Comments for History Research Hacks

Comment on A brief note on GeoCommons by Shane Landrum

Shane Landrum — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:10:57 +0000

Note here, mostly for my own reference later: The choropleth example provided by protovis behaves a lot more like I want my map to behave. The data being mapped is straightforwardly numerical, unlike mine, but the conditional coloring code seems easy enough to edit. Unfortunately, the data's in JSON format, which will require some research and hacking around to export from Google Docs.

Comment on A brief note on GeoCommons by Shane Landrum

Shane Landrum — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:53:57 +0000

I'm trying to do choropleth-esque maps that replicate, more or less, this historical item: There are actually 3 kinds of data mapped on there: states in the federal birth registration area (red), states with good laws but not yet in the birth registration area (pink), states with unsatisfactory laws (yellow). I know that I'd need to have 3 separate columns of data to map that appropriately; for now, I've just been trying to map one (the birth registration area), and I'm trying to map it year-by-year to explore a question about state-by-state policy diffusion. The map I've got so far is here, (dataset here). Here's what I'd like to do and what problems I've found:

There's no way (that I've found so far) to animate time-series data that's associated with boundaried areas like states. Apparently one can do this for points but not for states. What I really want is a time slider that I can use to select a date, and have it show a state either shaded (red) or unshaded (clear). I tried numerous ways to format a data set with booleans (like this), but that didn't seem to work either.
When I'm setting up the divisions of the choropleth colors, the slider represents dates as decimals, not as YYYY/MM/DD; this shows up in the legend as well, and it makes my map look as if it's handling quantitative data rather than dates.
There's no way to indicate that my date data is discrete, not continuous, for purposes of the choropleth sliders. In the original data I'm working from, it's actually just a set of years. My ideal would be that I could configure the choropleth and time-shown sliders to work at different levels of detail: continuous (date-time), by day, by month, and by year.

Anything you can suggest to work around these problems would be great. Thanks for your comment.

Comment on A brief note on GeoCommons by Kate Chapman

Kate Chapman — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:48:45 +0000

Hey Shane,

Glad you like GeoCommons. What is the issue with date formatting? I know it isn’t perfect, but maybe I have some tips that can help!

-Kate

Comment on Ocropus on OS X: frustrations by wasi

wasi — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:03:23 +0000

Someone put Ocropus in a working (also on Snow Leopard!) App: Velocraptor. Works rather OK, though it didn’t get improved lastly anymore. You can use it for free, but you should pay 29$ if you like it.

http://www.velocraptor.com/

Comment on Ocropus on OS X: frustrations by Jeroen

Jeroen — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:23:08 +0000

Hi Shane, I’ve installed TakOCR on my Macbook with Snow Leopard and it works like a charm. It took me a while to figure out to drag the document on the program icon and not to start it upfront.
Cheers,

Jeroen

Comment on Naming archival reference photos by Michael

Michael — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 12:43:42 +0000

This is the best real-world example of how to use Hazel I have found on-line, thanks for putting in the effort to describe it for all of us.

Comment on Ocropus on OS X: frustrations by Moritz Marasma

Moritz Marasma — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:33:05 +0000

I was about to download TakOCR and install it on my Mac running Snow Leopard, then I read your post, so thanks for the timely info. Now my question is: is there any other option, or should I go back to Windows and use my girlfriend’s netbook sitting next to my Mac on the same desk?
Regards

Moritz