Monthly Archives: October 2006

Away for a bit

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Family medical emergency.

Update, Nov 7 2006: It’s difficult, especially when there are loved ones gravely ill, to find the time to pay the bills and feed yourself, let alone opine on ephemeral public affairs or join in with the self-created world of academic discourse.

I had the opportunity to attend and present what turned out to be a slapdash talk at a fascinating conference in Chicago these last three days, but in light of family stresses I’m afraid it played out less as an opportunity and more as a distraction from Real Life. I will try to recount and respond to the many fascinating conversations I had — it’s my professional responsibility, of course. It’s what I do for work, this conference-attending, this collegial engagement and gentle interdisciplinary academic prodding, this insistence on thoughtfulness among my colleagues and betters in the world.

But insofar as I need to be away from work to care for family, it will be a while before I’m able to thoughtfully respond and recount here. In the meantime, Im hopeful that some of my new correspondents might stumble along to my blog (Google will send them). So let me add some links to previous work that still applies, and that may help frame things I’ve said for those I met in person these last days, who in most cases I’m sure are not regular blog readers:

There are others. I’m busy, I’m ragged, but I’ll be back.

Gradual Unveiling #6: Extending Fowler’s “New Methodology”

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For one of the best overviews of and introductions to the principles and state of the culture of Agile Software Development, with some ventures into Agile Product Design and Management (why is all this stuff Capitalized?), I recommend Martin Fowler’s The New Methodology.

Read it, thinking of the Academy. Of scientific and numerical work — not programming as such, and not product design surely. Research. Exploration. Discovery. The steady cycle of adaptive thinking and doing. Keyword: “adaptive”.

Influential data visualizations

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A collection of graphs, charts, and other visualizations of ideas and relationships, in draft and published form. Some impressive examples, which impress in many cases not just because of face value, but back story and implication as well:

All 1,943 Cornell Faculty were asked to respond to the following question:

Of the many charts (graph, map, diagram, table and “other”) you have seen in your life, which has been the most important, remarkable, meaningful or valuable?

On the archival paper provided, they were asked to create a copy of the chart and in the remaining space annotate notable attribute of the data and the image, describe what they remembered about first seeing this image and comment on why they chose this image.

(Via Information Aesthetics.)