Over on my ACME blog, I’ve written about using charts and infographics to explain complex or hard to visualize ideas, concepts, and relationships.
Instead of cross-posting that here, I thought I’d just provide a link and a teaser chart:
I discovered only today that, late last year, Alexander Davidson released a new version of my all time favourite text editor, Metapad!
Metapad is one of the most lightweight, simple, and yet powerful text editors out there. I love it for its tiny footprint, portability, multiple font support, block editing functionality, and transparent window capability. It also looks really nice :)
Before I upgraded this afternoon, I’d been using its previous version for at least ten years (via a recommendation from Chris Pirillo).
The latest version has a higher quality icon (which is really cool) and integrates fully with Windows 7 so it’s now my default text editor. Yes, you have to do a little OS-level tweaking and hacking to make that work…but it’s so worth it.
Yaay!
My three favourite Internet radio stations (the first two thanks to Winamp and SHOUTcast Radio) are:
ABC Classic FM is also nice, though I don’t listen to it all that often. Also, it’s only 64kbps.
That is all.
The first teaser trailer of the upcoming US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was released a few weeks ago. It was, by far, the best trailer I’d seen all year.
That got me thinking about which other trailers were, in my opinion, equally awesome? I could only think of two recent examples: Inception and Watchmen.
Here are all three for your viewing (and listening) pleasure:
Earlier this month, in a post about the upgrade of the Melbourne tram network map, I mentioned that I really loved the London Underground Tube map and the MTA New York Subway map.
A lot has been written about these maps so I don’t have much to add but here some information are bunch of links about them that you might find interesting.
Let’s start with the Wikipedia entry for this map which summarises its origins:
The first diagrammatic map of the Underground was designed by Harry Beck in 1931. Beck was an Underground employee who realised that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another – only the topology of the railway mattered.
…
To this end, he devised a simplified map, consisting of stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or on 45 degree diagonals. To make the map clearer and to emphasise connections, Beck differentiated between ordinary stations (marked with tick marks) and interchanges (marked with diamonds). The Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal – it was an uncommissioned spare-time project, and it was tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933. It immediately became popular, and the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network ever since.
This is the map that started it all: It was a proper transport system infographic and not a route overlay (underlay?) drawn on top of a geographically accurate aboveground map.
Here’s what the map looks like today:
You can read more about the Underground map on the BBC’s h2g2 website and can see images of it through its history on the Guardian’s website. There’s also more detail about it’s history (till 2002) here.
For something more awesome, check out:
Oh, and if you’re interested, you can get the actual, current map from here.
Again, let’s start with the New York Subway’s Wikipedia entry which has this to say about its map:
The current official transit maps of the New York City Subway are based on a 1979 design by Michael Hertz Associates. The maps are not geographically accurate due to the complexity of the system (i.e. Manhattan being the smallest borough, but having the most lines), but are known to help tourists navigate the city, as major city streets are shown alongside the subway stations serving them. The newest edition of the subway map, which took effect on June 27, 2010, reflects the latest service changes and also makes Manhattan bigger and Staten Island smaller.
Part of the reason for the current incarnation is that earlier diagrams of the subway (the first being produced in 1958), while being more aesthetically pleasing, had the perception of being more geographically inaccurate than the diagrams today. The design of the subway map by Massimo Vignelli, published by the MTA between 1974 and 1979, has since become recognized in design circles as a modern classic; however, the MTA deemed the map was flawed due to its placement of geographical elements.
So New York is one of the few large cities whose subway map is more closely tied to its aboveground geography. In his 2006 New York Times article, ‘Win, Lose, Draw: The Great Subway Map Wars’, Alex Mindlin had this to say about why Vignelli’s simpler but geographically inaccurate map didn’t work:
Although designers love to discuss why Mr. Vignelli’s schematic map didn’t fly, no single theory has emerged. The graphic designer Michael Bierut, however, suggests that New York’s street grid was to blame.
“Londoners are actually unclear about how close one stop is to the next,” he said. “But a lot of Manhattanites could tell you authoritatively how long it would take to walk from Fifth and 28th to Seventh and 44th. So the geographic discrepancies in the Vignelli map, which are no more than those you find in lots of subway maps around the world — they’re just glaring.”
Bierut actually explained the problem with Vignelli’s map more thoroughly in his own article on this topic in 2004 (the 100th anniversary of the New York Subway system):
[Vignelli’s map] was a design solution of extraordinary beauty. Yet it quickly ran into problems. To make the map work graphically meant that a few geographic liberties had to be taken. What about, for instance, the fact that the Vignelli map represented Central Park as a square, when in fact it is three times as long as it is wide? If you’re underground, of course, it doesn’t matter: there simply aren’t as many stops along Central Park as there are in midtown, so it requires less map space. But what if, for whatever reason, you wanted to get out at 59th Street and take a walk on a crisp fall evening? Imagine your surprise when you found yourself hiking for hours on a route that looked like it would take minutes on Vignelli’s map.
Here’s what the map looks like today:
For more about the map’s history (as well as that of the the subway system itself), check these out:
Another good website on the New York City subway is, of course, nycsubway.org.
For something more awesome, though, check out:
Of course, if you’re interested in the actual, official, current subway map, you can get that from here.
For more about Melbourne’s transport maps (both tram and train), check out these links:
If you’ve reached the end are are still reading, here are some more good links to check out:
So today we took part in SlutWalk Melbourne (which I wrote about earlier).
The only half decent report on the Melbourne walk is here but I’m sure there will be others over the next few days. The really good accounts (i.e. the nuanced and non-snarky ones) will, inevitably, be published in blogs.
We started outside the State Library of Victoria on Swanston Street with a few speeches:
The one by Cody Smith was particularly inspirational though others made really good points as well, such as:
"It shouldn’t be the responsibility of survivors to educate people about rape."
"It is not the responsibility of women to educate people on sexism"
"If you come from a position of privilege it should be your responsibility to educate yourself and your friends."
Lots of people were carrying awesome protest signs, like this one from James:
And this one from someone standing behind us:
After the speeches we walked down Swanston and Collins Streets to Parliament Gardens. Here are Scott, Nadia, James, and Andrew:
And here are me and Nadia once we got to the gardens:
If you’re curious about the “Hornet’s nest of revolutionary feminism” t-shirt I’m wearing, you can find out more about that on the Tiger Beatdown blog.
(Also, you can see a few more photos from this walk on my Flickr profile.)
Sadly, while the walk made an important statement, raised a lot of awareness, and was lots of fun to participate in, my cold didn’t react very well to two hour out in the cold so I got home a little worse for wear. I’ll definitely be sleeping in tomorrow!
A big thanks to the walk’s organizers and volunteers for making this happen; Samurai AV for the sound system; Victoria Police for coordinating our movement through the CBD; and everyone who turned up today (both in person and in spirit).
Here’s hoping this walk – and, indeed, this whole movement – has a genuine, long-term impact that reduces incidents of victim blaming and slut shaming. If nothing else, the walk has got us all talking about theses issues and that, in itself, is a good thing.
In case you haven’t already heard, SlutWalk Melbourne is at 1:00 PM on 28 May 2010 in front of the State Library on Swanston Street in the CBD.
For a quick introduction, here’s what the Melbourne protest’s organizer, Clem Bastow, said about SlutWalk in The Age earlier this week:
The "SlutWalk" phenomenon began in January this year, when a group of Toronto women organised a protest following a local police officer’s comments (to university students) that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised".
The organisers’ stance was simple: to call for an end to victim-blaming, the idea that victims of sexual assault or rape could somehow be blamed for their attackers’ actions based upon what the victim was wearing or doing at the time. Was the victim dressed skimpily? Were they intoxicated? Did they have a large number of sexual partners? Yes? Oh well, that explains it then.
In addition, the walks protested against a culture of slut-shaming. As the founders put it, "Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work. No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault."
Nadia wrote a really good blog post about the whole SlutWalk movement which mirrors my own feelings on this topic:
…If you get sexually assaulted, NOTHING you were wearing or were doing is going to be good enough. There will always be some moron going on about how you shouldn’t have gone there or done that or worn such-and-such or had a sexual or professional or intellectual history. The bottom line is that we live in a global society that believes femaleness is a fault and that if something happens to you, well then that’s just what you’re going to get if you insist on existing while female.
So yes, I’m going and I’d encourage anyone of any gender and any orientation who can attend to do so. Because this isn’t about one kind of woman or one kind of world view or even women as a group. Victim blaming and a culture that allows and even expects it are toxic for all of us, whoever we are and wherever we are. It is important then that, when handed the opportunity on a silver platter, we lend our voices to the protest against it.
I recommend you read the whole blog post and I, too, recommend that you attend at the protest walk.
Also, please don’t “slut up” or dress up for the walk. Women get abused, sexually assaulted, and, yes, called sluts regardless of what they do and what they wear. I think it’s important that people of all types, wearing all kinds of clothes attend the protest dressed as they normally would in order to highlight the diversity of people who are willing to stand up against victim blaming and slut shaming.
I love infographics and have a particular fondness for really good transport network maps. So I was very excited when, last week, Yarra Trams (Melbourne’s tram operator) launched a new version of their tram network map.
Here’s the old network map:
And here’s the fantastic new one:
A little application of colour goes a long way, doesn’t it? :)
This addition of colour – specifically, the assigning of one colour per line/route – is an excellent feature that is used by the best transport maps from around the world. Certainly my favourite transport maps – the London Underground Tube map and the MTA New York Subway map – both use this visual cue. So I’m glad Yarra Trams (YT) have added it to theirs. (More on those other maps in another blog post.)
The cool thing is that YT are highlighting this change via a really good marketing campaign (or would you call this a change management campaign?).
For example, yesterday they were handing these out at the Flinders Street tram stop on Swanston Street:
The information in the booklet was useful (an Android version of their awesome tramTRACKER app is coming soon!) and the jelly beans were delicious :)
YT have also gone a step further and placed colour-coded route maps inside trams. Through this, travellers have easy access to more detailed route information for the tram they’re currently on:
The complete network map is also available on a nearby wall, of course.
All in all, I’m thrilled with this latest instalment of KDR’s “TRAMSformation” of Yarra Trams.
If you like this sort of thing, do check these links out:
Yes, you can has!
After years of wanting a large screen HDTV, on Friday I finally went out and bought one. And boy was it worth it!
Sitting on the sofa in our living room, this is what our old 32” CRT TV looked like:
And this is what our new 50” Plasma TV looks like:
The larger screen makes a big difference, doesn’t it? :)
For those who are interested, I ended up getting the Samsung PS50C7000, which is a 50” (127cm) Series 7 (i.e. 2010) Plasma TV:
I did quite a lot of research before selecting this model and reviews like this from CNET were very encouraging:
The Samsung PS50C7000 is one of the best plasmas on the market and boasts one of the most complete feature sets available. Not quite deserving of full marks, though. [CNET Australia]
As well as this one from PC World:
The Samsung Series 7 (PS50C7000) plasma is very nearly the best television we’ve tested. It’s got an excellent design and generally great picture quality, only falling short in overall black levels. 3D is handled well but there are still a few aberrations; it is fine for occasional casual viewing. The Series 7 (PS50C7000) does a great job on Internet connectivity as well, making it an excellent all-round performer we’d happily recommend. [PC World]
My main research source was CHOICE, though, and they recommended this as one of the best 127-132cm TVs to buy (Note: Report viewable by members only):
CHOICE also named Samsung the ‘Best Television Brand’ in its 2011 Choice Awards. Panasonic and Sony were the other two TV brands that received the highest overall performance and CHOICE member customer satisfaction scores.
This TV also met all of my basic requirements:
Basically, this was last year’s top end Plasma model from Samsung so it had everything I wanted and even a few things that I didn’t want (like 3D capabilities).
The best part is that, in the annual consumer electronics cycle, April is when most new TV models hit the market. So, if you’re happy to buy the previous year’s model, March and April are when you get the best discounts(assuming the TV you want is still in stock). As it happens, I got this TV for about half its market launch price :)
In the choice between LCD and Plasma, I’m an audiophile and videophile so the superior picture quality of Plasmas has always appealed to me.
Also, in our price range of “just over A$1,000”, I had a choice of getting:
When you look at it that way, the choice of getting the plasma was obvious (assuming your aim was to get the largest screen size appropriate to your TV/living room).
I ended up getting our TV from RetraVision, which has one of the best range of Samsung TVs.
I got there at about 8pm on Friday night and, fifteen minutes later, I was done. The TV got delivered the next morning and I spent much of yesterday (Saturday) setting it up.
Yes, this has been a fun weekend :)
Now that we have an HDTV, we need high definition content to watch.
We already get some HD stuff from our free-to-air digital channels but my next step is to upgrade our Foxtel set top box to the iQHD and our subscription package to include HD channels (21 of them).
After that, we’ll think about getting a Blu-Ray player and some Blu-Ray discs. And, once we do that, we’ll think about getting a home theatre audio system. None of this will be any time soon, though. Certainly not till next year.
Fortunately, this is only the start of our life in HD so there’s a long way to go, yet. Let the fun begin! :)
‘On Her Shoulders’ is a short documentary commissioned by UN Women Australia to commemorate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.
“The message to young women is: You might think you’re equal but, mate, you’re not.
You earn less, you earn less per hour, you earn less over your lifetime. You do a heap of unpaid work because somebody’s got to do it.
You don’t run things, you don’t decide things…so don’t have the illusion that you’ve got choice.”
– Eva Cox
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