Meandering Bits

The Gothamberg is a really cool visualization where you can interact with stories from people living in apartments. Users are free to contribute their own stories to the system. The stories are linked by keywords that the user types in ALL CAPITALS. These words from a web that ties different stories together “revealing complex connections between characters & places occuring in apartment buildings.” Its real fun to play around with. Note: you will need to click an author to get started on the Gothamberg page.

The same site also has a really cool piece called “Apartment” where users build their own apartments by typing sentances. The semantics of the sentence are broken down and used to create the blue print. The apartments are then grouped together into daily cities. And the best part is you can browse the apartments and cities in 3D. Definitely worth a look.

Last year the Royal Society of London opened their online archive of journals to the public (it closed in December, and costs ~$9000 for a year subscription). This archive goes back over 340 years (1665 through today) and is home to some of the most famous works ever published: Newton’s work, Halley (of comet fame), Watson and Crick’s DNA, the discovery of aspirin, Benjamin Franklin, the list goes on. A really cool resource, especially when it was free.

Chris Harrison has taken all the citations from the archive and created a visualization of the journal over the past 4 centuries.

This visualization displays papers chronologically. Paper titles radiate downward from the vertical midpoint at a 45 degree angle. Within a single year, papers are sorted alphabetically. The year a volume was published is shown, centered among it’s respective block of papers. The size varies linearly by the number of number of papers published during that year’s volume. Authors are shown radiating upwards from the vertical midpoint at a 45 degree angle. Their positions are computed by calculating the average position of the papers they authored. The size of the author’s name reflects how prolific they were (linear relationship). Essentially, author names are “centered” above the time period they were active.

This just so cool. Its not on the market yet, but its a pocket sized full color video projector (the model pictured is monochrome). Uses laser diodes (one of each red, green and blue) to draw the image. They don’t explain the details, but I bet it uses a DLP or equivalent. Lite Blue Optics (the creator) claims only 1.5 Watts at max power. That means it could be powered by the battery in your PDA or cellphone. My one concern, its so small that tension on the cables that connect it to the PDA/cellphone/computer could cause the projector to refuse to stay level.

Over at kiev.ua they have worked out a system of mapping music to square where

Diagonal, vertical and horizontal intersections through the center of rectangle correspond to the strong beats of the bar and “time” coordinate. Distance from the center to the edge of rectangle is the second coordinate that reflects the pitch of note.

The rectangle should be isosceles (square), as the bars are equal by time. Distance from the center to the edge corresponds to octave; lower notes are located closer to the center, while high notes are closer to the edge of square.

The notes are transferred to the plane to their respective paths. There are 12 paths for the octave, according to the number of semitones in the octave.

Their theory also includes sound to color conversions, however all the examples on the site seem to be in black and white save one (which is in black, white and blue).

Some examples (they also have flash versions):