blog.sspboyd.ca

cesarojedac: So I did a redesign of this chart about Canada’s...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:57:35 -0500

Original

Redesign

So I did a redesign of this chart about Canada’s least liked cities and I think I did really well.

I like the final product.

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion...."

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:34:22 -0500

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.”

- Richard Feynman

(via scienceisbeauty)

parislemon: This is actually the craziest chart about Apple...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:22:18 -0500

parislemon:

This is actually the craziest chart about Apple following their insane earnings today.

There is exactly one company on that entire list that is not an oil and gas company. And they’re not that far from the top.

Creating Data Visualizations for the CBC

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:49:51 -0500

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 tool to visualize these dependencies might end up looking. Turns out I wasn’t too far off.

These screenshots below show the hightlighted and un-highlighted views. What isn’t shown is the interactive component that enables users to pick which content areas they want to see and then the ability to select individual projects and highlight their dependencies.

Larger version on Flickr

The next visualization focused on displaying the content area’s over all dependency on each Media Ops project and then normalizing the relative impact based on audience or revenue. Below is the baseline view before audience and revenue adjustments are applied. One of the benefits of this view is that it makes it easy to see where the content areas aligned in their dependence on different Media Ops projects.

Larger version on Flickr

There are more projects underway to help inform discussions about where and how we expend our resources.

A big thanks goes out to everyone involved in the Processing project!

Prototyping

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 01:08:45 -0500

Prototyping

First ones out on the course this morning. One if the few things...

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 08:16:57 -0400

First ones out on the course this morning. One if the few things I get up early for. #golf (Taken with picplz at Huntsville Downs in Muskoka.)

wanderinganthropologist: Slider puzzles of a few of the very...

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:55:17 -0400

wanderinganthropologist:

Slider puzzles of a few of the very cool personalities on CBC + me = procrastination to the extreme.

“If I don’t get Peter Mansbridge, Sook-Yin Lee, or Jian Ghomeshi unjumbled, they’ll never forgive me!”

graceyu: The World Map of Useless Stereotypes - NYTimes.com

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 11:00:22 -0400

graceyu:

The World Map of Useless Stereotypes - NYTimes.com

End of the week. (Taken with picplz at Texas Nationals Ski Camp...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:15:16 -0400

End of the week. (Taken with picplz at Texas Nationals Ski Camp for Champs in Muskoka.)

Deciding which photos 'make the cut' (and how many don't)

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:04:05 -0400

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 composition, or just not quite as good as other photos of the same thing.

Example of a rejected shot:

Photos labeled at 2 stars or less: 116, 16%
These photos won’t get uploaded to Flickr. They should probably get deleted but I’m a pack rat and hard drive space is cheap…

Photos lablel at 3 stars: 299, 40%
These are ok photos and will be uploaded to Flickr but not made public to anyone. There are exceptions where 3 star photos will have family or friends in them and in that case I’ll make them visible to those people since they may be more interested in seeing people even if the photos aren’t the greatest.

Photos labeled at 4 stars: 47, 7%
These are photos I like but I’m on the fence if they’re ‘good enough’ to make public. They’ll be looked again and one or two might be bumped up to 5 and a few more will get bumped down to 3. Any remaining 4 star photos will uploaded as private photos to flickr.

Photos labeled at 5 stars: 37, 5%
These are the photos I like and will be uploaded to Flickr as public photos. After a couple months or longer I usually cut back on the number of public photos I have on Flickr. I am more critical of the images as time passes.

Photos taken as reference shots: 15, 2%
I have a lot of photos of my left arm holding a grey card. They are white balance reference shots which aren’t uploaded to Flickr. I only take a reference shot if I think the light is tricky for the camera or if I don’t think I will remember the look of the shot later.

Examples of reference shots:

These totals don’t all add up to 100%. Some shots fall through the cracks and aren’t starred, labeled or tagged. I could be more attentive but I’d rather take more photos.

Here’s a couple of 5 star shots of from last month:

CBC Logos, 1940 - 2011. The current red logo is coming close to...

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:53:36 -0400

CBC Logos, 1940 - 2011.

The current red logo is coming close to be the longest running logo for the CBC.

Great idea, and execution. datavis: Do You Think Most People...

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:23:00 -0400

Great idea, and execution.

datavis:

Do You Think Most People Try to Take Advantage of You?

Live Demo: http://chartsbin.com/view/1866

P1080917.JPG on Flickr.

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:30:00 -0400

P1080917.JPG on Flickr.

anditallfallsdownsometimes: The many suits of Don Cherry.

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:30:18 -0400

anditallfallsdownsometimes:

The many suits of Don Cherry.

This might be a little old (2004) but it is still good. (via...

Wed, 18 May 2011 13:24:47 -0400

This might be a little old (2004) but it is still good.

(via Code Editor Learning Curves - Steve Rowe’s Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs)

How to Do What You Love, Paul Graham

Tue, 10 May 2011 15:44:57 -0400

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 life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.

“(A) line you often hear is that not everyone can do work they love—that someone has to do the unpleasant jobs. Really? How do you make them? In the US the only mechanism for forcing people to do unpleasant jobs is the draft, and that hasn’t been invoked for over 30 years.”

“Life tends to get more expensive as you get older, so it’s easy to get sucked into working longer than you expected at the money job. Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If you work too long on tedious stuff, it will rot your brain. And the best paying jobs are most dangerous, because they require your full attention.”

“When you’re young, you’re given the impression that you’ll get enough information to make each choice before you need to make it. But this is certainly not so with work. When you’re deciding what to do, you have to operate on ridiculously incomplete information.”

“…a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what to do with it may not be as good as it seems.”

“Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it’s rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you’ll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you’re in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you’re practically there.”

P050111PS-0522 by The White House on Flickr.Via...

Mon, 02 May 2011 18:33:18 -0400

P050111PS-0522 by The White House on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
President Barack Obama listens during one in a series of meetings discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

3 Steps To Hilarious [PIC]

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:01:06 -0400

3 Steps To Hilarious [PIC]

Regent Park Apartment Building Demolition

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:00:06 -0400

tnoc_Attractor_Duotone_vM500 from sspboyd on Vimeo.

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:00:07 -0400

tnoc_Attractor_Duotone_vM500 from sspboyd on Vimeo.