Comments on: You want to do WHAT with your sparkline?

You want to do WHAT with your sparkline?

shothotbot — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:31:41 -0800

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.

By: aetg

aetg — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:44:44 -0800

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.

By: Wanderlust88

Wanderlust88 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:46:30 -0800

Previously Cool Stuff.

By: minifigs

minifigs — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:49:16 -0800

It's almost as if they knew we were coming.

By: fore

fore — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:50:53 -0800

Time machine poster courtesy of Qwantz, better known as Dinosaur Comics: http://qwantz.com/index.php

By: rolandcrosby

rolandcrosby — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:27:51 -0800

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".)

By: Minus215Cee

Minus215Cee — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:34:30 -0800

It's nice that the poster mentioned atomic theory, but no mention of thermodynamics? That seems counter-intuitive, methinks.

By: qvantamon

qvantamon — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:42:26 -0800

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?

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:35:13 -0800

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

By: Mr. Anthropomorphism

Mr. Anthropomorphism — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:23:03 -0800

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?

By: tayknight

tayknight — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:42:29 -0800

rolandcrosby. start with http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/ and http://www.flowingdata.com.

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:15:13 -0800

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.

By: intermod

intermod — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:43:38 -0800

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

By: sergeant sandwich

sergeant sandwich — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:16:32 -0800

backlash (printed it out, on the wall in my office)