Archive for the ‘Website’ category

Timelines: sources from history from the British Library

February 5th, 2010
BL Timelines screenshot

BL Timelines screenshot

The British Library has released a new website, Timelines: sources from history, where users can traverse history “from Magna Carta to Obama.” From to the website:

The interactive timeline allows you to explore British Library collection items chronologically, from medieval times to the present day. It includes a diverse combination of texts: those that allow glimpses of everyday life (handbills, posters, letters, diaries), remnants of political events (charters, speeches, campaign leaflets), and the writings of some of our best known historical and literary figures.

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Posted in History, Literature, Website

Create and Use Barcodes to Simplify Your Book List

January 9th, 2010
barcode example

barcode example (converted to png)

In keeping track of my books, I have been looking for a simple way to generate barcodes as individual graphics that I could embed in my book list. I think I’ve found it: Dan Bornstein’s Barcode Server, which I found at the BarcodesInc’s UPC/EAN Barcode Generator.While the online version is nice, I wanted something a little more flexible and robust, so I downloaded the C source code.

» Read more: Create and Use Barcodes to Simplify Your Book List

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Posted in Software, Tools, Website

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New Feature: Typekit support

January 5th, 2010
Snapshot of the Typekit Kit Editor

Snapshot of the Typekit Kit Editor

I just updated the site with 2 new fonts from Typekit: Chunk for the headers and Droid Serif for the body copy. You can also see which faces I’m using. Although it’s an experiment for now, the potential looks tremendous. After I read that the Harvard Business Publishing is using Typekit on their HBR website, hbr.org, I thought it would be worth a trial run. What are the benefits? How much does it cost?

» Read more: New Feature: Typekit support

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Posted in Tools, Typography, Website

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Interactive data visualizations with R

January 3rd, 2010

Jeroen Ooms, a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Department of Statistics, has been very busy with R — he has two wonderfully slick online apps where users are able (for free) to visualize datasets using R’s ggplot. If you’re interested in R, stocks, or just data visualization, you’ll find something of real value in his applications.

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Posted in Data Visualization, Programming, Website

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PolarClock reincarnated as protovis.js webpage

August 6th, 2009

Based on the original PolarClock, the PolarClock has been reborn as a protovis.js webpage. Enjoy the coolness…

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Posted in Programming, Software, Website

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Turning Statistics Into Knowledge: Seminar Review and Notes

July 24th, 2009

I had the pleasure of attending the Seminar on Innovative Approaches to Turn Statistics into Knowledge, hosted by the US Census Bureau, the World Bank, and the OECD. While Robert Kosara, from UNC Charlotte, has a fairly thorough review (but not focusing on the technical aspects) of the seminar, and I would agree with most of his points (except for the presentation by David Spiegelhalter and Mike Pearson; their presentation was geared toward (and succeeded in) linking data with decision making), I didn’t read much about the technical side of things, so I thought I’d cover those areas here.

Here’s the low-down:

» Read more: Turning Statistics Into Knowledge: Seminar Review and Notes

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Posted in Data Visualization, Programming, Software, Tools, Website

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New R script: Plot Nike+ runs

June 5th, 2009

I’ve been playing around with R and Nike+ and thought I’d put the two together, so I wrote a little R script that pulls your public data from the Nike+ website and plot out the graphs. It’s a little rough around the edges (see below for a list of enhancements/fixes), but it generates plots. I like SlowGeek, but found their smoothing function a bit too “smooth” — it was shaving 1/2 mph from my run speeds. I wasn’t happy with that ;) Read more to get the source code, below.

Sample: Sample

For an example of what it might look like, you can see my plots.

» Read more: New R script: Plot Nike+ runs

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Posted in Programming, Running, Software, Tools, Website

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