This bra and knickers set is made of Second World War escape maps – classified tools for evading enemy capture. It was made for Lady Mountbatten from RAF escape maps of Italy. Printed on silk for durability, these maps became surplus after the war when secrecy was no longer critical. Amid post-war silk shortages, these maps found surprising second lives. This example of wartime ingenuity reveals hidden histories in an unusually intimate form.

This is a really important map.

“The partition of British India in 1947 into the new nations of India and Pakistan resulted in massive displacement and loss of life. In 1946, this map was produced showing different potential boundary lines between the new countries, drawn by hand in black ink. The map accompanied this top-secret report commissioned by Earl Wavell, the Viceroy and Governor General of India, which investigated the potential impacts of partition on a newly created Pakistan”

2025 was another good year for gardening. We had only a tiny bit of hail damage in May and June, and a lengthy period of warm fall temperatures. I had the usual great green bean harvest, plentiful cucumbers and melons, and exceptional crops of peppers and tomatoes.

The Secret Maps exhibition at the British Library, London is well worth a visit. Over the next few days I am going to post some of the exhibits that were a bit Map in the Wild

First up is this 16th-century satirical engraving known as the Fool’s Cap Map of the World (circa 1590)

Saw this on a tour of The United Nations HQ in New York, it is part of a display of 30 wood block prints by Otavio Roth illustrating each of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

December 10 is Human Rights Day, a United Nations (UN) campaign that calls for people to know and push for their rights no matter where they are in the world.

Elizabeth spotted these mappy gift bags in a local shop

Reinder said “My wife and I did a presentation / lecture on our new book ‘Nederland Waterland’ in the city of Roermond, in the south of the Netherlands, at a bookshop called De kleine tovenaar (the little wizzard). At the children’s books department, they’ve got a few globes … “

Reinder and his wife have written a book on Dutch history based on 100 maps (of course!) “The book deals with the history of our country in 100 maps and 100 essays – with the emphasis on water: floods, rivers, islands, tourism, harbours  etc.”

Elizabeth spotted this butchers in Borough Market

Toby spotted these map earrings at Geomob Lisbon a couple of weeks ago. They are designed by Kateryna Konieva who is launching her new collection of mappy jewellery

If I wore earrings …

Reinder said “There is this quite prolific Dutch writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, born in 1968. Today I heard a presentation on the work he did when he was a kid: he designed a country called Mocanië. The full design is extremely detailed, with even a language and a grammar. It was quite fascinating – and of course there were maps. It’s all in Dutch of course — but still. See https://literatuurmuseum.nl/verhalen/ilja-leonard-pfeijffer/het-ontstaan#wat-is-mocanie“

GeoSpatial Techno is a startup focused on geospatial information that is providing e-learning courses to enhance the knowledge of geospatial information users, students, and other startups. The main approach of this startup is providing quality, valid specialized training in the field of geospatial information.

( YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | X )

This blog post provides how to use the Buffer and Intersection analysis in the WPS Request Builder. The WPS Request Builder is a demo page used to try out the Web Processing Service (WPS) used to execute geospatial processes for transformation, summary and analysis.

A couple of churchy posts recently. I spotted this at St James Church in Muswell Hill when we were there for my wife’s choir performance.

Elizabeth spotted this notice board at the Muswell Hill Methodist Church

It doesn’t really show the lands that we know of from the bible?

Toby spotted this map of currencies and photos from around the world in a Vietnamese restaurant in Porto

Ana Letica shared these pix from Verbatim Books in San Diego. They sell maps as well!

Obviously not this clock maker who managed to fit everything else in!

Via Ken

A map of the Two Bays walking trail that came with a pair of Nike running shoes.

Ken said “It’s a brave move to target your product to a niche group but #mapsondrinks sells. If it’s got a map on it we’ll try it” I am not sure I would buy/try every type of booze with a map, maybe just the whiskies.

You may have noticed that https://github.com/microsoft/torchgeo is now https://github.com/torchgeo/torchgeo. This is not an accident! TorchGeo now belongs to YOU, please join our monthly Technical Steering Committee meetings! TorchGeo...

Est. reading time: 2 minutes

Full release notes at Release v0.8.0 · torchgeo/torchgeo · GitHub

TorchGeo is a PyTorch domain library, similar to torchvision, providing
datasets, samplers, transforms, and pre-trained models specific to
geospatial data.

Robert Simmon said “I have lived next to the lake for 7 years and never noticed this map before!”

Credits : Bru-nO (Pixabay Content License)

Thanks to funding from the Bordeaux Metropolis, I had the chance to work on CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK) support in QGIS. The metropolis’ goal is to remove the last barrier preventing their complete migration from ArcGIS to QGIS.

The developments are now complete and will be available in QGIS version 3.40, scheduled for release in October 2024, before becoming the next LTR in February 2025. It should be noted, however, that CMYK support will only be complete in QGIS versions built with Qt 6 (still unofficial version) for reasons explained in the article. On Windows, this version can currently only be installed using OSGeo4W (qgis-qt6-dev version).

Ken must have been visiting Miami

TorchGeo 0.8 includes 28 new pre-trained model weights and a number of improvements required for better time series support, including a complete rewrite of all GeoDataset and GeoSampler internals, encompassing 8 months of hard work by 23 contributors from around the world.

You may have noticed that https://github.com/microsoft/torchgeo is now https://github.com/torchgeo/torchgeo. This is not an accident!

Note

TorchGeo now belongs to YOU, please join our monthly Technical Steering Committee meetings!

Jo said that this is one of his favourite maps, I can see why.

Geospatial FM shared this. The Šargan Eight narrow gauge railway. 15.5km of it was restored in 2000 after built 1921, whole route connected Belgrade and Sarajevo

Ken drew my attention to the EUFA logo on the Europa League Cup. I think the purpose was that Arsenal haven’t won much in the last 20 years while this year’s cup was being held by the Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou who subsequently got sacked (twice within a few months!)

Carlos Eduardo Mota from Brasil Luís Calisto from Portugal Kateryna Konieva from Portugal Benjamin Webb from United States of America Joseph Emile Honour Percival from Samoa Weston Renoud from Netherlands Felix Delattre from Germany Julia Signell...

Est. reading time: 2 minutes

Dear all,

the CRO is pleased to announce the list of new OSGeo Carter Members:

Doug Greenfield spotted this tapestry in Venice airport.

Ken spotted this in a hotel foyer. There should be an eco message here.

Elizabeth spotted this Happy Drum (correct spelling) in Delhi International Airport – different notes for each continent.

Ken said “For anyone wanting a map to spark a discussion about design decisions I offer this recently seen #mapsinthewild. My opinion… I don’t even know where to begin.” Is it the cartography or the purpose of the map that is the problem?

Este 13 de noviembre se celebró el acto de clausura de la VIII edición del Curso-Concurso de Geoalfabetización mediante Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica (TIG), una iniciativa internacional que impulsa el aprendizaje geográfico y territorial a través de herramientas digitales abiertas.

El primer premio fue para el equipo de los Liceos 2 y 3 de Salto, con el proyecto “Mapeando los riesgos: cartografía digital de la siniestralidad vial y la accesibilidad urbana de Salto”, destacado por su enfoque innovador, su análisis territorial y su aporte a una comprensión más sostenible del entorno urbano.

A pirate map spotted by Anita Graser

Ken posing in his James Nihues carto ski jacket

Kenneth Wong shared this “Found this map at Mishima Taisha Shrine. The deeper you explore the map, the more intricate details you could uncover”

Some might argue that it isn’t really “in the wild” but who cares? it’s beautiful.

David Nuttall said “I haven’t been to the beach in a while…. but when I do go…. I am likely to “draw” a map!!!”

I think this came from Ken but if it was someone else who shared it apologies for forgetting!

Javier Jimenez Shaw shared this with us, he said “The equator is a bit off”

Ken said “New airline launch. “What shall we put on the tail”…”umm, a globe””

Ken spotted this on X (didn’t think I knew anyone who was still there). Crystal Palace fans displayed this massive banner plotting their route to the final of the UEFA Conference League.

Maps and football, what’s not to like? Well maybe the invasion type graphics!

I’m big on reuse, repair and recycling which is one of the reasons I volunteer at Glasgow Repair Cafe – I blame being exposed to “Stig of the Dump” at an impressionable age. As a result I struggle to throw out broken things let alone things that still work. However, space limitations mean that I do occasionally have to tidy out some stuff. I discovered that I have way too many old laptops that will come in useful sometime recently. So I installed a light weight linux on two of them and donated one of them to the repair café (where we have several laptops that really should be retired as they lack some keys), the other one is an old ThinkPad which I will use in my workshop/garage so that I don’t get sawdust in my work laptop.

Just in case you didn’t know where it comes from the distillers of Longitude 77 put a map on the label. Via Elizabeth

L’Imaginere shared this map of streets on the pavement in Ath, somewhere to the east of Lille.

You can find it on an OSM project called “A Map of Maps” which says “On this map you can find all maps OpenStreetMap knows – typically a big map on an information board showing the area, city or region, e.g. a tourist map on the back of a billboard, a map of a nature reserve, a map of cycling networks in the region, …). If a map is missing, you can easily map this map on OpenStreetMap.” What a great project!

Você sabia que o GeoServer pode armazenar toda a sua configuração (workspaces, stores, layers, styles) em um banco de dados PostgreSQL, em vez de gravar arquivos XML no diretório data_dir?

Isso é possível com dois módulos da comunidade: JDBCConfig e JDBCStore. Apesar de frequentemente usados juntos, eles têm funções diferentes e complementares.

1. O que é o JDBCConfig

O JDBCConfig é um módulo que permite ao GeoServer salvar toda a configuração do catálogo(metadados) dentro de um banco relacional, como o PostgreSQL.

Desde siempre, en Geomatico hemos hecho agilismo. En nuestra búsqueda por ofrecer el mejor servicio a las empresas con las que colaboramos, creemos que una de las mejores maneras de hacerlo es aplicando metodologías ágiles.

El agilismo llegó a Geomatico antes que el propio Geomatico. Ya en 2009 asistíamos a Open Spaces sobre agilismo, cuando todavía no estaba tan bien visto utilizarlo.

Durante años fuimos profundizando en la metodología y aprendiendo de la experiencia de aplicarla en la vida real. Han sido muchas las herramientas que hemos probado y muchas las discusiones sobre qué son realmente los puntos de historia, qué significa una historia de 10 puntos frente a una de 3, y cómo conciliar todo eso con nuestra realidad en la gestión económica de los proyectos.

David Sherren sent us this pic which he took in The Old Customs House, Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth. He said “Anyone who is familiar with Portsmouth Harbour will know that it is not actually joined to Gosport by a land bridge, as appears to be the case on this decorative chart!” I have to confess I am not familiar with Portsmouth Harbour but now I want to go there to view the map and check its lack of veracity.

Walter Schwartz sent us this pic from his trip to Nepal, he said “We visited a modest 24-student school for ages 3 to 11 in a small village outside the mountain town of Lumle, Nepal. The principal’s office features a desk with a world map desk pad and a display globe. The value of maps in education is ubiquitous.”

We agree with Walter hence the title of this Map in the World.

GeoServer 3 is a major upgrade led by a consortium of Camptocamp, GeoSolutions, and GeoCat and backed by a successful crowdfunding activity.

This is a major investment in the future of GeoServer and we are pleased to provide a project update. The GeoServer 3 code sprint completed last week, and we have quite a list of accomplishments to share.

• Photos
• GeoServer 2.28.0
• GeoServer 2025 Q4 Developer Update

Reinder shared this pic with us – “at Van Piere bookshop in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Oh – and how about the ‘map bag’ …? 

Esta charla forma parte de una serie de eventos geoespaciales que se desarrollan dentro de la Semana Geoespacial y son previas a la conferencia IDE (Infraestructura de Datos Geoespaciales) de Chile, que se celebrará el 4 de noviembre de 2025.

Este webinar, en el que participaron casi sesenta (60) asistentes, fue impartido por Ariel Anthieni, CEO de Kan Territory & IT y presidente de Geolibres Argentina, junto con Carmen Díez, Técnica SIG de Urbanismo, y Carlos López Quintanilla, CEO de PSIG, ambos pertenecientes a la junta directiva de la Asociación QGIS España, encargados de la Presidencia y Tesorería, respectivamente.

Participantes de la charla virtual IDE Chile.

Keith Hodgson sent us this pic of Glenshiels Chocolate along with this lovely message:

“Greetings Friends of maps

On a recent camping holiday in Scotland, we stayed at Glenshiels. A local small firm made chocolate with an outlet and cafe attached to the small building that housed the works. Being a lover of good, dark chocolate, several bars were bought. Once eaten, the inside of the packaging revealed a bonus in the form of a map of the area. Something to share after the delicious chocolate.

Love your site, thanks for all you do keeping it going.”

And our thanks to you Keith for your kind words, a bar of that chocolate would also be appreciated!

Mark Iliffe is running the New York marathon today. Here he is with his participant number. If you are an armchair marathon follower, look out for him.

Good luck Mark

Reinder spotted this plan at the municipal archives in The Hague: in English it says ‘Map of the good city’ Den Haag. 

The conversation around Looking for better ways to convert between QGIS VectorLayer and (Geo)DataFrame is continuing over at https://fosstodon.org/@underdarkGIS/115442614331293320

What I’ve learned so far:

• QgsVectorLayer.as_geopandas() has landed in QGIS master on 13 Oct 2025.
• There’s also QgsVectorLayer.field_to_numpy() which will be useful for many applications and has landed on 29 Oct 2025.
• QgsArrowIterator is in the works right now.

Exciting times for spatial data science tooling

Kenwood is a stately home and park near to where I live. They have a Halloween event on at the moment with an array of displays and activities around the park.

This isn’t normally a graveyard

El Ayuntamiento de Cullera ha dado un paso más en su proceso de transformación digital con la incorporación de un panel táctil interactivo en el cementerio municipal, que permite a cualquier persona localizar fácilmente la ubicación exacta de sus familiares y allegados.

Esta nueva herramienta se basa en la plataforma gvSIG Online, desarrollada por SCOLAB, y forma parte de un proyecto de digitalización que utiliza tecnologías geoespaciales para mejorar la gestión y el acceso a la información de todo el municipio.

Este viernes 17 de octubre estuvimos de cumpleaños. Agresta celebraba sus 25 años y, por suerte, teníamos invitación. Agresta es un nombre que nos acompaña desde hace tiempo, pero que tuvimos la oportunidad de desvirtualizar en el 9º Congreso Forestal celebrado en Gijón este 2025. Es una cooperativa del sector forestal, y precisamente sobre esas dos ideas —cooperativismo y sector forestal— giró el evento del viernes.

La primera parte estuvo dedicada al cooperativismo. Agresta es una cooperativa orgullosa de serlo, y organizó una mesa redonda con varias invitadas del mundo cooperativo. Hablaron sobre la importancia del cooperativismo, sus fortalezas y su situación actual, tanto a nivel nacional como internacional. Nos quedamos con esta maravilla:

We love a floor map and Ken spotted this beauty with flight routes at Salt Lake City Airport

Another floor map, this time from Kenneth Wong “a giant map of Yokohama on Yokohama Landmark Tower’s observation deck

An enormous map spreading out the floor is always a cool thing to me” – I agree

Ken spotted this carton of beer in his local supermarket.

Clare spotted this Mobile Library Map when rewatching Matilda the Musical. “Just rewatched Matilda the Musical and spotted the map
inside the Mobile Library when Matilda rushes out. It was acquired on pinboards from a reuse site – from the Studios!!
Amazing to think of all the art created for film and TV that may only get 0.1s on screen”

Plugin developers who want to use (Geo)Pandas-based functionality in their plugins regularly face the challenge of converting QGIS vector layers to (Geo)DataFrames. There is currently no built-in convenience function.

In Trajectools, so far, I have been performing the conversion manually, looping through all features and taking care of tricky column types, such as datetimes and geometries:

Ken shared this abstract Mammoth mountain ski trail map – $125 seems a fair price but you couldn’t really take it on the slopes with you.

I spotted this piece by Stephen Graham in a local gallery. I’m not sure that I’d like to have it hanging in my home but then I feel out of love with pop art nearly fifty years ago! I do like the way my photo picks up the old buildings reflected in the gallery window, almost the counterpoint.

Kenneth Wong stayed in Kyoto last year and shared these maps from two different hotels. He commented “Two hostels I stayed in Kyoto last Nov. Both have a gigantic city map hung near reception. Comparing the differences of their approaches to map the town and show the tourist spots would be a great cartography article” I am a R-Star fan.