I rarely address the more personal side of my life here (since this blog isn’t really a blog, but a repository for some connections I want to remind myself of), but I couldn’t be more psyched about this, and if you are visiting, feel free to click:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMDKfTb2tco]
maps maps maps
For three different GIS mapping sites, see Queens College’s Social Explorer, Brown’s MAPS USA, and SUNY Albany’s new MSA MAPS. For an anagram see this.
Update: Baltimore has a Festival of Maps! I want to go!
Update #2:
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A Horizonless Projection in Manhattan. Berg, 2009
social d
Social Design Notes is my new favorite website. I’ve used a dozen things from it in the last hour and a half for my classes and my book. It’s worthy of more than just an add to the blogroll. Also, on there somewhere, there is a pdf on ‘Visualizing Information for Advocacy,’ which ends with a list of free software tools, some of which are fabulous: OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Ajax13, Inkscape, PDFCreator, Scribus, The Gimp, and GimpShop.
DIY
DIY is something that recently bridged the gaps between my teaching and my research. Clau recently reminded me of the old saw that ethnographies are often about the ethnographers themselves, and I guess that there is an element of that in my own musings. I always thought that the walking guides I have been writing about are a little like ethnographers themselves, but that’s not too far removed. Anyway. I’ve been thinking about music as well, and DIY tools to make everyone more musical in a fashion. (Being on a MFA thesis committee on mass-participatory/social networking technology dance certainly prompted these thoughts as well.) It brings up Benjamin, of course, and a student in the Media, Technology, & Sociology class is hard at work on Garageband (both in theory and practice). But here are a few more of those sorts of programs (via ‘I Am Robot and Proud‘ website): Audacity, Processing, Chocopoolp, and Renoise.
Speaking of student projects (and DIY), here’s a part of someone’s final:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h3AuyR6EmI]
And also.