It’s Friday, everyone, and we’ve made it to the end of the week. And with the successful launch of Perseverance yesterday, this post from xkcd made a lot of sense. For those that don’t enjoy astronomy, basically stars have habitable zones, or sometimes the Goldilocks zone, around the star where planets would likely be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to form on the surface of orbiting planets. And since life as we presently know it requires water, it makes sense that these zones are where we focus our attention in studies of exoplanets.
Just generally not a fan of s’mores over here though.
Today is a Friday, an important point for those of us still in or largely in quarantine. So let’s try to ease into a more frequent posting with some humourous content from xkcd. It looks at everyone’s favourite golden ratio spiral and designers’ preferred ISO 216 for paper sizes.
I mean I would love if I could consistently get my hands on some A4. It just looks nicer than US Letter. But I digress, enjoy.
It’s Friday. I’d normally say something like we’ve survived this far, but the fact of the matter is that thousands have not. But, still, let’s try to keep it a little light. So here’s something from xkcd about the shape of the various curve potentials for Covid-19.
A few weeks ago we said farewell to John Bercow as Speaker of the House (UK). Whilst I covered the election for the new speaker, I missed the opportunity to post this piece from the BBC. It looked at Bercow’s time in office from a data perspective.
The piece did not look at him per se, but that era for the House of Commons. The graphic below was a look at what constituted debates in the chamber using words in speeches as a proxy. Shockingly, Brexit has consumed the House over the last few years.
At least climate change has also ticked upwards?
I love the graphic, as it uses small multiples and fixes the axes for each row and column. It is clean, clear, and concise—just what a graphic should be.
And the rest of the piece makes smart use of graphical forms. Mostly. Smart line charts with background shading, some bar charts, and the only questionable one is where it uses emoji handclaps to represent instances of people clapping the chamber—not traditionally a thing that happens.
Content wise it also nailed a few important things, chiefly Bercow’s penchant for big words. The piece did not, however, cover his amazing sense of sartorial style vis-a-vis neckties.
Overall a solid piece with which to begin the weekend.
Credit for the piece goes to Ed Lowther & Will Dahlgreen.
Next week is Thanksgiving and for me that means no pub trivia next week. So ahead of a two-week gap, here are our latest (and greatest?) in trivia scores. We won some, we lost some. And we definitely blew some. The key, as always, remains score points before music. Because we do not know music.
Yesterday the United Kingdom was supposed to leave the European Union. Again. Boris would rather be dead in a ditch. But he’s neither dead nor in a ditch. And the UK is still in the EU. So let’s enjoy the moment and reflect on this xkcd piece from the other day. And then enjoy the weekend.
But what about the UK–Shire border? Or UK–Westeros?
Well, everyone, we made it to Friday. So let’s all reflect on how many things we did on our mobile phones this week. xkcd did. And it’s fairly accurate. Though personally, I would only add that I did not quite use my mobile for a TV remote. Unless you count Chromecasting. In that case I did that too.
What about boarding passes?
If I have to offer a critique, it’s that it makes smart use of a stacked bar chart. I normally do not care for them, but it works well if you are only stacking two different series in opposition to each other.
Next week I am heading west. And by west I mean Austin, Texas. I mean you could argue that Austin is more south than west, but if you throw a “×” in there you get South × Southwest. Anyway, the allure of the western remains strong and that reminded me of an old xkcd piece reflecting on the relative length of the western period vs. the “west” in American culture.
Still not a fan of either…
It’s kind of like how M*A*S*H lasted far longer than the actual Korean War.
The week of the climate summit in New York and the revelation of the whistleblower complaint against the president seems to make it an ideal Friday to share this graphic from Wednesday by Jessica Hagy at Indexed.
If then statements all the days
So it’s less of a graphic and more an if then statement. But if the average designer codes the occasional if then statement, then the graphic is alright for Coffeespoons.
Well, we all made it to Friday. And for those of us here in the States, our bank holiday weekend starts at some point this afternoon. Consequently, here is a post from xkcd that basically describes my childhood and when I would draw the layouts to linear scrolling video game landscapes for Mario.
Admittedly, it really has nothing to do with data visualisation or design, but we can make a tenuous connection to video game design.
What about Luigi?
But everything is now a standardised and bland national chainstore. And before anyone asks, yes, my favourite game was SimCity. Unfortunately there I only had the power to lay out public transit systems. Strangely, it and later variations avoided the concept of multi-use zoning.
So whenever your weekend begins today, enjoy your holiday.
