Ideas Illustrated » Blog Archive » Visualizing English Word Origins

May 3rd, 2012 by John No comments »

Ideas Illustrated » Blog Archive » Visualizing English Word Origins.

Looking at the origin of words and comparing fiction (British and American), medical writing, legal writing, and sports writing.

Good thing I have some history with Old English, or I might not understand anything… hahah… and no wonder I don’t understand Medical lit — it’s the least OE-based. A little surprised that Medical lit has more Old French than Legal — would have expected more OF, but maybe the Latin makes up the difference.

Interesting. And geeky, too.

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Posted in Data Visualization, Language

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Electronic Books & Printed Books: Conflict and Opportunity

April 14th, 2012 by John No comments »

I love books, just like Jeff Atwood, who compares electronic books with their age-old printed counterparts, concluding that

…unless the publishers are willing to treat eBooks with the same respect and care that they give to their printed books – and most importantly of all, adjust their pricing to reflect the brave new economy of bits, and not an antiquated economy of atoms – they’re destined to eventually suffer the same fate as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

via Coding Horror: Books: Bits vs. Atoms.

I’ve been repeatedly disappointed by the clear lack of attention paid to e-books’ layout and typography. Amazon has let me down repeatedly. O’Reilly is better, because they create both the print and electronic formats. Amazon doesn’t. Until Amazon gets it right, I’ll stick to my paper books, thank you very much.

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Posted in Design, Software, Typography

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Live Coding example with D3 and Mike Bostock’s chord diagram from gabrielflor.it

March 17th, 2012 by John No comments »

Bret Victor is a genius. His recent CUSEC 2012 talk, Inventing on Principle, is one of the best talks I’ve ever seen. If you watch only one talk this year, make sure it’s this one.

I was blown away by his ‘live coding’ idea, but couldn’t find any actual live examples, so I put together a quick demo using d3 and Ace. I 100% totally based it on Bret’s idea – down to the clever book styling. Imitation is the sincerest… etc etc.

The default code is Mike Bostock’s beautiful chord diagram, tweaked to fit the Twilight theme. And remember, click the pulsing red numbers and hold down the alt key!

via gabrielflor.it.

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Posted in Data Visualization, Design, Programming

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Venn of Greek Rhetoric | visualizing.org

March 16th, 2012 by John No comments »

Venn of Greek Rhetoric | visualizing.org

Venn of Greek Rhetoric | visualizing.org.

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Posted in Design, Humor, Language, Literature

Fast Thinking and Slow Thinking Visualisation | Spatial Analysis

March 11th, 2012 by John No comments »

I have seen bad examples of both slow thinking and fast thinking maps but there is undoubtedly more rubbish in the latter category. I blame the rise of infographics in addition to the increasing ease with which data can be mapped (I note, this latter point has also facilitated many great maps). It’s not all bad though, much like tabloid newspaper headlines I think clever fast thinking visualisations have required a lot of slow thinking by their creators and are good for portraying simple but important messages.

via Fast Thinking and Slow Thinking Visualisation | Spatial Analysis.

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Posted in Data Visualization, Design

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