My study results!

So I made another video. It has no pictures. Boo. Maybe I will add some, but it is really helpful for me to make this videos and share them with you all. It helps me figure out how to explain things and also critique my own ideas.

Yes. There are probably typos in these videos. realistically I make these in about an hour. I don't really have any more time for this than that. I know it is unprofessional, and not befitting of a PhD student. Rest assured, my research proposal is well proofread.

But feel free to make fun of me if you like. That's what the internet is for isn't it?

Thesis renovation!!

So, many of you know that the process of developing a thesis involves many iterations. I am currently having the nail down some of the ideas I have been researching over the last two years and write a research proposal. I have made some big changes and I had to remove some of the work that specifically relates to designing schools. I feel a little sad about this, but I am actually developing a method for studying schools that I can use in future work. The thesis was just getting to big, and I am now focusing on developing the method - which I hope can be used in many applications. So I made this video to try to explain what I am doing and why.

Please let me know if you have questions. I am trying to make it all as clear as possible!!

CMD Demo Day!

Things have been sooooooo busy! I am struggling with what I can post on the blog that is not confidential or should be kept private until ready to publish. Hence my minimal posting.

Anyways, reading for my data viz class revealed this gem:

Wattenberg, M. (2002). Arc diagrams: Visualizing structure in strings. In Information Visualization, 2002. INFOVIS 2002. IEEE Symposium on (pp. 110-116). IEEE.Can you see it? where the arc hits the line that is where certain section of the piece repeat. How beautiful is that??

Visual diary 4

I know this is supposed to be a diary that might contribute to my data viz project but I am having so much fun drawing I just need to get this stuff out of my head. And I am so attracted to the graphic elements. With this pic I struggled with how to keep the dragon in the background and not to become too distracting. 

Visual Diary 3

I have this pet project where I want to draw characters with personality and charisma that are as abstract as possible. These are not very abstract, but I want to keep the overall egg-shape as a general outline which is filled in with details. I have a fantasy about another life I get to live where I can delve into printmaking and I make woodcuts and screen prints of these.

Visual Diary 2

So this may have very little if nothing to do with data viz. I just drew it because I have so many pictures in my head and I just want to draw them all. I am dreaming of doing fan art these days - especially from the TV and books I am reading. Now I know this has nothing to do with data viz, but I did draw it myself, which is learning in itself. I am interested in drawing using only black and white and this is a challenge - to use a fat pen instead of a fine tip. The challenge is to great a readable graphic with mostly flat colours. You see I had to do white around the sword and crown to get it to read agains the black coat? I also like the challenge of trying to create a sense of texture using the fat pen ehcih can be striking when it works, or completely unreadable when it doesn't.

(Any guess who this Game of Thrones Character is?)