dianaschnuth

As a Business Intelligence professional, David McCandless’s TED talk about the beauty of data visualization really struck a resonant chord for me. I aspire to be a designer who has a solid background in programming and database concepts, but I don’t find many opportunities to work on data visualization at my 8-to-5, as I’m focused mainly on straight-up reporting.

Last year, in lieu of one of my normal and customary Year In Review blog posts, I created a series of graphs that represented the easily-trackable data in my life: weight loss, music listening habits, miles walked, photos taken, things like that. In going back and re-reading my past Years In Review this week, I realized that my “infographic” review didn’t actually give as much information about what I’d done during the course of the year. It didn’t do an effective job of presenting the highlights like I’d previously done in verbal form. The idea had been along the lines of “show, don’t tell,” but it didn’t manage to do either very well.

Looking back objectively at my 2009 Year In Review, here’s what the graphs and numbers tell me:

• I went to Japan. I walked a lot one of the days I was there (14 miles), and I took lots of pictures.
• When I ate out (back at home), I had mainly Asian food (Chinese, Japanese, Korean).
• I tried to lose weight, but didn’t do very well.
• I took lots of pictures. Some of them were with my iPhone. Most of them were from vacations and trips, including Japan and Chicago.
• I listened to music, and my musical taste was stuck squarely in the ’90s, for the most part.

That’s kind of lame. I can do better than that.

With these two experiences rolling about in my brain, I’ve decided to try creating personal infographics over the course of the year, but keep the standard prose-style Year In Review for next year.

Practice is the only way to learn and improve, be it creating data visualizations, or writing, or photographing. We’ll see how long it takes me to successfully find my own style, and to successfully identify and convey relationships between datasets.

My new computer arrives tomorrow.

I’m moving from my Dell Dimension, circa 2004, with an Intel Celeron 2.4GHz processor and 2GB of RAM, to a brand new Dell tower with a 6X 2.6GHz processor and 4GB of RAM.

I specifically bought it so I could play Civilization V. But I was probably overdue for a new box, anyway.

I’ve made upgrades to my computer for the sake of Civ before, but never have I purchased a whole new computer just to play a game. —Well, mainly to play a game. There are actually a few games I haven’t been able to play on my PC: Portal and Spore, just to name two. I’m also just looking forward to having a speedier computer overall.

The actual migration to the new box shouldn’t be too bad. I have two external hard drives which hold most of my media and my projects, so all I’ll have to move is my iTunes library file, My Documents (mainly odds and ends), and everything on my Desktop (also odds and ends).

Figuring out over time which applications I need to install will be an adventure, too — I’m probably going to make a list tonight (and check it twice) to figure out which apps will need special attention (like my Omron pedometer database, which holds historical data of how far I’ve walked/run). I’m really hoping that the move to Windows 7 and a 64-bit OS won’t throw a monkey wrench into any of my normal applications.

Tonight: Moving stuff to the external hard drives. Sorting through digital files as needed. Exporting bookmarks and other necessities.

Tomorrow: Physical organization of desk (as much as possible in one night) and hooking-up of tower to peripherals. Will also involve dusting and vacuuming and other grossly-neglected duties.

…Oh, who am I kidding? This is probably gonna take the rest of the week.

I have lots of to-do lists. I have a Moleskine Piccadilly notebook full of itemized tasks I want to do sooner or later. I have an archived version of my old Palm Desktop with leftover to-do items. I have text files where I tried to consolidate some of my old scraps of paper full of lists, and I still have said scraps of paper full of lists from years ago.

I haven’t found a satisfactory way to organize all these maybe-somedays and to-do-this-weeks. Maybe Epic Win will save me.

From the Epic Win website:

Our lives are full of quests. Remember that birthday card, send that email, or drag ourselves to the gym on a regular basis.

Trouble is, sometimes we’re having too much fun doing other virtual stuff like hunting down rare items in World of Warcraft or leveling-up in Facebook games to remember the stuff we’re supposed to be doing.

EpicWin is an iPhone app that puts the adventure back into your life. It’s a streamlined to-do list, to note down all your everyday tasks, but with a role-playing spin.

Rather than just mentally ticking off your chores, completing each one improves and develops your character in an ongoing quest to level-up, gain riches, and develop skills.

By getting points for your chores it’s easier to actually get things done. We all have good intentions but we need a bit of encouragement here and there. Doing the laundry is an epic feat of stamina so why not get stamina points for it?!

Watch as your avatars stats develop in ways to represent your own life. Will you be a Maiden of Juggled Priorities, or a King of Win? The lifestyle you lead will decide.

This app will either be Epic Win or Epic Fail. I’m not sure which yet. I can see me either finding it amusing for a week, then deciding it’s dumb; or getting WAY more into it than I should, and breaking down my tasks into stupid little sub-tasks, just to level up my guy.

Until Epic Win is released, though, I think I’ll stick with the Piccadilly-to-Google-Tasks method I’m using now. As long as I can get one little thing done a night (e.g. cleaning off the dining room table or changing the bed linens), I feel pretty good about myself.