Eatin Cake

Observations, things, and productions of Dylan Moriarty, lovingly compiled here for your consumption.

[eightbears]

One of my hobbies is to take images my graphic design buddies post on Facebook and jokingly spruce them up. I offer some awful advice, and provide visual guides to further illustrate how they can *improve* their designs. 

All initial designs by the wonderful Cameron Jackson. Edits by myself and through the magic of Google Image Search, Shutterstock & Photoshop.

1. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not to shabby, but it lacked what really makes a fitness center mean something: people working out! An empty weight room does nothing for our imaginations if we can't see the results up front!

2. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

I dug this design- though felt the name of the event was getting lost in the center hole. With a minor tweak, the eye will be more drawn to it, resulting in a more unified graphic.

3. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adobe gets a lot of flak for the widespread abuse of their filters, but I find a lot get underutilized. Consider using such neglected ones such as the Buschemi Fill, which adds just the right amount of Steve Buschemi head to your design.

4. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

When making an infographic, you really want to draw the viewers eye in with something that makes them feel good so they'll stick around and really soak in all those hard facts. Replacing all your graphics with cats is a pretty slick method in the business to accomplish this.

Also, while you may have personally collected or researched those facts, but unless you have a celebrity endorsement, it's likely people will just write it off as propaganda. Use a well-known and well-liked celebrity to help endorse your facts to the common man.

5. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is good. Don't be ashamed to claim credit for putting together good work. You may be doing work for the client, but don't miss opportunities to let people know who's actually responsible for such a sensible arrangement of data.

6. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Getting people to volunteer for anything is a noble, but painful endeavor. You really got make the thing look spicy hot! What better way than to make it look like a spicy hot party?

By adding color, attractive people, and some *pizzazz*, what was just another call out for volunteers becomes the hit must-go-to event of the semester!  

Also starbursts. The more starbursts you can fit on the page, the more attractive it will be. Same goes for typefaces.

7. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

In order to achieve a nostalgic look, I added cowboys, as there are few things in the world more nostalgic than cowboys. I dare you to find a soul who looks back towards their days as a ten year old on grandpa's ranch with anything but reverence. Also, because it's an exhibit from one person, while you don't have to necessarily put her face all over the image, it's standard practice to slip them in subtly in the background so that when people attend the gallery they're struck with a feeling of recognition. Sneaky, I know.

Cheers!

[eightbears]

Howdy folks!

Over the last couple weeks, I put together an interactive map on the production of food! ...not the most exciting or revealing tool out there, but hopefully after reading this you'll appreciate why the stuff happening in the background is really, really cool.

At first I figured I'd just be scraping Wikipedia for the data on this. Then I discovered almost every other food had it's data presented in a different way.

After a bit of googling, I found both a reliable source, and uniform data from FAOSTAT. Looked up each commodity...

...grabbed the tables through Google Docs...

...and organized them into this table.

The most important field here is probably the "id", and it serves as the column to link this data to the topography.

The initial design!

The tools for this project make a short list:

Natural Earth Data

GDAL

TopoJSON

D3

Sublime Text (text editor)

Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator 

Usually I don't include the step of installing software or preparing the tools to be used because it's as simple as installing a executable file, clicking twice, and running the program. Setting up TopoJSON ended up being a surprising struggle. 

Why TopoJSON? Well, the goto file type for working with geographic data are .shp files. Those are faaaar to large to properly load and work with online. The original Natural Earth Dataset for world countries has a shape file that's 182.7 kB, and attribute file that's 1.8 MB. After conversion the .TopoJSON file was only 89.7 kB. Much more workable.

The drastic difference comes from cutting away all the unnecessary data, cleanup, and drawing the paths in a more compact way. In the original file there were 59 different attributes for things ranging from Country Name to Continent, to lots of various administrative codes. After conversion, the only bits preserved besides the topography was just one of the admin codes. 

There are a couple of tools online which allow us to do a typical two click conversion, but they're still pretty fickle. The one I'd heard most success from, Shape Escape, always crashed when I tried to use it. Another one, Map Shaper, worked fine for me, but I thought the file it exported was terribly messy.

Instead of relying on those sites, I decided to try to follow Bostock's guide for running the file conversion in node.JS. I liked the higher control on the output having it set up would allow, and especially not having to rely on the previously mentioned online tools.

Doing this on Windows proved.... unproductive. Bostock wrote his with Mac in mind. Answers to other frustrated folks on coding advice sites from 1 to 2 years ago proved to be the only place to find guides or help on it. It also didn't help that this was my first major foray into installing through the Command Prompt.

The big issue here seemed to be that Windows system files aren't entirely uniform. There are additional components that need to be installed, and due to the dated nature of the online answers, trying to find the version that led that person to a workable solution led to nothing but dead ends. 

SO, I decided to follow the advice of my peers when asked how to get it working on a windows: "Don't bother."

Luckily, I also have a laptop running Linux, which is much more forgiving for command prompt installation. After three days trying to get this to work on Windows, in one night I got it up and working in Linux.

Still with me? Cool. Here's a gif to make up for the long blocks of text.

And here's where the bulk of the project took place.

To summarize, the script is doing the following:

Drawing "invisible" svg circles over the food icons.

Declaring "states" based on the csv data ("Apples", "Bananas" etc.) that update when a new food icon is clicked.

Drawing the map from the Topojson.

Projecting the map into Equirectangular.

Linking the Topojson with the CSV through the common field.

Defining a color scale that goes with each "state".

Color the countries based on the color scale and "state".

Highlight the countries when hovered over.

Dehighlight the countries when hovered off.

Create an info bar below the map.

Update the info bar to show the selected food when "state" is changed.

Update the info bar to show the details on a countries production when that country is hovered over with the mouse.

...and it took awhile to get working. The title of this section is definitely an overdone joke, but it's entirely appropriate here. While learning how D3 functions was valuable, there's a lot to be said for the simple troubleshooting skills learned. 

Particularly for me, building a project entirely through script is still a foreign approach. Building this way requires a very careful approach, and a lot of future sight. It was a lot of sprinting into walls, good solid progress for an hour or so, and then a oddity or problem that required a long sit down session to work out. A few notable issues included:

Only creating bars in the graph for the 20 countries selected, not the 111 in the dataset.

Figuring out why the icon box was drawing weird sizes.

Figuring out why some countries wouldn't select. Turned out to be an issue with it being based on the "name" of a country, which for ones like the United States of America included a space. JS didn't like that.

I had hoped to include a block that would explain why a food grew where it did, but these walls took me into deadline mode. 

It's hard to consider the issues in hindsight because the solutions were ultimately mostly simple and straightforward. The code's not perfect or pretty by any means, but it's functional- and at the end of the day, that face value is what matters most.

About 1% of the time on this project was spent in my usual stomping grounds: Illustrator and Photoshop. 

Not much to say here. Did the title and lower images as a reprieve from coding, and most of these food icons at the very end once everything was up and running.

Link!

...and there we have it! A static map built entirely from data alone.

Besides the flexibility this approach offers towards data type and construction,  the really nice thing is that at any point I can change the data on either the topography or food sides and with a few tweaks, everything will still work perfectly.

To highlight this, in just an hour and a half, I went through the project again- finding data, compiling it, and drawing a few more icons- and completely changed what the map displays.

(link)

And that's it!

Cheers.

[eightbears]

Gonna keep breathing life into this blog with a new Tunes post. 

Instead of posting tedious youtube links, I'm just gonna link up my Spotify 

While made easier for listenin' to, I do recommend checking out some of the music videos- go figure good tunes have good vids.  Disco 2000 - Pulp

Water Fountain - Tune Yards

Royals - Postmodern Jukebox & Puddles Pity Party Cheers folks!

[eightbears]

As has become a holiday custom for myself, this Fourth of July in between cookouts I hoped on my computer and set to do some quick doodles for my buddies on Facebook. I post an initial image (like that above), and when people "like" it, I try to draw them a (somewhat) personalized holiday-related doodle.  Part of the appeal for myself is to see how much I can throw together in 10 minutes using the limitations of Paint. Folks delightful reactions are also pretty swell.

I'd usually only post my favorites, but there was an additional unmentioned theme over the course of the toons. It led to a couple that didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped... but hey, that's the nature of the quick sketches.

...didn't quite finish the theme in time, but 10 points to whoever can figure out what I was going for in each picture!

Also, I don't usually do follow up doodles once I've called it a night but...

Cheers folks.

[eightbears]

Bikes are pretty great for exploring. One of my favorite things to do over the summer is just pick a direction and bike it til I'm somewhere completely unfamiliar and then try to get back avoiding major roads. 

I didn't intend on doing that yesterday, but hey, it's hard to turn back before you're exhausted.

The immediate perk of riding off in a random direction is that you get to see the amazingly diverse local businesses that exist outside off the well worn shopping centers. Pictured here is a Moroccan & Mediterranean Restaurant, a Scuba Diving specialty store, hair salon & a pizza place owned by a dude name Buck.

After taking this picture, I looked down at my feet and found a $10 bill on the street. 

This place was out of business, though I'm still curious what on earth that business was. Was it a gag gift store? Pranks? The leading Mid-Western University of Clowns? 

In the map you may notice a loop around in Middleton. Well, around that point, I had intended on turning around. Unfortunately, as is the case with a lot of suburban neighborhoods, there was a ton of dead ends. It didn't seem like any of the roads I was on were heading in the right general direction, so I opted to continue until I found some local deli. I found $10 on the road afterall.

This proved to be the best idea because it led not only to the Middleton local museum, but also:

Apparently the National Mustard Museum is located in Middleton, WI.

I intentionally thought it must just be a shop (similar to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Shop), but no, it's actually legit.

The place doesn't take itself too seriously. I suppose you can't when your the national Mustard museum. 

They have a Mustard vending machine and everything.

There's also inexplicably a really nice fountain right at the entrance. For some reason.

Afterwards headed to a next door diner to grab a soup and enjoy in the spoils.

I took a different route home, but my phone was dead at this point. Did pass by an imposter Nitty Gritty though. Seriously Middleton. Effort.

Eventually after meandering through the suburban labyrinth, this is the sight that signals a surefire route home. 

The Madison area is pretty failsafe to get lost in, because as long as you know which cardinal direction you ran off in, you can just head the other way until you hit a lake and reorient from there. 

Cheers!

[eightbears]

Howdy folks,

February marked month two of doing professional freelance work, and it's been pretty great! Here's a highlight reel of sorts.

The first project completed this month was completely redoing my old website, eatincake.com, saying farewell to Wordpress. Wordpress was great to start out with, but over time I got more and more frustrated with trying to dig through the code to make my own changes. This new site brings it's own set of challenges, but at the very least I know for certain where everything is now. 

For the Geography Department, this month I've been putting together posters to advertise their courses. It's been a neat exercise to put these together, hopefully they'll be up sometime Mid-March.

For fantasy author Mike Mood, I was hired to put together a map of his book's land. First map I've put together that uses magical horses as a unit of distance!

I also threw together a tutorial on Photoshop colorin' for what will eventually be a community blog hosted via the Cartography Lab. You can check it out in the post right below this one, though most people seemed to be more interested in the cat. Sigh.

Finally, when Valentines came along, I decided to spread the love via Facebook making quick five minutes sketches in MS Paint for folks who liked the post. Here are a few of em':

Cheers!

[eightbears]

Howdy folks,

After doing a quick 15 minute demonstration on how I go about coloring illustrations in Photoshop a lot of folks expressed a desire for me to write a post about it outlining the various tools and methods used.

First step is to just open your linework. This can be something you've found and scanned in, or something you've drawn on paper. When you open up the document, you should notice the layer is brought in is titled "Background". If the layer window isn't open, you can toggle it on in the "Window" menu at the top.

"Background" is Photoshop's default method of bringing in images without layers (jpgs, pngs, etc.). You should notice a little lock symbol towards the right of the layer name. That means the transparency of pixels is locked. 

Essentially, this means when you erase or delete pixels, it will only effect the pixels color, not it's transparency. In Photoshop an images transparency will be shown by a checkered backgrounds.

Above is an example of how this works. The top bars are on a layer without transparent pixels locked, the bottom bars are. Both were run over by an eraser at 50% opacity.

The quickest way to remove a background layers default setting it to rename it. Just double click on the layer title (Background), and than this window should pop up. Name your outline whatever you wish, I'll be referring to it as the Outline Layer.

Now we can make a new layer and stick it below the Outline Layer. 

 Now we need to adjust our Outline Layer so that the only thing the image reads is the black. We could go through and erase all the white via the magic wand or brute force, but adjusting the layer type is the quickest. 

There are quite a few different layer types, all of which do different things, some are subtle others not. For our purposes, we'll want to go with Multiply.

Setting a layer to Multiply will make it take all colored pixels on it, consider the pixels below it, and "multiply" the colors, resulting in the darkest hue being dominant. Black will come in at full strength, whereas white will have no impact. Exactly what we want!

Now we can color this nice and quick with the paint bucket! Keep in mind, we'll be doing the coloring on the layer beneath the Outline, so we'll need to be sure the "All Layers" box is checked in the Paint Bucket Tool Options.

If you notice a white halo around your outline, it may also be necessary to increase the number in the Tolerance box. The higher the number there, the more tolerant the paint fill will be towards covering pixels relative to where you click. Which is to say, if it's set at 0, it will only color in pixels that are exactly the same as wherever you click. 

This will only work if your linework doesn't have gaps in it. 

If there are gaps in the linework, the paint bucket's gonna leak. You can either go back to the Outline Layer and close it up with a black paintbrush, or just color in the gap on the color layer.

Now, the best part of putting the Outline on top is that you can stack the rest of your coloring regularly. So, if you have a fancy background you want to use but don't want to cut around your original drawing, or paint over it directly, you can just stick it in a layer underneath the color one!

Now, to get back to Locking Transparent Pixels. Once you have the color layer made and colored in, the only pixels on that layer should be what you've colored. By clicking on the above circled box just right of Lock options, we lock the transparent pixels!

This will allow you to draw over those pixels, for shading, adjustments, or what have you, without fear of drawing over the lines onto the background. To demonstrate what it does, I zigzagged over the whole image above, and thanks to the Transparent Pixel Lock it only affected the cats body.

There are a lot of uses for this (chiefly adding gradients to select areas), but when it comes to drawing I like to use it for giving a lot more leeway when it comes to adding shadows and more color to images with lots of variation.  If you'd like to see the file used for this demo, and play around with the layers, feel free to download it here.

For a more detailed example of stacking colored layers and using locked transparency to add further detail, here's a breakdown:

...and there's a few more layers under that, but that's the idea!

Overall this allows a lot more control over certain areas of coloring, and lets us work quicker and more effectively. 

I hope this has been somewhat informative! If not, feel free to send any questions and/or hate mail to [email protected].

Cheers!

[eightbears]

Howdy folks,

So since opening shop, I've been really pleased to be working on quite a few projects for numerous people! The whole freelance thing is new to me, but it's been a blast thus far. Here's a few of the projects I've been done,

First off, lots of prints. Thanks everyone who's enjoyed, shared, or bought a copy of my UW Map! The best part has been delivering them and seeing people really engage with it. Another kudos for those who wanted older illustrations! It's been a lot of fun to revive old half dead hard drives to locate the original files to a few of them.

The first unique commission came from a Cardinalista who wanted me to take a quick sketch I'd made based off a facebook conversation into something more respectable lookin. 

I also put a bird on it, it being a flask. Considering I very rarely use acrylic paints, I was pretty cheerful that looks like a blue bird. 

Probably the largest project that I've so far completed was a commission to throw together an illustrated frame for one of the old management folks from the DC (management get these mock pages as a farewell gift). 

Finally, maps! The Canada map is currently hanging at Nancy Nicholas Hall's Design Gallery as part of an exhibit. Not exactly sure where the Africa map is going, I believe it's a book. 

There's a few larger projects still on my plate, so look forward to those sometime at the end of the next month.  Cheers!

[eightbears]

Sale!

Howdy folks!

Despite just graduating, I'm basically jumping back into the UW system to complete a graduate-level cert program in Cartography/GIS. In hopes of recouping some of the losses of continued education, I'm setting up shop!

For a couple months starting now, I'll be taking requests for prints/doodles/work.

If you don't live in Madison and would require shipping, I'll respond with whatever shipping will cost to give you a accurate total. The further you are from Wisconsin, the more difficult it's gonna be to ship. We'll figure something out though.

As soon as I start getting requests, I'll be going into production mode. I'll respond with an ETD once things start goin'.

36'' x 48'' UW Map - $40

20" x 26" UW Map - $25

Map of the UW Campus, or at least how most students see it! Took quite awhile, and while large, is suitably full of fun stuff. 

You can look at and about the map here.

There are some more pictures of it towards the end of this post.

17" x 11" Cardinal Covers - $10

Cover Illustrations I did for a few special issues! If you're a Cardinalista, I'll sell em' to ya for $5. Here's links to better views of the options:

Bar Guide 2011

Fall Welcome Back 2012 

Halloween Issue 2012 

Spring Farewell 2013

Graphic Print, 8.5"x11"ish - $5

Want a print of any doodle I've drawn? Nic Cage as a patriotic raptor? Bill Murray Riding a PBR? Good thing we're friends. I do mean anything I've drawn in the last three years. The best place to point out what you'd like would be my facebook gallery of silly things. 

Eatin Cake Print, 8.5"x11" - $5

Similar to the graphic prints, just with comics. Frame a comic of me with beautiful long flowing hair and immortalize it forever, passing it down generation to generation as your most treasured relic.

Here's an online archive of the comics. Website needs to be fixed, but most of my favorites are there to help ya point out anything interesting.

Settler's Cards - $25

Inspired by some cards my brother did for his game, these are replacement cards for everyone's favorite game. There's about forty unique cards that do much more involved than the default ones. 

For an additional $5, I'll throw in a couple custom cards of whatever or whoever ya want to personalize it!

Post-it Note Sketch - $1 B/W Doodle - $10 Color Extravangaza - $20+

Kudos to Angel for the fun name for this. Essentially, tell me what to draw, and I'll draw it. For a buck it'll be something quickly done on a post-it and forgotten.

For $10, I'll spend a good half hour or so making something reasonable.

For $20, you'll get something a bit more intense, like the pictured illustrations. 

For more? Well, eh, I'd be happy to get carried away with it. If the request is really intensive, I might inquire in what quality you want it, but I promise there is literally nothing too crazy or ridiculous.

Finally, have actual work you want done? While most of things I'm peddling here are illustrations, I also have a decent background in putting together quick posters, logos, and info-graphics for folks.

If you have a project in mind, feel free to send me some details and I'll get back to you on cost and what not.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - 

So, there we go! Send me money, I'll send you some fun stuff to put up on your wall. I hope you've enjoyed my makeshift store.

Cheers!

[eightbears]

Howdy, again, folks,

(If you want to read part 1, which is the actual drawing of the map itself, check that out first!)

We left off with a finished base map, but no color to speak of. 

I do hope, eventually, to sit down with a small armada of colored pencils, acrylics, watercolor, and pastels and wage war on the original document- but for now I'm far more skilled with photoshop. I am a addicted to the almighty strength of the "layers" and "Hue/Saturation" tools. 

In order to do the coloring I re-scanned the map, opened it in photoshop, and immediately put the scanned copy on the top layer. Setting that layer to Multiply allows you to basically treat it as a coloring book. 

I don't have as many shots of this, but I do have a screenshot of the happy Mendota Monster. 

After quite awhile of tinkering, I eventually got the base colors more or less down. Everything goes much faster once that's done, because everything is basically on separate layers. When it comes to adding shadows, shades, or extra color, I can lock down one particular part, say Science Hall, and color it without worrying about accidentally coloring over the trees or sky. 

Figuring out what colors to use for the roads and ground took forever. 

I also added a few things to help fill in the massive blank space. There's still a massive blank space, but there's a cute menagerie of critters in close proximity to draw the eye away now. 

It's also worth mentioning that my home desktop is a beast. Despite the stupid large size of the file at no point did I experience any lag, which is amazing. Though I also might just be used to working on five year old computers.

While it didn't make it difficult to work on, my computer did try to voice it's frustration with me a few times though.

It also refused to save due to scratch drive space on me right when I'd finished. Tried to free up more space by first deleting a few extraneous files and then going into Photoshop's preferences, but it rebelled by self-terminating. 

Luckily I'd saved half an hour prior. Save often friends.

Finally, getting the printer to accurately print the map was a bit of a struggle. We at the Cart Lab are not printers, we are people who make maps that occasionally need to print something. 

After jumping between two computers, Arthur Robinson (our name for the large-scale printer) finally acknowledged my wish to print. 

Unfortunately it decided to clip quite a large part of the bottom off.

It took another two tries, but eventually it came out right.

Viola!

I'm really happy with how this turned out. The captivated searching done by my roommates when I got back was validation of a "mission accomplished". It's a good day, to be sure.

[eightbears]

Howdy folks,

Almost a year ago I was shown this map, made in 1937 by Hans Werner, in an intro to Cartography class,

(You can see a larger version over at MagHugger courtesy of Marty Elmer)

Old maps like this one are intrinsically inspiring. The illustrations may be simple but the depth and variety of things to glance at makes it a fun playground for the eyes and imagination to fling across.

Nowadays, we don't really see many of these. Which is understandable. It takes for-freakin'-ever to put together, and is also inherently more 'artsy' than straightforwardly informative. For my last Cartography class, and final class of my undergrad career, I decided to try to produce a modern version. 

I figured out right off the bat I wanted to do a few things:

Make this large and engaging enough that in order to view it someone has to actively move their head,

Give locations 'relative' new names. There are plenty of services out there that tell you where particular buildings are on campus. "European Village Dorms" sums up those buildings far better than their given names.

Make sure the labels/references made were something that 90% of anyone going to school here over the last three years would understand. 

Research mostly consisted of me just constantly bugging friends and colleagues for ideas. And I got quite a few! Thank you, everyone who responded.

Thank you, everyone.

I quite liked the layout of Mr.Werner's map, particularly how it allowed for more intricate details in the sidebars. Originally, I had hoped to make this digitally, but a few problems arose.

First and foremost, keeping a sense of scale was near-impossible. As you can see I had started with the buildings, and despite efforts to draw them comparatively the same size, somewhere between the paper to screen the pen weights were noticeably different. When it came time to actually draw the map itself, I could hardly get past two buildings.

Secondly, when drawing digitally you can always zoom in for better detail. For something like this, where most buildings are going to just be rectangles (which absolutely works fine- relook at Werner's map), it's really hard to consistently draw that sloppy when you can instead make super-accurate (and therefore super time consuming and ultimately unnecessary) drawings that turn into uglier blobs when zoomed out.

No, working digitally brought way to many hassles. Hassles, that would be non-existent if I just flat out drew the thing out altogether.

Considering almost everything I've ever done at the University has been digital, doing something that I could spill leftover take-out on and make fifty-so mistakes that you just have to accept and move on was quite appealing. 

The project initially began by renting a projector and trying desperately to tape the 4' x 3' paper securely to the wall. Then, I projected google maps over the center and roughly sketched in all the streets. I in no way desired to measure out distances of streets, nor did I trust my hand to just figure it out as I went along. I still managed to goof up a few areas, but people have been kind to not point them out.

I don't have any pictures of the set-up, unfortunately, but that's mostly due to how I was constantly preoccupied getting it done quick or praying the tape wouldn't fail. Again. And again.

Many pencils selflessly gave their lives in the making of this map. 

Eventually I summoned the courage to start drawing in pen. It's kinda like diving into a lake. You just gotta keep running into the water until you're head-deep before you can stop worrying about how freakin' cold the water is.

A few folks have asked, so I should note that I don't own an Apple laptop. They just happen to be the laptops that UW-Madison rents out. I have a wonderful desktop PC at home that I love dearly. 

I should also add a thanks to the folks at the Cart Lab who let me basically take over the main table to work on this. 

So that's 9 days working on it on and off. At this point, 3am the day it was due, I sat back and considered what to write in the little box I'd left myself on the right-side.

Initially, I had planned to minimize the personal influence. Keep it subtle by dressing the vines with a few mementos of things and events that really had a lasting influence on me. Or that were just great memories. 

As to the writing, crediting people was something I was very conflicted with. On the one hand, you should always cite your sources. And in my mind, these folks are. However, as I learned when I tried to insert the entire DC staff in a couple special illustrations, you always forget someone. It's inevitable. They might be sketched in and missed when the final writing takes place, or completely slip the mind because that's what minds do. 

By 6am I decided 9 days of work is enough justification for some self-indulgence.

And so the project was quickly coded and thrown up onto the website in a sleep-deprived triumphant click.

Here it is!

...not quite done though. Needs something... John Cusack?

No. Not Cusack. Not this time.

Wait! 

Color! 

[eightbears]

Howdy folks!

Now a full week into the new year, here's some tunes to help ya continue cascading into it with moving feet and swinging heads.

We start with a salutation to those years gone past, with Ich Erinnere Mich An Die Weimarer Republik,

Ich Erinnere Mich An Die Weimarer Republik - The World Inferno/Friendship Society

Then disregard it with cult-esque chanting,

History Eraser - Courtney Barnett

Remind ourselves that we're officially in the future, 

Psyche Rock - Pierre Henry

Sigh on the continued loss of a steady sleep schedule,

Midnight Blues - The Detroit Cobras

Leave kind words for those we've lost and those we can still enjoy,

Take Care of all my Children - Tom Waits

Roll back to our sides,

Rollin' Over - Skinny Lister

And look forward with unhindered giddy cheer. 

This Will Be Our Year - The Zombies

Cheers.

[eightbears]

Howdy folks,

This project is the product of an assignment to design a 'slippy map', which is the term used for web maps you can zoom in and out of, drag around, and put little interactive popups on. Most people are probably most familiar with them through modified google map api's that seems to be trendy with company sites. 

The main points of the lab were to include,

Bunch of icon for the points on the map.

Build the basemap using a (really, really, cool- though limited) program called TileMill

Setup a place on your personal website for the map to site

I can safely say this was the most frustrating of the projects I've done this semester. There were quite a few setbacks, roadblocks, and the fact that I haven't really used Javascript before didn't make things easier. Luckily, a few friends helped me climb out of those holes and every couple hours of frustration was matched with a rush of joy when things finally worked. 

For those unaware I hail from the southern city of Janesville, Wisconsin, whose claim to fame (besides Paul Ryan, the KKK rally in early 2000's, or the GM plant closure) is being "Wisconsin's Park Place". I grew up within five blocks of three parks, so this is probably not inaccurate. I doubt anyone visits Janesville to check out our extensive amount of patches of grass with one or two benches in them, but hey, it's something!

I've got a pretty good memory of the parks I frequented, but finding 'official' data is always preferable. Janesville's site seemed legitimate enough, though, I ended up being fairly disappointed with the source. I thought something was off when I read on the main Parks page that there are 64 total parks whereas this chart only has data for 43. Later on while I was collecting the latitude and longitude data from google maps I was pretty easily able to find a few parks with things like playgrounds, basketball courts, etc. that weren't listed there as well. At some point when I return to town I plan on trying to fix that. 

At least for this project's main purpose, learning the programs and programming, I'm ok with it being a bit inaccurate for now. But I do feel almost compelled to throw a giant asterisk on it explaining that it needs to be updated!

For the basemap, I grabbed roads from the Gov. Thanks Gov!

Drawing out images that are eventually going to be 16x16 or 32x32 pixel sized wasn't a recommended method, and definitely one that required quite a bit of tweaking in Photoshop to look decent, but I felt it was the best way to retain some uniqueness to them. There are a lot of great places to find icons - The Noun Project in particular - but I feel a lot of them look rather generic. Granted, that's kinda the point of icons. For a project like this I don't think that level of generalization is really required, especially with a legend to dissolve any confusion prominently placed. 

I also did the above quick sketch in class for a banner. Everyone loves banners. 

So, Tile Mill. 

All in all, a pretty easy to use program that makes it incredibly easy to style map tiles. Take a second to check out their gallery of projects, it demonstrates why this is super useful far better than my words could. 

The coding aspect of it is basically CSS, so pretty straightforward. At least if you're just making a basemap. Tile Mill does that job really well, but as far as interactivity goes, it's not to in-depth. Getting it to display things like the name  of a location when you hover over designated points is simple, but I wanted to put images in there. Oh boy oh boy. 

Unlike every program I've ever used, Tile Mill only lets you import images onto the map using base64 encoding. This format helps keep the image code ok during transfer through multiple platforms that only deal with text. That said, it's also a pain the butt to mess around with. Below is the base64 encoding for one image. 

It took quite awhile to get it to actually show up, but I eventually got it right!

I also highly recommend using pictures of Nic Cage to debug. 

So everything was working, and life was good.

Then they released a update of Tile Mill two days prior to the project being due that resulted in quite a few problems when it came to embedding the Tile Mill export onto websites. The basemap would load, but the interactivity would be shot.

Leaflet to the rescue! 

A Javascript library built especially for programmin' interactive web maps, leaflet picks up the inadequacies of Tile Mill perfectly. While I have a little experience with Javascript, it was still a bit of learning curve to figure out how to get images to work in this language as well- there's literally no example on their site that does this. Apparently images in pop-ups are not very popular. 

Fast forward another day of google searching and throwing things at code, this sight finally meant a workable solution.

Click here to check it out!

Yeah!

Like I previously said, this tool is currently a bit inaccurate, but I plan on fixing it some point in the future as it's a fun toy. More importantly, the various tools used to build it are going to be incredibly useful going forward. 

Kudos to Mapbox and the folks behind Leaflet! 

Cheers.

[eightbears]

Howdy folks,

Over the last few weeks a couple of my good buddies officially launched an indiegogo campaign to help establish what began as a MSOE student org into a full fledged non-profit. The organization is called Project: Community Computers and they help mediate the transfer of computers that companies or schools would just throw away and uses them to establish computer labs for other nonprofits or other organizations that couldn't otherwise afford them (Men's Shelters, Food Pantry's, and some schools.) More recently, they want to focus on Milwaukee, as they've discovered while abroad that the 'Digital Divide' in the States is far more severe than abroad, i.e. not having access to a computer in the United States is a much larger handicap for people compared to those in less developed countries. 

For my Cartography class the second project was to develop a long-form infographic with some caveats. I threw around a few other ideas for the project, but ultimately thought this was the most sensible subject to do it on; practical applications!

So those caveats: 

1) Has to tell a story. Beginning, characters, setting, conflict, resolution. 

2) Has to have a 'Bivariate/Multivariate Choropleth' map. Think election maps. one that represents either a diverging data set or two or more separate ones to try to make a point of comparison. 

3) Has to have a map representing change over time.

For 1, I felt the story was pretty straightforward. Lay out the problem, explain how PCC has already gone about fixing it, and finish with a quick explanation of future plans.

For 2, I thought this lent itself well to establishing the problem. Have one map of the world with % of population in a country versus how many of them had computers would highlight who would benefit from the projects.

...however, I couldn't find the data on that outside of a site that wanted $1,950 for it. Let my info go.

Luckily, statistics on internet use are much more freely out there. I figured the overlap between people using internet and people using computers was close enough, at least for my purposes.

For 3, my original idea was to use the time map to draw the focus on the digital divide in the US via showing the proliferation of computers, and internet popularity over the last ten years. Unfortunately, I could only find data for the entire United States, nothing state by state. The data was there, but it would be much better suited for simple graphs... which doesn't fulfill the prompt. 

I decided to just post-pone this issue and instead started working on the graphic. Almost immediately after putting together the 'Resolution' section it dawned on me that I could just show where in the world PCC has gone since 2009 every year. Resolution!

Part of the assignment was to turn in a storyboard. There's my initial draft. 

The data for the bivariate map mostly ended up coming from working with wiki tables. Google docs has a pretty nifty ability to pull tables off any webpage and put it into excel format. By running a few numbers of users vs. population, I separated out the various 'levels' for the map.

Both were made in Illustrator and then exported to Adobe Photoshop for the composition. Hence, I saved all the text work for that. 

Through Natural Earth Data & ArcMap I popped out this diddy. Not really anything surprising about it. Antarctica is probably not on anyone's mind anyway. 

And this is what I threw together for the 'places hit' map. The data for this came straight off their projects page. The color indicates the year in which they took the trip. The above image is rather poor quality because in later revisions I apparently over-saved the original. 

For the class project, this is what I ended up turning in. (click on it for full)

...however I didn't think it was as successful as could be. I initially sought to develop this so it would both work as a long form infographic and pamphlet, but the deadline crept up on me. So, with the coursework satisfied, time to make this useful.

The most beautiful thing about doing things digitally is that once you've built all the pieces, they're completely changeable.

We decided to remake this into a poster to be hung around Milwaukee. Also to be more condensed. After everything was roughly thrown together, I printed out a test copy and had a few friends go over it.

General things; make darks lighter so they pop through better. Change 1/3 to something more visual, make bottom all about the indiegogo, and so on and so forth. Good stuff.

We're still going back and forth over small revisions here and there, but with everything built, they're almost quick five minute adjustments of text or nudging things over. 

 Cheers!

[eightbears]

Perhaps it's November. Perhaps it's the chill in the air that's moved everyone inside and under a few hundred blankets. Perhaps it's how these tunes sound like a private audience between you and the singer, the backing band complimenting the conversation like an old man playing saxophone on a lonely street. 

It's probably because I've been watching a lot of Boardwalk Empire. 

Monday - It's Only A Paper Moon - Ella Fitzgerald

Tuesday - After You Get What You Want - Kathy Brier

Wednesday - My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker

Thursday - Minnie the Moocher - Cab Calloway

Friday - The Crave - Jelly Roll Morton

Saturday - Mack the Knife - Russell Wilson

Sunday - Life Is A Funny Proposition After All - Stephen DeRosa

Cheers!

[eightbears]

Happy Halloween!

For our recent Halloween Fiesta, I asked my roommates what represented the spirit of Halloween to them and then drew them to decorate our basement. Here are their cheeky answers.

If you feel ripped off of actual Halloween content, here's Tim Curry circa 1986:

Cheers!

[eightbears]

Tunes continue with some Fall 13' favorites. Yes, yes, it's Halloween this week. If you need someone to tell you to listen to "The Monster Mash" and Rocky Horror on repeat, Buzzfeed probably has you covered. For convince sake folks with Spotify can find all the tracks I'm posting here in this playlist.

Study hard, party hard. 

Monday - Stress, - Jim's Big Ego

"I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done, if I'm not under pressure than I sleep to long and I hang around like a bum I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous."

Tuesday - I'm a Cuckoo - Belle & Sebastian, remixed by Avalanches

"I'm glad to see you I had a funny dream"

Wednesday - Multiply - Jamie Lidell

"Gonna take a trip and multiply"

Thursday - Pumpkin Time - The World/Inferno Friendship Society

"Who loves ya. The Pumpkin loves ya."

Ok. One Halloween themed song for the day itself. Celebrate Halloween this year by camping out in a pumpkin patch with this song on repeat to summon the ineffable Great Pumpkin.

Friday - Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen

"You can't start a fire without a spark" 

Saturday - Philosophize in it! Chemicalize with it! - Kishi Bashi

"And if your body is a penny and dime, ready to throw into the fountain of my many monies"

Sunday - The Best of Times - Sage Francis

 "It was the best of time. It was the end of times"