Starbucks ?''. The ``Climate | Tornado'' stat appears to be broken -- it indicates 0 risk of tornado for every city I've tested; I expected higher risk for Tulsa OK.
http://www.cityrating.com/costofliving.asp
Large Cities in the World http://www.travelgis.com/default.asp?framesrc=/world/majorcities.asp ``This page lists all cities with population of more than 100,000 in the world. There are about 3400 cities in this list. '' [FIXME: bignums ?]
http://oceania.org/ The Atlantis Project -- a city built of concrete and steel, floating in the Caribbean.
pretty photos of greece.html#Thessaloniki and other cities [FIXME: copy base URI]
http://www.cnn.com/TRAVEL/CITY.GUIDES/WORLD/Europe/greece/ [FIXME: trim to base URI]
Cities Over 10,000 Population (in the 50 United States) http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/~chuck/2002gt380/subcnty9099.pdf (BrokenLink as of 2005-09-22 -- offline ?)

other map stuff

``The map is not the territory.'' -- unknown
"Dissertation Could Be Security Threat: Student's Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information" article by Laura Blumenfeld, Tuesday, July 8, 2003 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23689-2003Jul7.html

Sean Gorman ...
... Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society and a secure society.
... "It's a tricky balance," said Michael Vatis, founder and first director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. ..."But I don't think security through obscurity is a winning strategy."
Gorman compiled his mega-map using publicly available material he found on the Internet. None of it was classified. His interest in maps evolved from his childhood, he said, because he "grew up all over the place." Hunched in the back seat of the family car, he would puzzle over maps, trying to figure out where they should turn. Five years ago, he began work on a master's degree in geography. His original intention was to map the physical infrastructure of the Internet, to see who was connected, who was not, and to measure its economic impact.
... "I wasn't even thinking about implications."
The implications, however, in the post-Sept. 11 world, were enough to knock the wind out of John M. Derrick Jr., chairman of the board of Pepco Holdings Inc., which provides power to 1.8 million customers. When a reporter showed him sample pages of Gorman's findings, he exhaled sharply.
"This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist. "Why in the world have we been so stupid as a country to have all this information in the public domain? Does that openness still make sense? It sure as hell doesn't to me."
...

... perhaps link to "transparent society", ways to make society open *and* secure.
the Flat-Earth Society http://flat-earth.org/ links to the Cartographer's Conspiracy Cabal http://fantasymaps.com/
the international square earth society http://pw1.netcom.com/~rogermw/square_earth.html links to "the International Flat Earth Research Society" http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm
"A Small Spherical Universe after All?" http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cosmology-01f.html | mirror http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=6934 | http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nouvelle/dec01/luminet.en.shtml mentions that

there are an infinite number of spherical spaceforms, including the lens spaces and the fascinating Poincaré space. ...
The authors give the construction and complete classification of all 3-dimensional spherical spaces, and discuss which topologies are likely to be detectable by crystallographic methods. They predict the shape of the pair separation histogram ...
The authors are Jean-Pierre Luminet (DARC/LUTH, Observatoire de Paris, France), Roland Lehoucq (Service d’Astrophysique, CEA Saclay, France), Jean-Philippe Uzan (Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Orsay, France), Evelise Gausmann (Université de Sao Paulo, Brésil) et Jeffrey Weeks (Canton, USA).

automobile design

Aquada Sports Amphibian
- "Amphibious car drives over water" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3077508.stm
- http://www.gibbstech.co.uk/ | mirror http://www.aquada.co.uk/
"The car that swims" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/430721.stm
"Self-parking car" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3198619.stm
"The car that drives you" BBC, February 17, 1999 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/281432.stm There would also need to be legal changes. In the UK, for example, automatic control of steering and brakes is illegal.

flying car

"It's the 21st century! I was promised flying cars! I don't see any flying cars!" http://www.nasaexplores.com/show2_articlea.php?id=01-003
"How Flying Cars Will Work" by Kevin Bonsor http://travel.howstuffworks.com/flying-car.htm
http://future.newsday.com/6/fbak0618.htm
flying car http://www.viewaskew.com/tv/leno/flyingcar.html ???
"Flying car ready for take-off" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/354129.stm Canadian engineer Paul Moller's Skycar M400
[aircraft] THE YEAR 2000-2001 FUTURISTIC TRANSPORTATION MARKET REVIEW Flying Cars, VTOL's, Watercraft and Futuristic Vehicles Available Now and What's On The Way A Journalistic Service Of Skypad Technologies Int'l http://www.skypadtech.com/Profile.htm [includes a paragraph and photo of the SoloTrek XFV from Millennium Jet ]
Skycar links http://www.skycar.co.za/related_links.asp

skyhook design

skyhooks, space elevators, beanstalks, etc.

also Loftstrom loops.

Designing a skyhook has some similarities to #spacecraft_design , yet in other ways it's completely different than any artifact ever built before.

"space elevator" appears stationary (perhaps with minor vibrations) to someone standing on Earth (or whatever planet it is installed on). The "skyhook" appears to spin; typically one end comes down to (near) the planet surface, grabs the cargo, then pulls back out ... and releases it somewhere out in space. "rotavators, which are basically rotating shorter space elevators in lower orbits"

Steven Den Beste http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/10/GreatChipmunkSpaceshipRac.shtml has a good introduction to the physics of the space elevator -- especially the counter-intuitive fact that a climber pulling itself *up* the elevator also pushes it sideways. (This is sometimes called the "Coriolis Force" http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/CoriolisForce.html )
"Elevator World" magazine "the international news provider for the vertical transportation industry" http://elevator-world.com/ (includes comics)
the Space Elevator http://megafoundation.org/UltraHIQ/HIQNews/2003-9-29-Space_Elevators.htm has a brief explanation of how to construct the space elevator, a nice to-scale diagram of Earth and geosynchronous orbit, and a artist's rendition of a climber widening the ribbon.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SpaceElevator [FIXME: move this entire section there ?]
"Thoughts on Space Elevators" by Blaise Gassend http://gassend.com/elevator has good charts and graphs ("the dynamics of objects released from the SE at any altitude"), and points to "the space elevator: physical principles" by Ranko Artukovic', Zadar, Croatia http://www.zadar.net/space-elevator/
"The Space Elevator Ribbon Climbing Robot Competition" http://www.gotrobots.com/space_elevator/