Archive for category Geek
Mapping the Canadian media landscape
The network map of Canadian media ownership was one of two pieces I was working on for the CBCNews.ca feature package on the future of television. I built it with IBM’s free data visualization tool Many Eyes.
I’m generally pleased with how it turned out, but I think the presentation could be much clearer. I felt the need to make a screencast using Jing to show how to use it.
Newslab.ca contacted me for an email interview about the network map, and I think it addresses some of the concerns I have about the tool. One part of the email I sent that they didn’t use addresses one aspect of the lack of clarity in the map.
The Many Eyes network map was intended for personal relationships, like a Twitter network showing who’s following who, or computer networks showing connections, where there’s no hierarchy.
In the case of the Canadian media map, there’s a clear hierarchy, so it would have been nice to see, for example, parent companies at the top of each cluster, or as a larger node, or in bold, or in bigger text, something to show that these are the companies that own everything “below” them.
If the point of a visualization is to tell a story, the story of the companies at the top of the food chain is one this map doesn’t tell clearly.
Oh, and the other part of Changing Channels I did was this article on Canadian over-the-air digital TV. It turned out well and it’s very pretty well received in the comments.
Map the fallen Canadians
Map the Fallen, a Google Earth map released yesterday for Memorial Day, is an impressive piece of work. It maps the approximate locations of the deaths of coalition soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and links each one to that soldier’s hometown. It uses data from icasualties.org to populate the map.
Unfortunately, either some of the data on icasualties.org isn’t formatted properly or there’s something wrong with Sean Askay’s data scraper. Many of the Canadian casualties are missing from the Afghanistan map. Because female soldiers are given a different colour, the absence of Capt. Nichola Goddard, Canada’s first female combat soldier killed on the front lines, is especially conspicuous.
Cpt. Nichola Goddard's entry in Map the Fallen
In fact, her entry in Map the Fallen contains several errors. Her last name is given as “MSM,” which is actually a title indicating that Goddard was posthumously given the Meritorious Service Medal. Her hometown is given as “Calgary, Nova Scotia,” she is reported to have died in “Not reported yet, Afghanistan,” and the circumstances of her death aren’t given.
I’ve been working on a database of Canadian soldiers for years now. Here’s Capt. Goddard’s entry in the CBCNews.ca database, and here’s the approximate location of her death. That map of Canadian casualties in Afghanistan was my baby for a while, but it hasn’t been updated for nearly a year, for various technical and editorial reasons.
I’m planning an update to the database this summer that will include some map data.
Maureen Dowd, Twitter and the telephone
Some people will never get Twitter. They’ll never get past the 140-character limit. They’ll always think it’s just people writing about what they had for breakfast. (Frankly, I think people should stop watching Twitter in Plain English. It’s not relevant anymore.)
Some people will never use Twitter. And that’s OK.
One of those people in Maureen Dowd. She flew San Francisco and interviewed the creators of Twitter, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, and used that opportunity to mock them to their faces. And not in a self-aware, tongue-in-cheek, Stephen-Colbert sort of way. She hates Twitter and she let them know it.
Sample question: “Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?”
Fortunately, bloggers are a clever bunch, and this parody Dowd interview with the inventors of the telephone dovetails nicely with my recent interest in Bell’s life.
Sample parody question: “Was there anything in your childhood that turned you into a loathsome scourge to humanity?”
Bell responds, deadpan, “You mean my mother’s deafness, which made me dedicate my life to helping people communicate?”
Earning my GeekDad cred
Here, for posterity’s sake, is how I liveblogged my wife’s labour and baby girl’s delivery using Facebook status updates:
September 28
John is timing contractions! 9:36pm
John is finding the iPod perfect for timing contractions. 9:56pm
John is watching his wife updating a Calc spreadsheet during labour. Amazing. 10:28pm
John is realizing that using an iPod to time contractions officially qualifies him as a GeekDad. 10:50pm
John is boiling water (for tea) and resisting the urge to tear up old sheets. 11:08pm
John is off to bed. Maybe Ella will come overnight. 11:14pm
September 29
John is having breakfast and then it’s off to the hospital. Updates from my cellphone when I can. 10:06am
John is at the hospital. We have our room. Everything going well. 12:56pm
John is having lunch. Ella’s birthday could be today or tomorrow. 3:06pm
John is glad Laurie is getting some pain relief and some sleep. Epidurals are great. 8:41pm
September 30
John is a daddy to Ella Faith Bowman, 8 lbs. 3 oz., born at 10:31 last night. 7:46am
John is home with Ella and Laurie and is going to bed. 2:31pm