blog.sspboyd.ca: Archive

Feb 12th

17 notes

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s...”

– Richard Feynman (via scienceisbeauty)

Feb 3rd

105 notes

Jan 25th

654 notes

5 tags

Creating Data Visualizations for the CBC

I recently started using Processing (processing.org) at the CBC to visualize the dependencies of the content areas on projects being built by Media Ops & Technology (MO&T). Roughly speaking, MO&T builds out platform related projects and the content areas leverage the functionality of those projects to build out their sites. The previous post here was a first sketch in chalk of how a...

Dec 14th

13 notes

1 tag

Nov 14th

1 note

Jul 16th

Jul 12th

10 notes

Jul 10th

40 notes

Jul 9th

3 notes

4 tags

Deciding which photos 'make the cut' (and how many...

I looked at my Lightroom catalog for the last month and realized I’ve taken a lot of shots, 723 in total. Most of these will never see the light of day but a few will end up visible on Flickr. Here’s a rough breakdown of how they are categorized. Photos labeled “Rejected” in Lightroom: 179, 25% Some of these photos are rejected because they’re blurry, poor...

Jul 7th

9 notes

3 tags

Jul 5th

15 notes

Jul 5th

11 notes

4 tags

Jun 21st

1 note

Jun 7th

65 notes

5 tags

May 18th

9 notes

4 tags

How to Do What You Love, Paul Graham →

Great article by Paul Graham. I go back and read this every once in a while. Some parts I like: “Always produce” is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. “Always produce” will discover your...

May 10th

3 tags

May 2nd

2 tags

Apr 23rd

3 tags

Regent Park Apartment Building Demolition

Apr 13th

2 notes

5 tags

Watch

tnoc_Attractor_Duotone_vM500 from sspboyd on Vimeo.

Apr 11th

6 notes

Mar 28th

33 notes

3 tags

Watch

Coloured Boxes Image Sampling 10 from sspboyd on Vimeo. This goes with the image from the previous post. Video from a Processing.org sketch that reads the colours in an image and represents them as rectangles. The width is based on the brightness levels.

Mar 25th

22 notes

3 tags

xkcd.com/radiation →

Mar 20th

5 tags

Just how good was Gretzky?

Today is Gretzky’s 50th birthday. With all the stats being talked about the one that stands out for me is how much farther ahead of all other players he is in terms of total points. Stats from NHL.com

Jan 26th

4 tags

Choosing Descriptive Variable Names: Code !is...

When starting a new project I often find one of the hardest parts is choosing accurate, descriptive variable names for the objects and variables I’m working with. I’m sure this isn’t a new observation but it is striking me now as I try to sort through the best way to structure a Class in Java that generates a histogram of some colour data in an array (PImage ints in Processing). ...

Jan 5th

6 tags

Dec 16th

3 tags

The Top 50 Gawker Media Passwords - Digits - WSJ →

Great use and analysis of the Gawker password database by Zach Seward of the WSJ.com.

Dec 14th

6 tags

Data Visualizations with Processing, TSU prints

This image,Tsu-20041226-005853UTC, was created shortly after the Christmas 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It was made using satellite images and population density information for the affected countries in the Indian Ocean. I wrote a program in Processing to read this data and generate the black and white representation below. Lines representing people who died from the Tsunami are drawn...

Dec 14th

Watch

My flickr photos via #pummelvision

Dec 8th

Google Refine: data cleaning is easy - Datalicious... →

Nov 24th

2 tags

Flickr Favourite: Sunrise clouds, November 2010

Taken out the window of a plane at sunrise heading through clouds.

Nov 22nd

NYTimes.com Election Night: info above 'the fold'

Putting aside the argument over whether ‘fold’ on a website is even relevant, the New York Times’ main page tonight has a crazy amount of info presented above the fold. Look at how much space is taken up by ads. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for their discussions over user experience vs media sales priorities. Lastly, it doesn’t look like they’re...

Nov 3rd

3 tags

musLnsClrBox-30-167926-18588

Nov 2nd

6 tags

18147 tweets about the Toronto Mayoral election

Toronto Mayoral Election: @RobFordTeam vs @G_Smitherman vs @JPantalone Tweets with @RobFordTeam are in red. Tweets with @G_Smitherman are in purple. Tweets with @JPantalone are in teal Tweets mentioning two or more are multicoloured. Tweets mentioning none of them are transparent. Tweets were gathered from searching via the api for: #voteTO OR #RobFord OR #Smitherman OR #Pantalone OR...

Oct 30th

Flickr Favourite: Lake of Bays, September 2010

Oct 27th

Oct 26th

59 notes

Oct 26th

1,077 notes

7 tags

#VoteTO election night tweets

mferrier Nobody in Toronto can ever make fun of the US electing Bush ever again. #VoteTO 26 Oct 2010 tapesonthefloor I, for one, welcome our new Marshmallow Man overlord. RT @coreypierceart ALL HAIL MAYOR STAYPUFT #fordTO #voteTO 26 Oct 2010 johnpapa Can we PLEASE refer to Rob Ford as “Mayor Double Down”? He’s greasy, filled w/ cheese and generally bad for the health...

Oct 26th

1 tag

"Using old cameras is like..."

“Using old cameras is like camping in the woods and cooking over an open fire… You may not want to do it all the time but when you do it’s a blast.” Ellard Gann , Jan 16, 2000; 09:21 p.m.

Oct 25th

1 tag

Pcystnittgsr

“Pcystnittgsr, fatucvimh.”

Oct 25th

3 tags

Twitter API: to cache or not to cache? When, why...

How do twitter-based apps access tweets going back several months? Do they keep data in dbs or do they re-search for tweets each time a visitor makes a query? I’m asking because most of the playing around I’ve done with the twitter api has focused on the query functionatlity. This is a great way to pull in data but it is slow and I believe it would be much quicker if I had that data...

Oct 24th

5 tags

Processing integration with Eclipse →

Great news about a Processing plugin for Eclipse. While I love the minimalism and simplicity of the Processing IDE, larger projects start to stretch its capabilities. Quoted below from Ben Fry’s blog, ”Processing + Eclipse”. “Exciting news! The short story is that there’s a new Processing Plug-in for Eclipse, and you can learn about it here. …we settled on the...

Oct 24th

2 notes

3 tags

"Your whole team should be built for 16 games." →

“My whole philosophy of building teams, I owe to Bill Torrey (legendary Islanders GM). After we won (in Anaheim), I called him and thanked him. I asked him once, you won four straight Cups — people can argue that might have been one of the greatest teams ever — I’m a young GM, can you educate me on this? He said, it’s very simple. You have to win four playoff series to win a Stanley Cup, 16 games....

Oct 10th

Sep 21st

3,166 notes

1 tag

Top funny source code comments | cObaia.net →

My favourite in the list is: //When I wrote this, only God and I understood that I was doing //Now, God only knows I think I might have a few to add to this list.

Sep 20th

1 tag

Sep 19th

6 tags

Flickr Favourite: Manzanillo, May 2007

Aug 26th

6 tags

Redscale Film + Minolta Hi-Matic AF

I got back my first rolls of film taken with my new/old Minolta Hi-Matic AF. I’m surprised and happy with how they turned out. The developer (Blacks, expensive and not so good) forgot to make copies of both rolls on the CD so there are only the redscale photos shown here. Jeff Wyonch (on Flickr) was kind enough to give the roll of Lomography’s Redscale film.

Aug 24th

“Go outside, to the fields, enjoy nature and the sunshine, go out and try to...”

– Anne Frank - Wikiquote

Aug 23rd

1 note