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This graphic pretty much confirms my suspicions about the US presidential race as it stands at the moment.

From Real Clear Politics (via infographics news, I think it originally appeared in the Guardian but i can’t remember)

There are some problems - the spacing isn’t proportional but it pretends it might be, the lack of familiarity of the presentation (which can’t really be avoided) - but overall I think it’s a good graphic, boiling down a complex question into a simple glanceable chart. It’s obvious that if they want to win then the Republicans need to go with McCain.

The designers have been quite lucky with the data set but looking at the numbers reveals a couple of problems, for example in an Edwards-centric version of the chart Giuliani would appear above Huckabee, it’s easy to imagine a different set of figures that would throw up more such contradictions between figures and display so this is a decidedly un-portable approach.

Whether the visual lies undermine the chart I’m undecided, after all the data is all there in bold numerals.

[update: about 30 mins later]

So I spent a couple of minutes with a drawing package and came up with this based on the same figures…

Obviously it needs work, a description of what it does/ how to read it to start, but I think you should get the idea. It fixes some of the problems with the original but loses the nice leader board look. On the other hand it really does highlight that the ordering in the original was a bit of a sham. One of the other advantages of this formulation - Tufte would call it a small multiples presentation* - is that it’s portable, so you could run it from dynamic data.

The same graphical design structure is repeated for each of the twelve slices or multiples. Small multiples are economical: once viewers understand the design of one slice, they have immediate access to the data in all the other slices. Thus the eye moves from one slice to the next, the constancy of the design allows the viewer to focus on changes in graphical design.

[Visual Display of Quantitative Information]

OK I just need to finish this off.

Gentlemen of the Road:

Or “Jews With Swords” as was apparently Chabon’s working title. Swashbuckling adventure set on the silk road during the middle ages. I imagine the effect is similar to Isable Allende’s Zorro book which has been on my stack for about a year now. Simple high quality fun.

The Invention Of Morell:

Brilliant Borges-esq sci-fi mystery. A fugitive hides out on an island pacific, but is he alone? The story’s bizzare sequence of events seem like they must be some kind of allegory or dream or hallucination or something but Casares brings it all imaculately together with a single simple conceit. Like Lost would be if it really, really good instead of glossy nonsense.

World War Z:

The format, a series of interviews with surivors fo a zombie apocalypse is a neat idea from a practical point of view: Brooks gets to tell his grand story without worrying to much about providing a linking narrative arc or developing characters. Unfortunately this framework doesn’t hide the authors deficiencies, the format should offer pace, jumping around from one place to another but instead it just serves up a mix of undifferentated anecdotes. None of the characters are believable individuals, at best they’re crude stereotypes, and the attemps at political commentary are just a bit embarassing. The horror passages are weak too; basically comming accross as descriptions of bits from horror films.

Why do so many people I like think this is a good book?

Bait and Switch:
Barbara Erenreich goes undercover in the shadowy and often desperate world of the unemployed American middle class. This zips along at a fair old pace but never falls into the classic American journalist book trap (Stephen Johnson, Tom Standage etc.) of being just a list of stuff. There’s a story and a point to the interviews and the statistics and Erenreich is not affraid to offer an opinion, though she never comes accross as opinionated. It’s really good, compasionate, funny and occasionally, necessarily ultra-bleak.

Over the coming year the typographic car-crash style of design pioneered by RayGun magazine in the 90’s will make a bit of a comeback in response to the crushing tedium of web 2.0 design tropes. Seriously, look through the sites on commandshift3 (web design Hot Or Not). I spent a good 10 minutes clicking and was pretty much unable to judge one from the next in most cases. Part of the probelm is obviously that a web site’s success, design wise, is determined largely by functional considerations (usability, accesiblity, legibility) rather than purely aesthetic ones. But still the degree of similarity was quite astonishing, all the sites tend to look totally professional and utterly uninspiring. Gradient fills, rounded corners and Helvetica, your time is up. Except maybe not Helvetica.

Also I’d like to see the end of all those superflous JS driven transitions. But I suspect that’s only going to get worse for at least the next couple of years. I don’t mind the small ones so much, but I hate the revealing of huge chunks of hidden content and functionality.

Finally took delivery of this after about a week and a half of trying to get the fedex guy to turn up at the flat some time when I was in. I’m working from home today but as my current project is related to US election maps I feel I’m allowed to read the rules at least.
And you can too because they’re available as a PDF from the publishers page.

OK, This started out being very long but I think I’ll cut it right down and maybe come back to some bits and pieces later.

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I bought this book, The Making of the
Representative for Planet 8 - Canopus in Argos: Archives by Doris Lessing, in a second hand book shop in the lanes in Brighton. North lanes maybe? I can’t remember which lanes are which.

What an amazing cover! How could I resist? A lovely clash of black and white minimalism with 80s font abuse. By the time I got to the till and discovered it was going to cost me £15 I was too much in love to put it back.
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He’s right.

I saw this this morning.

Terrific compare and contrast between the Republican electoral nominatees and the bad guys in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It is amazing how far a couple of passing resemblances and a bit of satire can go. Fred Thompson as The Judge is tripply clever because HE PLAYED A JUDGE IN LAW AND ORDER.

… Barak Obama can be compared to another Buffy character which wouldn’t bode well…

(Altogether now “I HAAAMMMMM KENDRAAAAA, DE SLAAAYYYYYYYYAAAAARRRR”)

I’ve been itching to do my Kendra/ Hermes out of Futurama impression ever since (”Great cow of Moscow!”). So you can look forward to that.

Anyway, surely someone who isn’t Kate must have also made the comparison of the current presidential shenanigans with West Wing series 7. Obama = Matt Santos (”Too young! Too inexperienced!” They cried), McCain = Arnie Vinick (Moderate republican, perhaps a little on the old side).

“I’m Matt Santos. And you better believe I approved this ad.”

Mind you Hillary as “Bingo” Bob Russel doesn’t really work…

42 All Time Classics
Some of them really aren’t classics at all. Shaking a bottle of fizzy water? That’s barely a game let alone a classic game. On the other hand I now know the rules to most card games and Shogu, which I didn’t before. Good value. esp if you buy it for someone else and then play it while they’re absorbed in the new Zelda game.

Super Mario Galaxy
It really is as good as they say it is. How good do they say it is? Well in the case of They == Simon Parkin

It’s like stream of consciousness, capsule game design where every single idea is perfect, self-contained, never repeated and there are ten brazillion of them laid out in a line. Idiots will look at the candy-coloured palette, cutesy character designs and Mario dicking about in a bee costume and dismiss it as a game for children and nostalgic man-children. But in terms of the orthodox definition of what a videogame is and should be, this is actually the best videogame ever made.

I only have one star left to collect and I’m slightly regretting gorging myself on all the game’s delights over a single month.

Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Not sure yet. Only on the 3rd dungeon. It’s a Zelda game so it is one of the best games ever made but to me it seems a bit rough around the edges. Surprising given it’s protracted development.