Category: Miscellaneous
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Tracking my Travels
I have returned from my brief journey to the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coasts. So let’s wrap up this series of recent posts with a final entry. As I mentioned previously, the mapping tools provided with Google Analytics simply fascinate me. Now I’ve discovered yet another use for them: recording my travels. The Resulting Map…
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Amateur Radio County Hunters
I never know what I might encounter while researching geographic oddities on the Internet. As a case in point, I came across an entire subculture of people as fascinated by counties as myself while I was putting together my recent series on the Smallest County in the United States. They call themselves the County Hunters.…
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National Geographic Museum
The Twelve Mile Circle blog fixates on geography and travel. Naturally then, it appreciates the accomplishments of the National Geographic Society over its 120 year history. What many readers may not know is that members of the public can get a peek at the results of some of their research. The society runs a small…
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New Urbanism Viewed through Maps
An urban design movement began to coalesce in the early 1980’s as a counterbalance to what planners and architects viewed as the sprawl of modern suburbs arising from the postwar environment. Practitioners called it “New Urbanism“. Organizations such as the Congress for the New Urbanism began to promote its hallmarks. Some of the features typical…
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Festival of Maps – Chicago
The ongoing Festival of Maps in Chicago [link no longer works] features the combined efforts of more than 30 cultural and scientific institutions. It portrays the significance of and reflection of maps upon culture, exploration, discovery, and the world around us. Thus, the festival incorporates the physical display of maps along with lectures, seminars and…
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Santa Claus, Indiana
In southern Indiana east of Evansville, a town of 2,000 people exudes the holiday spirit year-round. They gave it the curious name “Santa Claus” (map). What the Clause? Various sources including Wikipedia claim that the town was originally called Santa Fe when it was founded in 1856. However residents had to change the name when…
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Corners
I have a fascination with political boundaries, whether national, state/provincial, county, or town. Especially, I like corners where three or more join together at a point. On my website I’ve compiled trip reports about a few of those locations. Most well known, it includes the renowned 4-Corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Additionally I…
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Washington DC Area’s Last Phone Booth
NOTE: Twelve Mile Circle originally posted this article in November 2007. Verizon has since removed this phone booth. Sometimes changing technology can impact the landscape around it. Twelve Mile Circle notes the looming passage of an era: The Washington Post reported today on the Washington DC area’s last public phone booth. Apparently none of us…
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Thanksgiving Towns
Those of you in the United States will be celebrating Thanksgiving on November 22nd, so in recognition of that happy occasion, Twelve Mile Circle offers you a guide for your holiday feast. No Thanksgiving is complete without Turkey, so we offer several choices on the menu: Turkey in Texas, North Carolina, Arkansas and West Virginia;…
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Google Maps – “My Maps” Capability
I’ve embedded a number of Google Maps on pages throughout my website using the API for a variety of different personal interests, including my Brewery Visit map and my Family Descendants in Dodge & Jefferson Counties map. They weren’t particularly difficult to put together. However, they did require at least a rudimentary understanding of HTML, XML…