Back from Spring Break

I hope everyone enjoyed their spring break. For the first time in four years, I actually got a spring break--I no longer run track so I got to leave for the whole week. And when I say I took the whole week off--I did!! Whenever I get the chance, I go home to visit my family; so that is where I went, instead of South Padre or Cabo. When I got home my parents and my little sister was just coming home from my sisters 4th official college visit. She is a senior in High school, and has been going through the process of finding out where she is going to continue her education, and start a new chapter in her life. She is a very good triple jumper (and even though I do not want to admit it, she is better than me) and many schools has expressed interest in her including LSU, Auburn, Stanford, University of Pittsburg, Kansas State, Indiana, University of New Mexico, TCU, a lot of places. She went to the schools, hung out with the team, but just was not ready to sign by the first high school signing date Feb 1, 2012.

So she waited, and when she came back from her visit (after she settled down from the surprise I gave her) she said that she wanted to sign with Missouri. She called the coach, they sent the papers, and now my baby sister is on a Full ride track scholarship to Mizzou.

In celebration of this, I decided to make a map of the schools she will be competing against next year, and some of the other schools in the SEC are ones that offered her track scholarships as well. (:

http://bit.ly/H9DMA1

London 2012 Olympics

Here is a basemap that could be used for my final project.

It is a neutral background with minimum labels, that can be used for a London 2012 Olympics map.

http://bit.ly/ymMJgg

IAAF World Indoor Championships

My Track Coach is the Olympic Relay Coordinator, and this week he was in Turkey for the IAAF World Championships. So I figured that would be my next Map. I made a map of the top 5 (so far) medal ranked countries at the meet. I included how many medals they have, who and what event the medals were received, as well as the total team points, and the overall place. All the information was retrieved from http://www.iaaf.org/Mini/wic12/Index.aspx && the flags were from google.

here is my map:

http://bit.ly/yj4TNE

enjoy.

Silly mistakes...

I have got to remember my log in information on ArcGIS before I make a map next time.

I guess I will make this map again once i recover my log in and password.

Better news:
I learned how to change the symbols on the maps (:
-You will see I was able to insert flags as the symbols, once I make my map again. It looked nice until it deleted...



I shall return....with a map

Eureka!

I just reached a turning point with this website. I was getting a little worried because I thought I would have to create layers manually, which was going to end up being a lot to handle. But I was clicking around and found that I can search layers, change the canvas, add demographic information, all kinds of things. The data was already collected. 

Needless to say... I just got very EXCITED!

I was looking at some tips on making great base maps, and people want simple background so that they can create their own maps--yes, I know it took me awhile to notice that. It is like when you are selling a house. You present the house with simple items, so that the potential buyer can visualize putting their own flare to the space, promoting them to buy the house; same with base maps.

For my end-of-the-year project, I have to figure out how to create simple base maps that people want to use. What am I going to do with my maps that sets them apart from other simple, base maps...hmmm?

back to thinking and wondering around on ArcGIS 

To Do list:

I apologize for being gone for a few weeks, I got caught up with other school work-->which is not an excuse. I am just being honest.

I was looking around on ArcGIS, and there are some really cool maps that I would love to try out.

For Example, this map http://bit.ly/z85cid has a really cool, vintage layout but I don't know how to even get my stuff to look like that.

Today, I am going to look around and see if I can figure out how to make a cartogram map. Hopefully, I figure it out.

Be back later

I want to do something like this...