Monday dog March 31, 2008
Posted by Jason in Pets & Animals.2 comments
More fun with Google Earth March 14, 2008
Posted by Jason in Miscellany.add a comment
Here’s a neat thing you can do with image overlays: Livonia Voting Districts. I added my city/township layer so I could see where the boundaries were and then stretched the Livonia image to fit over the city. I got the file from the city’s website a while back so I think it’s fairly accurate.
Maybe I should make a “Maps” category…
My first Google map! March 13, 2008
Posted by Jason in 2006 Elections.3 comments
As most of you know I have a thing for maps. Election maps in particular. So when I saw people combining Google Earth with election results (example) I knew I had to learn how to do it myself!
Here’s my first map (must have Google Earth to view). It shows the results of the 2006 election in the 100th Michigan House. Cool, no? 
My map doesn’t have the 3-D effect that Kenton’s does. I may go in and add that later. I just wanted to get a proof-of-concept going first.
I was able to get the township boundaries by converting a .shp file from the Census Bureau into KML. My ultimate goal is to automate everything with custom software. That’s definitely possible with this method since the colors are stored in a separate file from the boundary data. I still need to figure out if I can import description data so that when you click on a city or township name it brings up a balloon with the election statistics for that area. If I can’t figure that out then the maps would be just like the one I linked to above, which isn’t that bad really. I guess I just want to give myself even more work to do!
More map data! March 5, 2008
Posted by Jason in Politics.add a comment
While searching for Michigan election data I happened to come across this link. The website that press release is about has precinct-level data for Michigan elections for 1992 onward! They have earlier dates but apparently the some kind of translation “keys” were lost and only the raw data is available. Very cool though! Time to make more maps.
Maps going up March 5, 2008
Posted by Jason in Politics.add a comment
I’ve finally started uploading my completed election maps that I’ve been working on for so long. Check them out on the Michigan politics page.
Formatting problem fixed March 5, 2008
Posted by Jason in Blogging.add a comment
You may have noticed (or not) that my sidebar was getting placed below the posts recently. I just noticed it today. I tracked the problem down to some stray div statements in the HTML on the local governments post. It’s fixed now!
Jason Felton is a homo sapien in his mid-20s observed to be living in west Michigan. Observations suggest that he spends way too much time on the internet reading blogs, researching family trees, and keeping track of current events in science and politics. Other interests of his include atheism, electronics, religion, and history, among many other things.
