2013 Kinetic Sculpture RaceMay 13th, 2013 | no commentsThe Kinetic Sculpture Race is a mobile art display as only Baltimore can do it. This past weekend, 37 teams built vehicles powered only by their own legs. The creations had to traverse 14 miles, up and down hills, not to mention a plunge into the Baltimore Harbor, through a sand pit and even a mud pit. The American Visionary Art Museum guides the event, now in its 15th year. The morning starts with a raucous blessing of the pilots, after which the teams runs down the grassy slope of Federal Hill and climb aboard their vehicles to start their journeys. These photos show some of the creative entrants I saw as I followed the race through Baltimore.
2013 WABA Bike FestMay 7th, 2013 | no commentsCyclists dressed up in their “Great Gatsby” finest to party at Eastern Market last weekend. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association’s (WABA) annual fundraiser attracted hundreds to play casino games and dance to a live band. Chipotle was there serving up tacos. The carnitas came with an purple onion topping that you can’t find in stores, and it was awesome. There was a silent auction, plus generous raffle prizes, and an awards ceremony that recognized local advocates. Local bike shops participated in the “bike-build” contest, with their creations auctioned off at the end. Here are a few photos from the event.
Online Tool to Make a One-Page SlideApril 29th, 2013 | no comments
To use it, just enter your text at the end of the URL, like:
Washington Region’s Transit NetworkApril 7th, 2013 | no commentsAt Mobility Lab‘s recent hack day, WMATA released a copy of the GTFS data they use for their trip planner. The trip planner includes schedule data for a total of 19 different transit agencies. GTFS, General Transit Feed Specification, is a collection of files that together form a complete description of all the routes, stops, and schedules. WMATA released an animation of the data last November (see Maps in Motion: Telling Stories from Transit Data). With the GTFS data now publicly available, I wanted to try making my own animations.
Voronoi Diagram of CaBi StationsMarch 24th, 2013 | no comments
The map plots each CaBi station. The boundaries are drawn at the half-way point between the closest two stations. When three or more cell boundaries meet, you are equidistant to them all. Inside the cell of a station, that station is the one that’s closest to you. Justin showed me an interactive example of Voronoi Tesselation on GitHub. The interactive demo adds a new “seed” wherever your mouse is pointing. That point creates a Voronoi cell. continued » » »
2013 Rock ‘n’ Roll MarathonMarch 22nd, 2013 | no comments30,000 runners filled the streets of Washington, DC on a brisk Saturday morning, for the annual Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Marathon. I woke up early to take some photos in Rock Creek Park, Woodley Park, and Adams Morgan.
Neighborhood CaBi AnimationsMarch 22nd, 2013 | no commentsA few days ago I animated a day of Capital Bikeshare trips using a new Java program I had written in Processing (see Animating Data with Processing). I wanted the program to be flexible enough to allow people to customize for their own uses, so I put it to the test myself by making slight modifications to its display. For the first customization, I wanted to zoom into Dupont Circle. It turns out that at this scale, drawing a frame every 60 seconds means bikes disappear from view without giving an impression of movement. So, I had to slow down the speed. The video below samples the data every 5 seconds (12 times slower than before), so you can follow individual bikes. The video displays 30 frames per second. The data is from October 5, 2012, from 8am to 8pm.
Animating Data with ProcessingMarch 18th, 2013 | 4 commentsWant to create an animation from a set of data? If the data has spatial and chronological components, you can view it as a map-based movie. I’ve been making short animations from Capital Bikeshare data using Processing, a mini Java development tool. Here are steps you can follow to try making your own movies.
Team DC on the RunwayMarch 13th, 2013 | no commentsMuch like the proverbial stripper who works to save for college, the Team DC Fashion Show strutted out a dozen male models to raise funds for their scholarship fund. Team DC is an umbrella organization for the many gay sports teams in Washington, DC. Their student-athlete college scholarship supports local gay students whose participation in sports make a positive contribution to the community. The sporting spirit of competition also applied to the models, with a panel of judges and online voters picking their favorite, who would win a raft of prizes at the end of the night. Local fashions were on display, with an emphasis on swimwear, underwear, and one fashionable dog leash. The event was hosted by local drag queens Athena Ducockis and Barbara Ann Bushwacker (who bears an uncanny resemblance to “Silver Fox” Barbara Bush). Enjoy the photos below.
A Better Way to Map Flickr PhotosMarch 7th, 2013 | no comments
The program searches only photos that have been geotagged. You control the boundaries of the search by moving the map before starting the search. You can pan and zoom the map, or just type a description of a place and use the built-in auto-complete geocoder. You can narrow your search by matching for a word, or limiting the search to a specific user or group. If you leave both fields blank, you’ll see only photos added in the last 12 hours. continued » » »
|
Site by M.V. Jantzen |
Mystery IncorporatedProgramming, photography, news, culture, and cartoons |
home |
rss |
atom
|
