How many times does the Bush administration get to work America over before we get tired of the sham? We have to be there by now, don’t we?
update: Michelle says I shouldn’t use “that word” here.
Author: Andy
gCensus
Imran Hague has put together a set of libraries that work with US Census data and make it available to view in Google Earth. The project, gCensus, looks like a great start and will hopefully lead to greater use of the Census’ already excellent resource.
I couldn’t agree with Imran more about improving access to this data. Now, about displaying raw data with choropleth maps….
Your e-mail will be… back?
Myrealbox, my mail host for the last 5 years has been down for the last week. It appears that they’ve just placed an announcement about the problem notifying us that service should be back soon. Really confidence inspiring. Hopefully they really are saving all incoming e-mail with plans to deliver it once service returns. Looks like I didn’t bail soon enough.
Now, if only Gmail supported IMAP.
Mapping Hip-hop
A cultural geographer visited my digital atlas class a while back and shared some excellent maps of cultural phenomena, highlighting the variety of ways to use maps, but also in the variety of ways the people look at place. Some of the maps he shared showed regional nomenclature for things like pop (Soda, Coke, Soda pop, etc) and what people said where. Same with sandwiches (Subs, hoagies, po’ boys, grinders, heros, etc).
He also showed a map of hip-hop. I haven’t been able to find out the author or where it’s from, but it’s a fascinating look at music and culture. There are of course some glaring problems with it, but without knowing the cartographer’s intentions, we can’t really know exactly what his point was; or why certain things are emphasized and others not.
Click on the image to view the full-sized version. What problems do you notice? What would you change?
A couple more firsts
Ella had a couple more firsts yesterday. During the day, with my mom, she participated in her first train/car collision. No, neither my mom nor Ella were driving, they were on the Max when a car pulled in front of it. The max was apparently going full speed when the car turned in front of it. The driver yelled, the vehicles collided, the max came to a stop, and Ella remained asleep, even while response vehicles arrived.
Later that day, she committed her first party foul. While at a going-away party for one of Michelle’s co-workers, Ella grasped a full glass of beer that I thought was just out of her reach and pulled it towards her. And me. And it all spilled in to my lap. She seemed to enjoy the response, which could mean bad things.
Eyes bleed chroma
I had a dream that my eyes were bleeding chroma, the gray value associated with the Munsell color system. It made finishing my maps impossible because the colors were all too bright. Weird, for many reasons, but mainly because I don’t like the Munsell system. I much prefer to work with HEX codes. RGB is ok, but harder to remember when you have to type in a lot of values. Time to use some eye drops.
Peas
Ella has started eating “real” food in the last two weeks. We started with peas, which is somewhat distressing because I still can’t stand the smell of the awful little vegetable. She absolutely loves them though and is happily eating a small jar of them in a sitting – even when mixed with rice cereal.
The one thing that peas are good for is a plethora of jokes. My favorite, and the one I’m sure Michelle is the most tired of is using the phrase “pea-ness.” Try it sometime – it’s a non-profane word that becomes profane simply by using poor grammar.
And of course, I have to mention the change in her output. It’s gross. Like mechonium again, but it varies in color depending on her diet. The strange thing is, these colors where once common in people’s homes. Carpet, furniture, drapes and appliances actually came in these colors.
Open Architecture Network
Pollyanna, a friend from high school, sent me a link to a project she’s been working on with Architecture for Humanity called the Open Architecture Network. It is going to be a community driven site for sharing building plans and ideas for solving shelter-related problems. AFH is dedicated to solving architectural and design issues that come after various crises; natural or human caused.
The project is quite exciting and will hopefully help address a plethora of shelter-related problems in innovative and affordable ways. Ironically enough, the “about” page starts with a declaration of Le Corbusier’s being wrong. The banner on my site right now is nick-named after the Swiss architect. He made quite a few contributions to modern architecture, including the gigantic utilitarian apartment complex that sought to give each inhabitant a window. These structures were mostly built to house the poor, but many failed horribly. (See Paris riots, 2005) It will be interesting to see how this project manifests, and hopefully there will be a variety of solutions available so we don’t get the uniformity and banality of the banlieues.
Sprawl and Obesity
Science News Magazine has a store on City Design and Human Health right now that looks at whether smart urban design could help improve our health. The article suggests that sprawl has caused us to become less healthy, or as UC puts it, “Fat Lards.”
Nels Cline
Last night I ventured out with Lolly to see Nels Cline and Glenn Kotche at the Doug Fir. It’s the first show I’ve seen in… well, a while and it was awesome. It was the first show I’ve gone to where I was late (they actually started at 9pm!), and the first show I’ve been to where it was easier to see the artists as the show progressed. I think both Lolly and I drew a fair amount of satisfaction from the number of people who left during the show.
Nels started the set with some guitar and accessory noises (which we missed most of) and was followed by Glenn doing a solo set, which was the coolest live solo drum set I’ve seen. He used a combination of a small kit, an electronic pad, a sampler, a loop and some really funky cymbals. His Monkey Chant was excellent.
The two played a small set together to finish that mixed some great sample looping and perfect guitar control for a rather cool mix of interstellar travel and angry garbage compactor sounds.