Maps courtesy of the algorithm

I love a good map. I enjoy books that have a map in the front of them. I like looking at old maps, obscure maps, made up maps... 

Some of the maps in this post are more like data visualisations. They are all maps that have popped up on my social media feeds that I've liked enough to save. The algorithm now knows I like maps and keeps showing me them!

If anyone finds a map on here that belongs to them, then please let me know and I will credit you properly.

Let's start with this beautiful graphic of African river basins.

I found it interesting to compare the map of natural features with this map showing which European colonisers laid claim to parts of Africa in 1914. 

Moving to another continent altogether, here's a map showing the relative populations of humans and kangaroos in Australia. The roos seem to have the upper hand in most of Oz. 

Meanwhile this agricultural map from 1920 firmly divides Australia into terrain suitable for sheep and inhospitable to sheep. 

A friend of mine commented this would make the good basis for a remix of Insomnia by Faithless. "I can't get no sheep."

This map of placenames in Tasmania is done purely for puerile amusement. It amused me.

Coming closer to home, this is a map of the western edge of Europe during the last ice age. A person could walk from Britain to Denmark across Doggerland. 

A map showing Cymraeg names for places in England. 

And another map showing castles - note how many were built along the border between Cymru and England. 

It's almost as impressive as this map showing Gregg's locations across the UK.

Back to castles, this cute map of castellau Cymreig isn't very accurate.

And to bring the post full circle, here's another map of rivers, showing all the rivers in Cymru. 

I wonder what maps the algorithm will push my way next.

Snacks of the Month - choccy goosegogs and chin chin

Two snacks this month. First, another random snack from Lidl: chocolate covered  gooseberries. 

Cathy spotted them while we were having a mooch round one of the stores. I expect they were part of one of the themed weeks that Lidl do - in this case Polish week.

Gooseberries aren't massively popular berries. I like them in desserts and as jam - mainly because my mum had a very productive gooseberry bush in her previous back garden and both gooseberry jam and goosegog crumble featured in her home cooking. 

There's also a story about how some bitey creepy-crawley that lived in the productive gooseberry bush bit Mum and a little while later the infected bite hospitalised her... in the USA. But that's another story.

These goosegogs are creepy-crawley free and are coated in a rich dark chocolate. They're about the size of Maltesers.

I was able to remove the chocolate coating and leave the gooseberry intact. It was brown and didn't look appetising. Instead here's a cross section with the chocolate still on.

Cathy reckons she wouldn't recognise the taste as gooseberry but to me they had all the tangy sharpness I'd expect. The dark chocolate works well to complement the sharpness of the fruit. 

They taste very rich, though. I wouldn't be able to scoff a pack in one sitting (and I know I shouldn't anyway). But for an occasional burst of tart sweetness these are pretty good.

My second snack this month is Africa's Finest chin chin, which I found in Asda. Despite claiming to be Africa's Finest it's actually made in the UK.

One reason I bought this was because of a funny thing I remember when I was a kid. A few years after my family came back to the UK from Africa we were invited to a wedding. The groom's family were from Nigeria and his relatives had brought some African food to the reception.

My brother and I ignored the normal British style buffet and went straight for the African food, much to the amusement of the groom's female relatives who were surprised to see little white boys so keen to try their cooking. One of the things they had was a massive sack of chin chin. 

Chin chin is a crunchy biscuit produced in small square chunks and fried rather than baked. Sometimes flavourings are added, sometimes not. There usually isn't much sugar in it, just a tiny amount to give it a slight sweetness.

In contrast to the home made stuff I remember with heavily nostalgic bias, this commercially produced and packed chin chin wasn't as good. It had a great crunch. It tasted fine. 

But, honestly it was never going to live up to the chin chin I had at that wedding. 

The day after Star Wars Day: The Revenge of the 5th

I said this a bit on Twitter, but I’ve been reflecting on why Star Wars means so much to me. A lot of it comes down to this: Return of the Jedi was the first film I saw in the cinema after my family came back to this country from Africa.

I didn’t really understand what was going on. I hadn’t seen the first two movies. I knew there were goodies and baddies and I liked the Ewoks beating the Stormtroopers and Jabba the Hutt was disgusting and the fight over the Sarlacc was dangerous and Luke Skywalker was brave and things exploded and spaceships were cool, especially the Millennium Falcon.

And for two hours I forgot that I had left the warm and known environment of Africa behind and been made to come back to this cold, unfriendly place that people said was my home, but wasn’t really.

As a young teenager I saw Empire Strikes Back for the first time and loved it. We taped it off the telly at Christmas and watched it so often we almost wore out the tape. I still remember where the advert breaks were in that recorded copy. (It was a big Christmas premiere for ITV.) I know most of the dialogue off by heart. It edged out Jedi as my favourite film of the trilogy.

It’s kind of fashionable to beat up on Star Wars and the people who love it. They aren’t the coolest films out there. There are clear plot holes and unlikely coincidences and for some reason Stormtroopers can’t shoot straight and their armour doesn’t work against arrows. Yeah, all those things. And I will line up with anyone else to pour scorn on the prequels, although The Phantom Menace probably gets more vitriol than it deserves whereas the third one should be coated in lead and sunk in a very deep hole somewhere.

And, yes, the trilogy is good for jokes and pastiche. I’ve always loved Spaceballs. I really love the Robot Chicken feature length Star Wars episodes. But you can tell Robot Chicken is done with love and affection for the films, not to poke spitefully at the people who love them. (Even if we are all depicted as weedy nerds by the Chickeners.)

I think the reason May the Fourth has taken off in just a few years from geek joke to major Twitter event is down to the attachment people have for the films.  The original trilogy holds such emotional importance for me I turn to them when I’m poorly or feeling low. Return of the Jedi was my first comfort film; the first movie to transport me away from a difficult situation that I was struggling to adjust to. It helped a confused and, I realise now, grieving, little boy to believe the world could be a place where good triumphed in the darkest of circumstances, where evil could be defeated, where heroism would be rewarded, where little people held the fate of the universe in the balance, even if the big people had guns and scout-walkers and speeder-bikes.

Even now I get a lump in my throat when I watch the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where Luke throws away his lightsaber and tells the Emperor that he won’t turn to the dark side because he is a Jedi. Like his father before him.

Faced with that choice I wanted to be as brave as Luke Skywalker. I wanted to be a Jedi.

I still do.