One of the perks of Apple’s WWDC is the unlimited supply of Odwalla fruit drinks. I like to see how different foods try to mask sugar in their ingredients list. The most common ploy is to split it up into several kinds of sugar so it doesn’t appear so high in the list, but Odwalla raises the bar with “organic evaporated cane juice”.
Archive for August, 2006
Sugar, In Other Words
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006Data Visualization Winner
Thursday, August 10th, 2006
My week-end and evenings spent staring at pixels paid off as Comprehensive Winner designation in Business Intelligence Network’s Data Visualization Competition. My entry included visualizations for all five scenarios, and I won the checking account scenario and tied for first in the freestyle scenario, in which I revised the old OWASA water graph. The analysis of the winners and other entries will be released later, and I look forward to reading them. Unless one of my entries for the other scenarios is highlighted as an example of what not to do.
The checking account scenario was so simple I almost didn’t enter it. It involved a checking account statement with only 7 or 8 transactions for a given month. I thought it would have been a better challenge to visualize a statement with dozens of transactions, some occurring on the same day. I did the simple visualization in a way that was scalable to the more complex case, which may have helped my entry.
I found problems with all of my entries soon after submitting them, but I thought the budget summary scenario was my best entry (PDF). Below is the updated OWASA graph (my JMP version, original OWASA version). Getting my contour colors from Color Brewer probably helped.
New Concrete Paver Walk-Up
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
The powers that be long ago declared our old walk-up composed of 15-inch square concrete pavers to be unsuitable, and last week I finally made the plunge to replace it myself. I think it was the $4000 quote from a landscaper that provided the final incentive.
Above is the after photo, with 6×9 concrete pavers and new 6×6 timbers, bringing the supplies cost to around $200. The sand hasn’t completely settled, yet, and I may have to redo some pavers if they end up being too uneven, but even redoing them all wouldn’t be too bad.
The only physically hard part was actually moving the old and new pavers around. Skill-wise, the hard part was cutting the edge pavers, especially the ones needing diagonal cuts (near the timbers). I did all the cutting with a hammer and chisel, which worked OK for short perpendicular cuts and not as well for others. I only had one successful long diagonal cut. Usually it would break where I wanted eventually, and it doesn’t look too bad having a couple of pavers glued together with liquid nails for the unwanted breaks.
Anybody need any 15×15 concrete pavers?