Reinder spotted this plate decorated with a map of Sicily at the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam, the daily flea market.

Click on the image above to view the map Anyone who knows me knows that two of my top passions are maps and football, more specifically The Arsenal. Fans are always debating the historic achievements of their clubs (in some cases going back 40 years or more to find success), so I thought I would use a map canvas as a backdrop to an interactive dashboard to explore the connections between finances and success.

James Wolff’s Spies and Other Gods is a great example of the "unreliable" spy novel. It is a clever, witty, and deeply puzzling read that eschews the usual genre tropes in favor of something far more atmospheric and unsettling. The story opens with a premise that feels both tragic and darkly comic: Sir William Rentoul, the Head of British Intelligence, is stumbling toward retirement through a literal and metaphorical brain fog.

James Wolff’s Spies and Other Gods is a great example of the "unreliable" spy novel. It is a clever, witty, and deeply puzzling read that eschews the usual genre tropes in favor of something far more atmospheric and unsettling. The story opens with a premise that feels both tragic and darkly comic: Sir William Rentoul, the Head of British Intelligence, is stumbling toward retirement through a literal and metaphorical brain fog.

Alex shared this pic, with apologies for the quality. I'm left wondering "What! Why?"

Another mappy truck, this time spotted by Ken Field somewhere in the US.

Click on image above to view the Geomob Events map Last Friday I recorded a podcast with Ed Freyfogle about my vibe coding exploits. In the podcast Ed challenged me to make a map of Geomob events, so on Sunday afternoon I sat down to see what I could do. Most of the struggles with building this map related to extracting the events data from the Geomob web site, the site is built from markdown pages which are not consistently structured and have a lot of free form text, dates as text strings etc.

Rollo spotted this jigsaw of John Speeds county maps in a charity shop. For reasons that I can't understand he didn't buy it.

Reinder spotted this in the in the public library in The Hague " on the floor there is a map - not surprisingly - of the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. Been here many times, but never saw this before. "

Melinda Clarke, the creator of the Melbourne Map has branched out with a range of beautiful silk scarves with some very stylish map designs including, of course, The Melbourne Map. n this pic my pal Denise McKenzie is wearing Melbourne at the GeoBusiness conference. Here's Melinda with her vintage New York scarf And here she is with the Melbourne map You can order the scarves from her site at a beautiful gift for a map lover.

Click on image above to view the map Do the levels of deaths from mass shootings in the US correlate with the gun policies of individual states? I thought this might be an interesting topic to explore in my journey of mapping with AI, you can draw a conclusion from the screenshot above or wait until you get to the end of this post for my thoughts.

This is not the opening screen of some Esri software, it's the in-flight mapping system on Ken's last flight to the UK

I started out trying to make web maps with WebMapperGPT and then Google Gemini to scratch an itch after my pal Ken Field said he was going to make a map a day in 2026. I thought I would give it a try and as some of the previous posts in this thread have shown I have been able to make some reasonable web maps with quite nice design and interaction (IMHO).

In Jane Rogoyska’s Hotel Exile, the Hotel Lutetia is far more than a backdrop; it is a living, breathing witness to the soul of twentieth-century Europe. Rogoyska has achieved something truly remarkable here, imbuing this iconic Left Bank institution with a persona that carries the crushing weight of a century. By focusing on this single, grand landmark, she offers an unflinching and brilliant study of the refugee experience, beginning with the 1930s exodus of intellectuals and political dissidents who sought sanctuary within its walls while dreaming of a Germany free from Hitler.

Marc Tobias spotted this old school map in Ed Frefogles home. It's pretty nig!

"World of communication’, in Rome, in the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. It dates from 1972 and is made by Jiří Kolář. " I htink the collage on the globe is made with postage stamps.

Reinder spotted these mappy suitcases in a hotel window in Rome. He was so taken with them that he didn't mention the nice looking globe, while his wife apparently was more impressed by the towels folded as swans. Go figure! If only those cases were a bit bigger and had wheels.

Reinder spotted this mosaic map of the Old City of Rome, "Saw this in the lobby of the Santa Chiara hotel in Rome. The size of the map is let’s say 50 x 70 cm, it is made of little stones of approximately 4 x 4 mm. No artist is mentioned — but he or she deserves our respect. Ciao!"

Click the image to go the Unequal London Map (v2) I was quite pleased with the first version of the Unequal London Map, but by the time I had crawled over the finish line I realised that there were several choices that I had made which were less than ideal, particularly with regard to the data I selected. I thought it should be quite easy to build another version with more/different data and remedy some of the other issues.

Remember Santa's Delivery Route from Xmas Eve? Ken sent me this modern version of that map which he spotted in the lobby of the Great Northern Hotel next to Kings Cross. Note that this time the map is north up.

After the relative success of my first attempt to build a map with WebMapperGPT (WMGPT) I wanted to try something a bit more ambitious. A conversation about how in most parts of London rich and poor live relatively close to each other, prompted me to try and build a map to illustrate Unequal London. This was a much more complex project with several stages: