17 replies to this topic

[frax]

There are not enough polls here! The other day I was procrastinating preparing a legend for a map I was working on, thinking that must be the most boring thing to do on a map...

What do you think?

More suggestions for other alternatives/options are welcome!

[David Medeiros]

I guess I'm a true cartographer if I have hard time coming up with a quick answer huh?

Can I sub tedious for boring? Labeling can be VERY tedious (and boring I guess) but at least there are those moments when you have a really tight section and you work out the label positions in such a way that it all fits and looks elegant. To me that's kind of exciting but still incredibly tedious.

[Crischan]

For me definitely data transformation - especially as my state uses a special UTM33N projection, one which uses a false easting of 3500000 instead of 500000. This was decided long time ago because some database was optimized for 7-digits x values like in the old days (Gauss-Krüger) and they thought this was a nice solution...
Gives you trouble all the time when mixing data in official UTM33N and that "broken" UTM33N...
Thank god they are switching over to regular UTM33N. But that 7-digit data will stay around for a while...

Nice poll, we should have more of them!

[frax]

Tedious works as well... I dont' do enough topographic/large-scale/city maps, so not that much labelling for me.

Next month I will do a poll on the most FUN part of cartography!

[razornole]

Tough one. Every mapping project is different. Data acquisition can suck if I'm downloading large files from various sources, but if I have to go out into the field to acquire the data it becomes a lot of fun.

kru

[Charles Syrett]

Those of us who have done lots of detailed city street maps will note the lack of two more elements here: drawing and indexing. Drawing can be ho-hum, but I can usually schedule it to coincide with a webinar or even just some really good music. Indexing: to do it properly, you have to do it by hand, and it's a lot of gruntwork. It requires you to pay close attention, and yet it's non-creative and repetitive. That gets my vote for most boring, I guess.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[Paul H]

Those of us who have done lots of detailed city street maps will note the lack of two more elements here: drawing and indexing. Drawing can be ho-hum, but I can usually schedule it to coincide with a webinar or even just some really good music. Indexing: to do it properly, you have to do it by hand, and it's a lot of gruntwork. It requires you to pay close attention, and yet it's non-creative and repetitive. That gets my vote for most boring, I guess.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Yeah, I was looking for the "indexing" choice, didn't see it, so I picked labeling instead. They are both very tedious.

[Charles Syrett]

Yeah, I was looking for the "indexing" choice, didn't see it, so I picked labeling instead. They are both very tedious.

This is all pretty personal stuff, but....for me there's a big diff between labeling and indexing. In labeling, there's almost always an element of creative problem solving. Indexing, on the other hand, is rote -- either you get it right, or you don't. And yet you have to pay attention to minute detail. Bleh.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[Hans van der Maarel]

Right now: importing data... 24 times the same steps (1 globe, 2 hemispheres of 12 gores each)

[David Medeiros]

Those of us who have done lots of detailed city street maps will note the lack of two more elements here: drawing and indexing. Drawing can be ho-hum, but I can usually schedule it to coincide with a webinar or even just some really good music. Indexing: to do it properly, you have to do it by hand, and it's a lot of gruntwork. It requires you to pay close attention, and yet it's non-creative and repetitive. That gets my vote for most boring, I guess.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Indexing! I forgot about indexing, I haven't dome a city map in a while... there is little to like about indexing and it's certainly boring.

[Dennis McClendon]

Thinning and redrawing and generalizing hydro. I like drawing streets, because they have an underlying geometry and at least there's a good chance someone will look at them. But I despise spending hours and hours on the lakes of northern Québec or figuring out which tributaries of the Amazon matter or the scuzzholes of central Florida when no one will ever pay the slightest bit of attention to them.

Thank you Tom for Natural Earth Vector!

[aallen]

Great poll question, I would have to go with data transformation, after I have collected the data for a project I then set up the scripts for a batch process for the index and the base data (contours, roads, dems, polygons, etc). This process does not include any cartographic enjoyment basically I set up the script and let the machine chug (fun no but the results are a huge benefit).

Andrew Allen
www.backroadmapbooks.com

[Adam Wilbert]

I think the poll is also showing something else thats interesting: So far we've collectively rated—by not voting for—GIS, Shaded Relief and Research as our most favorite (or at least "least dullest!") activities.

[MapMedia]

I seam to have a lot of steps pre-packaged (legends, hillshade, etc.) so for me it would have to be the GIS work, if any, up front. Generalizing, transformations, clipping, etc. But sometimes this can be fun if I am tinkering on an experimental look.

[Kathi]

Looking at the poll results, I'm intrigued how a category getting 0 votes and thus 0 % still has a bar suggesting some 2 or 3 %... Zero should be represented by a single-pixel line at most, IMO.

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In my work, I tend to get dxf-data (and other formats) that's not georeferenced, and since many architects don't think it necessary to include any reference points like a coordinate grid, it's often very tedious and boring to search for such points and georeference such a plan.