First I had to start off by creating the animations by using Ulead GIF Animator ( a pretty fitting name for the program). This was pretty easy to figure out with the help of the Ulead GIF Animator packet that was circulating throughout the class. All you really need to do is locate the layers heading on the toolbar and then click add images. After that, select the images that you would like to animate. You are able to move the pictures in different orders by using the move up/move down buttons also located on the toobar at the top of the page. And that’s pretty much it. Another helpful tool that you can use is the delay, or how long you want to wait until the next map shows up. You can test this out beucause you do not want the speed of the cycle to be too fast, and you do not want it to be too slow either. I went with about one second for my map animations. It is about the perfect speed, in my opinion You can select preview to view a relatively quick run through of what the animation will look like.  After I got done saving these animations to the HTML folder (THIS WAS WHY I COULD NOT PUT THE IMAGES ON THE WEBPAGES BEFORE!!!) Such a silly mistake…Anywho i was now able to put the animations on the animations page and they look pretty spiffy if I do say so myself. I also added some text describing each of the maps that are located on this page. I also added some links such as the census bureau to give them some credit for the information that I have mapped. I have made other adjustments as well such as background color (but I’m stil fiddling with it to make it look as good as possible.  By making a few adjustments and adding text to each of my pages I have finally completed the Geography 535 course project.

I wanted to see my maps on one of my HTML pages, but I could not get them to load to my page. I put the files through the CuteFTP but I still could not figure out how to get my maps to any of the pages. Hopefully I can figure them out during lab 9, and what I hope more is that they will look alright on the computer screen, and if not then I think I might be in some trouble, because what would be the point of having a map if the people trying to read them can’t. It would be one giant waste of time. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed

We also had to come up with the color scheme that we though would look best on our webpages. this part was fun though, getting to decide color schemes lets you take your mind off of the work that you are accomplishing while doing so. So it was fun work. The different types of maps that we made were first the Population Change maps which showed over the course of 106 years, how much (in percent) the population has changed for each county. The next type of map that we created were graduated symbol maps. These let the reader see, with the use of different size shapes (in my case circles), how much the population change has either increased or decreased over the years. The third map that we created was the proportional symbol map. This map lets you see the population of the different counties in Colorado, again by using shapes. The fourth and final map that we created was the dot density map. This map give the reader a chance to see the different population by using dots to represent a number of people in the county.

Here are some definitions that could help those reading this to better understand some different tools within ArcGIS that we in GEOG 353 are using to complete this project.

Select by Attributes- This function brings up the attributes table which is a table that shows all of the attributes you selected to be seen in this table. You are able to select any attributes that you would like to be seen in the table.

Query- A request to select features or records from a database. A query is often written as a statement or logical expression

Fields (in a Table) – A column in a table that stores the values for a single attribute

Records (in a Table)- A set of related data fields, often a row in a database, containing all the attribute values for a single feature. For example, in an address database, the fields that together provide the address for a specific individual comprise one record. In the SQL query language, a record is analogous to a tuple

Attributes- Nonspatial information about a geographic feature in a GIS, usually stored in a table and linked to the feature by a unique identifier. For example, attributes of a river might include its name, length, and sediment load at a gauging station

Relational Database- A data structure in which collections of tables are logically associated with each other by shared fields.

Join function- The joining of two different files into one common database

Monitor Fire- When the monitor catches fire because your two files do not match up nicely when trying to join them.

Calculate / Field Calculator- Used like normal calculator. But you are able to take different fields on the attributes table and find the differences between them.

The two different maps that I decided to make were one map of Ohio and vacant residents for this I made the scale shade light to dark red. The other was number of households for this I made the scale light to dark blue. there is a larger number of households around bigger cities where highways come together. The number of vacant houses are larger when you move to southeast Ohio where there is the fewest amount of highways.

Two interesting things that I found out how to do were compare different points on one map using different colored points. And another thing that I found out how to do was put different graphs on the map to compare different values of different parts of the map.

I created a map of Colorado (the state that I am doing my main project on) and looked at some of the similar things as the Ohio map such as population and its correspondence to highways. The highways all lead to main cities such as Boulder and this happens to be where the population is the highest. I also added rivers to the map and most of them are in central to western Colorado.

I then made another map of the United States and put points to where all the golf courses in the United States were located. I was not a huge fan to see how large Alaska was compared to the rest of the united states because it made it difficult to look at what I was mapping because there aren’t even any golf courses pointed in Alaska. I also added and area code layer to the map as well, for no real reason in particular other than curiosity.

Map Document (mxd file)- The file in ArcMap that contaions one map, its layout, and its associated layers, table, charts, and reports. Map documents can be printed or embedded in other documents.

Table of Contents- A tabbed list of data frames and layers (or tables) on a map that shows how the data is symbolized, the source of the data, and whether or not each layer is selectable.

Data Frame- A map element that describes a geographic extent, a page extent, a coordinate system, and other display properties for one or more layers in ArcMap.

Map Layer- The visual representation of a geographic dataset in any digital map environment. Conceptually, a layer is a slice or stratum of the geographic reality in a particular area, and is more or less equivalent to a legend item on a paper map.

Attribute Table- A database or tabular file containing information about a set of geographic features, usually arranged so that each row represents a feature and each column represents one feature attribute.

I think that the whole idea of ArcGIS is pretty cool. Its interesting to be able to chart data onto maps and make your own personal maps.  Pretty much whatever you have the data for can go into making a map and changing up the detalis and values can make your map more interesting.

Google API key: ABQIAAAA3TtQdL3FgmtNolbDOAWJ2xQ6zKRAHsOhKTTXFp340CvfYsMksBS3k1MBxGxbUlWlwDC-bjajfe-b9A

9-17-07 Continuing Lab 2 I started off by linking my index page to my lab log, but now I need to figure out how to link the lab log back to the index page and possibly all other pages….’m having a bit of trouble with this because I need to find out how to link from a page that already exists on the web….

I linked my lab log to the rest of my pages by writing a post that contains links to all of my pages.

I have been making solid process on my map mashup page. I have placed my two points (Denver, Colorado and Mile High Stadium) on the map and have decided what longitude and latitude lines the page should start at. But I need to decide what zoom level I want my map to start at. I linked all of my pages to the map mashup and it works.

9-19-07 I continued plotting the points to the map mashup page. I also added a few pictures to some of my pages, mostly to the main project page. I also added different links to my main page to things that I am interested in such as the Cleveland Indians, running, and just sports in general.

9-24-07 I finished plotting the points on my map mashup page. I listed all of the points, that are shown, under the map itself on the mashup page.

By typing in a key word from a search engine such as Google can be a very easy or quick way to find what you are looking for on the WWW. But it can also be a tool that can lead to astray from what you are actually looking for. For example when I was searching for the Colorado census, I did in fact come across the U.S Census Bureau page as one of the first links that was available for me. So there are a lot of sites that come up that will contain the information that you are looking for.

Then there are the sites that will not have any of the information that you are looking for. The sites that come up on the search engine of your choice are websites that contain the words that you have typed in. Here is the problem, some websites will contain these words but have nothing to do with the information that you are looking for and will be useless for your research.

I found the information I was looking for on:

http://dola.colorado.gov/demog_webapps/population_census

This is the Colorado State Demography Office Homepage

The only copyright information that I could find was the fact that the information belongs to the state of Colorado. Other than that nothing.

…to Brandon Hunter’s Home Page

…Geography 353 Main Project Page

…to Geography 353 Animation Page

…to Lab Log Blog

…check my progress

…to map mashup