David Parker, of bVisual Ltd, has created a really cool map of the UK’s counties and boroughs, and released it for download. Have a look at the article here: UK Counties and Boroughs Map Shapes for Visio.
David’s answer to my Map of Germany has just unwittingly (or wittingly) started a friendly, cross-Channel rivalry (Visio Guy is currently in Vienna) And the timing couldn’t be better: since England won’t be in Austria for the European Cup our Northern neighbors will have plenty of time to add features to their Visio maps. Hurray for the Visio Community!
Anyway, David’s document contains not only geographical shapes, but also some very nice organizational and structural details of London boroughs, counties, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, district county areas, unitary authorities, and council areas. To put it in American English: “It’s a ten-page extravaganza blowout!” He’s also linked the shapes to data, using the new Link Data to Shapes features in Visio 2007. Very nice indeed!
Back to the smack-talk: in 2000, I created a silly .wav-file to mock the English before their match with Germany. This wasn’t entirely non-Visio-related, because it was intended to help defend a co-worker who was working at the UK Visio office, but was from Germany.
England vs. Germany is always an exciting rivalry, and the looming pending match was considerably raising the tension-level in the office. My friend had been harassed all week long by her English co-workers (the Scottish lass was at least supportive), and needed something with which to fight back. Since English footie had been having trouble with the Germans, I put this little mix together…
Download “God Save England Music Mix Sound File”
s!Aj0wJuswNyXlhU_9gPwyjqXnvOiJ – Downloaded 3488 times – 103.00 B…which effectively jinxed the Germans. In the 53rd minute, an excellent free-kick from David Beckham was headed into the goal by Alan Shearer to knock the Germans out, 1-0. Stand up if you love England!
Too kind, sir!
Where were you when we got knocked out of the European Championship???
..and I’ve just added your blog to my blog (sorry, should have done it before!).
Well, we actually flew to London on a plane full of Croatians the day before the match.
We were at a birthday dinner near Earl’s Court, at a table with people of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian (and American) descent, who came from Australia, USA, and Austria, when the poor English bit it.
Suffice it to say, nobody at the table really knew how to feel about it! 🙂
Hi guys,
I’m looking for a visio stencil with the flags of the world. And the flags need to be vector-based not pixel-based. Any ideas?
Cheers,
Tim
Hi Tim,
I can’t find them any more. They used to be shipped with Visio (I know, because I drew the things when I worked for Visio Corporation!)
But they seem to have been removed from recent versions, and I can’t find them via Shape Search (which doesn’t mean that they aren’t there, Shape Search is hard to use!)
On a related note, I’ve produced these that might be of use to you:
European Cup 2008 Country-Flag Visio Shapes
Also, Visimation is selling these:
Maps and Flags ShapeSuite Stencils
Which I think is a bit absurd, since they used to be part of the product!.
Stay tuned for new articles, maybe I can work something out.
Beckham is probably one of the best players of Football, i love every game that he play`~”
Hi Visio Guy-
Do you have the UK-Map with the Union Jack as a stencil for download as well? (The Shape on top of this article?)
Cheers
Christian