You want to do WHAT with your sparkline?
October 21, 2009 3:31 PM   Subscribe

Chartporn is a blog devoted to good graphics. Here are a few that stand out to me: environmental indicators, a beautiful graph of the time takes people to get to a good sized town, 2010 ski resort guide, who owns the US national debt, how to crack a master lock and - of course - a poster to hang in your time machine.

The link to the time machine was was borked, so I took the liberty.
posted by shothotbot (13 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
A poster to hang in your time machine.

Somehow I was hoping it would be a more extensive version of this..

year 2009
Oct. 10 Philippines Days of flooding, landslides kill 186
Tropical depression Parma, known locally as Pepeng, dumped as much as 36 inches of rain. Another 93 people have been injured
Sep. 29 Samoa 85 deaths reported after quake A tsunami warning for the South Pacific was called off hours after a magnitude 8.0 earthquake was recorded near American Samoa

January 2007
Jan.18 London 47 dead as storm batters Europe

July 2000
Jul.25 Paris Concorde crash kills 113


That way I would know where NOT to go in my time machine.
posted by aetg at 3:44 PM on October 21, 2009


Previously


Cool Stuff.
posted by Wanderlust88 at 3:46 PM on October 21, 2009




Time machine poster courtesy of Qwantz, better known as Dinosaur Comics: http://qwantz.com/index.php
posted by fore at 3:50 PM on October 21, 2009


Is there backlash against this sort of thing yet? If not, I'm happy to start it. Half-assed authoritative-looking "data visualizations" seem to be thrown around a lot lately (heyyyy!) without much criticism of the quantitative data (if any) that's being presented, and usually also without criticism of the presentation of the data. The end result can be anything from meaningless, incomprehensible presentation of real data to complete and utter bullshit, and either way it gets linked all over the internet by people who lack critical thinking skills. (See also: the YouTube genre "flying numbers and words about the internet or globalization or something, with groovy music and perhaps an educated-sounding voiceover".)
posted by rolandcrosby at 4:27 PM on October 21, 2009 [8 favorites]


It's nice that the poster mentioned atomic theory, but no mention of thermodynamics? That seems counter-intuitive, methinks.
posted by Minus215Cee at 4:34 PM on October 21, 2009


Do they have the site in an URL that won't have someone looking at my workplace's proxy logs and wondering WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?
posted by qvantamon at 4:42 PM on October 21, 2009 [2 favorites]


Now I want to go buy a master combo lock and try opening it by their method.
posted by maxwelton at 5:35 PM on October 21, 2009 [1 favorite]


Now I want to go buy a master combo lock and try opening it by their method.

Including the part where you lift up with your penis?
posted by Mr. Anthropomorphism at 6:23 PM on October 21, 2009


rolandcrosby. start with http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/ and http://www.flowingdata.com.
posted by tayknight at 6:42 PM on October 21, 2009


Is there backlash against this sort of thing yet? If not, I'm happy to start it. Half-assed authoritative-looking "data visualizations" seem to be thrown around a lot lately


I think that is one of the points that ChartPorn wants to make in this post, a truly miserable chart, sending us to JunkCharts like our friend tayknight.

I dont think its lately. I think good visual design has always taken a good deal of work, a good understanding of what is being conveyed and design sense. Like most things that take effort and have some sort of aesthetic appeal, some people like to look at good examples for inspiration.

Speaking of which, here is a great National Geographic visualization of mankind's extra-planetary missions, which I wanted to post but decided it was a little thing on its own.
posted by shothotbot at 7:15 PM on October 21, 2009


I was the chief engineer for my college's radio station for a couple years. We had a wall covered with about 2 dozen lockers, all locked with Master padlocks. Half of the lockers belonged to nobody, and couldn't be used because nobody knew the combos anymore. I used that padlock algorithm on nearly* every one and did indeed get them open within 10 minutes or so.

I'd just sit down with the next padlock (well, sit down next to the locker) whenever I had 5-10 minutes to kill.

The algorithm they show here works, but if you really want to try this, look around for a more complete explanation of the last part. It's critical that you NOT try to literally spin through 100 times A-B-C combos. Scrutinize their example closely, and note that you are blowing through a handful of combos in one fell swoop.

And do everything gently (so that the internal dials don't shift) but firmly (so that the lock does open when you happen upon the combo).

* only the weird/keyed padlocks wouldn't budge
posted by intermod at 7:43 PM on October 21, 2009


backlash

(printed it out, on the wall in my office)
posted by sergeant sandwich at 8:16 AM on October 22, 2009


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