Category: My Work

  • Redesigning the Turkish Election Results

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    Turkey held its elections over the weekend. And so on the way to work this morning I decided to check the results on the BBC. And I saw this graphic—screenshot from my phone. So I decided to scrap today’s blog post and instead spend all of five minutes tweaking this to make it a bit…

  • Where in the World Have I Been?

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    In January 2011, I made a map of counties I had visited in my life. I just rediscovered the file last weekend, and so today I decided to update the map. So below is 2011 and then after is 2015.

  • The Spellecy’s Wisconsin Land Grant

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    I have returned from my trip up north to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Unfortunately, from the research side it was not the most successful of trips. I did find some records, but none that answered any of the big questions I had. If anything, I now have far more questions. Most of the information I learned…

  • Researching the Family History in Ashland, Wisconsin

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    I’m presently off in the northern reaches of Wisconsin, Ashland in particular, researching part of my family’s history. To aid me in understanding just how this frontier-following family moved over one century, I put together a crude map and a timeline to give me context (and jog my memory) while searching through files in the…

  • Baseball vs. Basketball vs. Hockey

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    There was an interesting article in Forbes on Monday that looked at baseball’s popularity. In short, the commonly believed argument is that baseball is becoming less popular vs. sports like football, basketball, &c. Hence, one of the reasons for the pace of play changes. However, last Wednesday, there were three nationally televised playoff games—two in…

  • Amtrak Train No. 188 Derails

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    I am a big fan of trains, rail transit, and Amtrak. I think the rail network connecting the East Coast’s big cities from Boston down to Washington is one of the big draws of the Northeast. Not surprisingly, I have taken that route I don’t know how many times. So, when Amtrak’s Northeast Regional No.…

  • Battle of Mons Graupius

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    I just finished reading Tacitus’ account of his father-in-law Agricola. Agricola is the Roman—more likely from a family of Romanised Gauls—general who conquered Great Britain for Rome. His crowning victory was the Battle of Mons Graupius. It should all be taken with a grain of salt, because there are no other corroborating sources—to my knowledge.…

  • Yemen’s Tangled Web

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    Did you see the news about Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen. Are you confused about what is going on in Yemen? And how that relates to what is going on in Iraq? And the rest of the Middle East? Well, so am I. But, I also only had time to research and work on one graphic…

  • America’s Most Popular Beers—And Almost All Are Crappy

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    Or so says Adweek. I would heartily disagree about their inclusion of Yuengling in their group of crappy. Though the other nineteen, yeah, I would tend to agree. Regardless, the infographic that sparked the Adweek post is quite blah. I do enjoy the illustrations of the bottles and labels, but the data visualisation below is…

  • Some of the Best Baseball I’ve Ever Seen

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Was ten years ago this time in October. Boston was on their way to winning their World Series in 86 years. But to get there, they had to go through the New York Yankees. And they did it in dramatic fashion, winning a riveting best-of-seven series. Why riveting? Because it had never been done before.…