Edward Tufte - Beautiful Data

Attended Edward Tufte's course  on Presenting Data and Information this past Friday here in Denver.  It was a great experience seeing him in person after having followed his books for years and the course was amazing.  He's a wonderful presenter, the most professional and engaging I've see and he had the audience fully participating following along on chosen pages from his books that were given out to each person as part of the program.  The audience was big and eclectic with the common thread being somehow involved with the presentation of data in their work.  One of the most spellbinding moments of the course was when Dr. Tufte talked about the richness of the drawings and data on sunspots from Galileo's "Letters on Sunspots" from 1613.  He had the title page of the book displayed on the screen when he said "let's see the real thing" and produced a first edition of the actual book and walked around the room showing it to the attendees.  He also showed the engraving, pictured above, of Galileo commenting on how alive, inquisitive and mischievous he looked in the illustration. Very cool.  His whole premise was that rich, complex data can be displayed beautifully if you take the time to look, learn and understand.

I would urge anyone with a personal or professional interest in the display of data and also in art and design to take this course if possible.  If you can't take the course you should definitely get the books.  

Below is the link to Edward Tufte's website. 

This site is a visual experience in itself. 

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Crashing

I crashed the other day on my commute home.  Got off the bus at the Park & Ride, dumped my bag in the milk crate on the rear rack and headed out.  The bus passed me heading up the street and pulled over to the right pick up lane for another passenger.  I started to pass him on the left, first checking traffic and making sure the bus driver saw me.  Good to go.  What I didn't see was that the town had begun the repaving process on the street by removing the upper portion of one lane and leaving a drop off on the lane that I was in.  Not much room to maneuver between the drop off and the bus and my front wheel went off the edge and the rest was what seemed like a choreographed slow motion head first crash into the side of bus, slipping down the side of the bus and finding myself on my back tangled in the bike and looking under the bus.  Bus didn't move.  I pushed my bike away and slowly got up.  Someone shouted asking if I was all right.  Bruised but OK, my head protected by my helmet, I limped over to a side street to collect myself, take a bike damage inventory and head out again.  What took only seconds seemed like some type of time warp.  Shit happens and it happens fast.

In Praise of the Lowly Milk Crate

Usually I carry the stuff for my commute in a messenger bag.   Computer, a few folders, planner, lunch and a change of cloths along with my tool kit and air pump.  I wanted to experiment with not having to carry this bag draped over my shoulder with the extra weight driving me down onto the saddle.  That was getting uncomfortable.  I started looking at panniers but my one main requirement was that I needed a bag with a designated laptop area that was padded, waterproof and safe from impact.  That's way the messenger bag worked so well for that.  I looked into commuter brief cases that are like the messenger bags but with the added feature of a mounting system that latches onto the rear carrying rack.  My only problem with these was the expense for the really good ones.  Did I really want to drop more bucks on another messenger-type bag?  So looking around for alternatives I came across a milk crate I had in the garage and having seem these used a million times as a bike carrying crate I bungeed it on to the rear rack and dumped my messenger bag into it getting a better feel for riding with the weight in back of me and not on my shoulder and back.  It worked great, gave me the freedom I wanted on the ride and it wasn't too wobbly.  Cost was zero.  Will I use this instead of a high end bag?  For now I will, using it as a kind of test of concept plus it has the added advantage of being the most unpretentious, basic. get something that works starting solution I could find at the moment.